Designing for Action: Principles of Effective Sustainability Measurement

The report argues that sustainability measurement is only effective when embedded in an iterative process of learning and acting, consisting of institutional mechanisms, data and analytics, evaluation, and feedback. It emphasizes a systems perspective, highlighting the food-water-energy nexus and the need for nested scales of assessment from the enterprise to the global level. The document also reviews the evolution of sustainability science since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, distinguishing between mature tools like Life Cycle Assessment and emerging concepts such as planetary boundaries and resilience thinking.

• Effective sustainability measurement requires a framework comprising four interdependent building blocks: institutional mechanisms (governance and rules), data and analytics (collection and projections), evaluation (interpreting data against objectives), and feedback (information flow to catalyse change).
• Sustainability assessment must be applied across nested scales—single enterprise, national or sector, and global—because an individual entity may appear sustainable even if the broader economy it operates within is not.
• The 'food-water-energy nexus' represents a critical area where increasing demands driven by population growth and economic development create interacting pressures that require integrated, cross-sectoral assessments.
• Progress toward sustainability can be categorized into three levels: supportive actions (raising awareness), necessary steps (integrating information into decision processes), and sufficient conditions (establishing cradle-to-grave stewardship with low or zero environmental impacts).
• Sustainability science has evolved in two phases since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit; the first decade produced mature tools like Environmental Impact Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment, while the second decade has introduced emerging concepts such as 'planetary boundaries' and 'resilience thinking' that are not yet fully translated into practical tools.

APA

O’Connell, D., Raison, J., Hatfield-Dodds, S., Braid, A., Cowie, A., Littleboy, A., Wiedmann, T., & Clark, M. (2013). Designing for Action: Principles of Effective Sustainability Measurement. World Economic Forum. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC/2013/WEF_GAC_MeasuringSustainability__PrinciplesEffectiveSustainabilityMeasurement_SummaryReport_2013.pdf

Chicago

O’Connell, Deborah, John Raison, Steve Hatfield-Dodds, Andrew Braid, Annette Cowie, Anna Littleboy, Thomas Wiedmann, and Megan Clark. Designing for Action: Principles of Effective Sustainability Measurement. World Economic Forum, 2013. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC/2013/WEF_GAC_MeasuringSustainability__PrinciplesEffectiveSustainabilityMeasurement_SummaryReport_2013.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{oconnell2013designing, author = {O’Connell, Deborah and Raison, John and Hatfield-Dodds, Steve and Braid, Andrew and Cowie, Annette and Littleboy, Anna and Wiedmann, Thomas and Clark, Megan}, title = {{Designing for Action: Principles of Effective Sustainability Measurement}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2013}, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC/2013/WEF_GAC_MeasuringSustainability__PrinciplesEffectiveSustainabilityMeasurement_SummaryReport_2013.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }