Sustainable development indicators

The Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) are used to monitor the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS) in a report published by Eurostat every two years. They are presented in ten themes.

Of more than 100 indicators, eleven have been identified as headline indicators. They are intended to give an overall picture of whether the European Union has achieved progress towards sustainable development in terms of the objectives and targets defined in the strategy. For a more complete picture it is necessary to look at the progress of all indicators within a theme.

Theme	Headline indicator
Socio-economic development	Growth rate of real GDP per capita
Sustainable consumption and production	Resource productivity
Social inclusion	People at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion
Demographic changes	Employment rate of older workers
Public health	Healthy life years and life expectancy at birth, by sex
Climate change and energy	Greenhouse gas emissions Share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption    Primary energy consumption
Sustainable transport	Energy consumption of transport relative to GDP
Natural resources	Common bird index Fish catches taken from stocks outside safe biological limits: Status of fish stocks managed by the EU in the North-East Atlantic
Global partnership	Official development assistance as share of gross national income
Good governance	No headline indicator

The evaluation of progress since 2000, based on the headline indicators, shows a rather mixed picture:

• Clearly favourable changes for indicators: 'People at risk of poverty or social exclusion' (since 2005), 'Greenhouse gas emissions' and 'Consumption of renewables' (since 2006);
• Moderately favourable changes for the indicators: 'Real GDP per capita', 'Life expectancy' (since 2002) and the 'Abdundance of common birds';
• Moderately unfavourable changes for the indicators: 'Resource productivity', 'Employment of older workers', 'Energy consumption of transport relative to GDP', 'Conservation of fish stocks', and 'Official development assistance';

To learn more about the background of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS) and its indicator framework please refer to: Context

Please address any comments or questions concerning the webpages on the EU Sustainable Development Indicators (EU SDIs) to the Eurostat SDI team through estat-sdi@ec.europa.eu

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