Using indicators to measure sustainability: recent methodological and conceptual developments

Abstract

This paper briefly reviews some of the progress made to address the issues of measuring sustainability since the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992. It provides the broader context within which to integrate indicators of fisheries sustainability. Although the immediate focus of fisheries indicators will be to achieve sustainability in the management of each fishery, it will also be necessary to aggregate some appropriate indicators geographically and temporally for global measures of fisheries sustainability. Conversely, global indicators of pressures on fisheries are needed as inputs to local sustainability calculations.