Latest developments

The Department has appointed the Palmer Group to assist in the developments of the local authority indicators. The first project steering committee meeting took place on 3 December 2003. Stakeholder workshop was held on 9 March 2004. Final documents now available on-line.

To view a brief summary of the environmental indicator project, click the button below.

• Environmental Performance Indicators - final report (304 KB)
• Appendix A: Consultation Process (13 KB)
• Appendix B: Situation analysis (122 KB)
• Appendix C: List of indicators (46 KB)

The underlying theme of sustainable development is the integration of economic, social, environmental and institutional issues in decision and policy making at al levels and should be taken up in mechanisms for institutional integration, such as national sustainable development councils, committees, and task forces as well as national strategies for sustainable development. This fundamental approach to sustainable development should be kept in mind in developing, testing and using indicators.

Through the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) Indicator testing in 1998 and the development of the National State of the Environment Report in 1999, it was recognised that there was a gap in reporting on environmental issues using indicators. Although South Africa has well developed social and economic indicators (and statistical systems to support them) the absence of clearly defined and adopted environmental indicators, supported by monitoring and reporting programmes and statistical systems, made reporting on the state of the environment and the environmental component of sustainable development difficult. The National Environmental Indicator Programme (NEIP) was launched to address this gap by developing a core set of indicators for National State of the Environment Reporting. The NEIP was completed by August 2002 and consists of 102 environmental indicators.

It is clear that many of the indicators of this national set are either not directly applicable on a local level, or they can not be disaggregated to smaller geographic areas. This fact renders these indicators useful on a national and international level, but limits their use on provincial and local levels.

In addition to the above initiative, there were also several other initiatives that developed indicators in other sectors, including the work done by the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG), which developed Key Performance Indicators for use in the annual reports of local authorities on the implementation of Integrated Development Plans (IDP's), and indicators developed by the Human Rights Commission. In contrast to the national environmental indicators initiative, these latter named initiatives developed indicators that are directly applicable to the provincial and local levels of government.

The KPIs developed for the Department of Provincial and Local Government aims to integrate the planning and reporting regimes with the IDP as the basis for local level planning. It contains a mix of social, environmental and economic indicators, but of the three, environmental indicators are not currently as well developed as the other two categories of indicators. The indicators used by the Human Rights Commission focuses primarily on pollution and waste issues and access to environmental services.

Apart from the IDPs, there are also specific environmental plans (environmental management plans (EMPs) and environmental implementation plans (EIPs)) that all provinces and scheduled national departments have to compile every four years, and report on implementation every year. Currently there are no set indicators for the annual reporting on EIPs or EMPs.

The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism wants to develop set of environmental (performance) indicators that can be integrated into the IDP, EIP/EMP and which would fulfil state of the environment reporting requirements.

The main objective of the project is to assist the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to develop a core set of environmental performance indicators for local level reporting purposes. The intention is that these environmental performance indicators:
(a) be integrated into the General List of Key Performance Indicators for Local Government as prescribed by the Minister of Provincial and Local Government;
(b) be used by provinces in their annual EIP/EMP reports;
(c) be used for reporting on the state of the environment on local provincial and national levels;
(d) Be aggregatable from local to provincial and national level;
(e) Promote informed decision-making

The set of environmental performance indicators should:

• Take into account the indicators in the National set that are applicable on local level;
• Be integrated into the DPLG set of General Key Performance Indicators for Local Government (currently only consisting of 7 economic and social indicators);
• Be aggregateable from local to provincial to national level to the extend possible;
• Be designed to be useful in promoting more informed decision-making;
• Provide relevant information on the environment on provincial and local level.