The Scottish Government

« Previous | Contents | Next »

Listen

FOREWORD

I am pleased to recommend to you the third annual progress report on Indicators of Sustainable Development for Scotland.

This report records progress against the 24 indicators included in Meeting the Needs…Priorities, Actions and Targets for Sustainable Development in Scotland, published in April 2002. These 24 indicators cover the key Scottish priorities for sustainable development against which we can measure our activities to ensure that the action we are taking contributes towards sustainable development.

Last year we indicated that we would be working with the UK Government and other devolved administrations to review the UK Sustainable Development Strategy. Following the joint consultation exercise, Taking it On, during 2004, the Scottish Executive has joined the UK Government, Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Administration in agreeing a UK Strategic Framework for Sustainable Development, One future - Different Paths.

The Framework was launched in Scotland by the First Minister at the Scottish Sustainable Development Conference in Edinburgh on 7 March 2005. It commits us to work towards a shared purpose, principles and priorities. To put this into practice, we are developing a new Scottish Sustainable Development Strategy. This will include a review of the current indicators, partly to take account of new UK-wide indicators contained in the Framework.

We saw real examples on 7 March of how people and organisations are working together at many levels to make a practical difference. The new Framework, and our commitment to it, will reinforce that spirit of co-operation in working towards creating a sustainable future.

ROSS FINNIE
Minister for Environment and Rural Development

INTRODUCTION

The task of making Scotland more sustainable involves work across the country in the work of the public and private sectors and in our daily lives. We need to be able to monitor progress and our Sustainable Development Indicators give us important information both on the successes of Scotland and on the challenges we still face.

This is the third report on the status of our indicators. For each indicator we have provided information about where we are now, based upon the latest figures available at 31 December 2004. We gave given a description of the relevance of the indicator, identified trends, looked where possible at the differences between urban and rural areas in Scotland and given a brief summary of the main actions we are taking to achieve our targets.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS REPORT INDICATORS PROGRESS CHART

v moving in the right direction
= no change
˜ no significant change
x moving in the wrong direction
~ insufficient data
* data not available

« Previous | Contents | Next »