|
|
Indicators of Rural Sustainability
There is a need in Central America, at the regional and national levels, to integrate environmental, economic and social concerns into the development decision-making process, to improve policies and their implementation, and to monitor and report the national and regional state of the environment and development process, on a regular basis.
This collaborative effort between the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank, has as its purpose to develop, test and refine environmental, land quality and other related indicators and information tools in an user-friendly geographic information system (GIS) interface, for integrating rural sustainability considerations into policy-making and planning and improve environmental management at different scales in Central America countries.
During 2000, the project reached the end of its second phase. A number of outputs from this phase are available for downloading (see below). If you wish to receive the whole packet by mail, please address your request to eadvisor@worldbank.org
Key resources include:
- A Lessons Learned report ("Developing Indicators: Lessons Learned from Central America 1-3"), which provides practical guidance to indicator developers.
- A report on forest indicators ("Forest Sector Indicators: An Approach for Central America"), demonstrating how policy-relevant issues can be addressed at the regional and national level through the use of available forest sector information derived from existing data sources
- Two analytical examples ("Using Information to Improve Decisionmaking: Climatic Risk in Central America" and "From Indices to Policy Implications: Land Use in Central America"), which gives the reader an idea on how indicators can be used to improve decisionmaking processes
- A poster ("A One-Stop-Shop to Successful Indicator Development"), based on the Lessons Learned report. The poster takes the indicator developer step by step through the development of a successful indicator initiative.
- Access is one of the major drivers in the development process. For this reason a tool has been developed that allows users to define and explore 'accessibilities'. The application and use of accessibility for policy-making and planning can been seen by viewing one concrete example - how Mitch has modified 'Accessibility to markets' (one of the project's indices), which can be seen by viewing Accessibility before Mitch and Accessibility after Mitch (see below Indicators of Rural Sustainability Accessibility Index)
- Apart from the accessibility index, the project has also developed indices for Land Use, Forest Risk, Coastal Risk, and Climate Risk for Central America. For maps picturing the indices as well as appurtenant technical notes, please see documents below
- In the context of the CIAT/World Bank/UNEP rural sustainability indicators project a goal is to develop sectoral indicators. The document below is a technical note that introduces a framework that can be used in the development and use of water indicators (See document Conceptual Framework to Develop and Use Water Indicators below).
 | A One-Stop-Shop to Successful Indicator Development: Poster, 2000 (1,308KB PDF) | | Climate Risk Index (56KB PDF) | | Coastal Risk Index (29KB PDF) | | Conceptual Framework to Develop and Use Water Indicators, 1999 (CIAT/World Bank/UNEP Project) (88KB PDF) | | Developing Indicators: Lessons Learned from Central America Part 1, November 2000 (World Bank, CIAT-World Bank-UNEP Project, CIAT) (872KB PDF) | | Developing Indicators: Lessons Learned from Central America Part 2, 2000 (1,074KB PDF) | | Developing Indicators: Lessons Learned from Central America Part 3, 2000 (1,537KB PDF) | | Forest Risk Index (64KB PDF) | | Forest Sector Indicators: An Approach for Central America, November 2000 (The World Bank, CIAT-World Bank-UNEP Project, CIAT) (523KB PDF) | | From Indices to Policy Implications: Land Use in Central America, November 2000 (1,122KB PDF) | | Indicators of Rural Sustainability Accessibility Index: Before and After Hurricane Mitch (Maps) | | Land Use Index (70KB PDF) | | Using Information to Improve Decisionmaking: Climatic Risk in Central America, November 2000 (1,240KB PDF) |
|
|