• Introduction
• Indicators developed for the Solent
• Coastal and marine indicators workshop, 22 November 2005
• Other national, regional and local indicator sets

INTRODUCTION

The Solent Forum has developed a set of indicators to be used to monitor the sustainable development of our coastal zone. These are available via our indicator portal.

It must be remembered that although these indicators help to focus attention on key issues and highlight significant trends which are occurring in the Solent they do not give the full story as they represent a simplification of the real life situation. Indicators are only one tool for evaluation and scientific and policy-related interpretation etc is usually required for them to acquire their full value.

INDICATORS DEVELOPED FOR THE SOLENT

Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) requires robust indicators of sustainability that gauge the ‘health’ of the coast in relation to environmental, economic and social activity. Such indicators are essential tools for monitoring the state of the coastal environment to inform managers and policy makers of the effectiveness of strategies in achieving sustainability. Indicators can be defined as ‘quantified information which help to explain how things are changing over time’ (Defra).

Following the publication of the first State of the Solent report, a project was carried out to establish a set of environmental, social and economic indicators as a basis for future monitoring of the health of the Solent. The indicators identified by this project can be found via the indicator portal.

The full indicator report is available as a working document as a pdf file. To access the file you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. The report is copyright Solent Forum, for a hard copy contact the Solent Forum office.

Where possible the selected indicators have been adapted from international, national and regional indicators of sustainable development e.g. the indicator set developed by the EU Working Group on Indicators and Data for Measuring the Sustainable Development of the Coastal Zone and the UK government’s ‘Quality of Life’ counts and biodiversity indicators. They have also been selected with reference to frameworks developed by a number of international and European Union initiatives i.e. the Sustainable Development Reference System (SDRS) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Pressure/State/Response framework.

The indicators were selected to represent all the pertinent aspects in the Solent. Some indicator data, mostly social and economic, is not currently available. Further work is being carried out in these areas through the Solent Forum Research Group.

The chosen indicators for the Solent will be kept under review to ensure that they continue to reflect the long term aims for the Solent as well as to make use of new scientific knowledge and data. This will guarantee that the most suitable indicators are being used to measure the ‘health’ of the Solent at any one time. An annual data update will be undertaken and this information will be available on the Solent Forum’s website.

The information provided gives a baseline assessment and in some cases trends can be seen over time. These trends are not assessed but will be reviewed by the Solent Forum Research Group on an annual basis. There are no headline indicators as it was decided, by the Solent Forum Research group, that key indicators would only show one aspect of an issue and composite indicators would be too difficult to choose.

The second edition of the State of the Solent publication can be ordered from the Solent Forum at the price of £20 per copy. ISBN: 1859757359

COASTAL AND MARINE INDICATORS WORKSHOP 2005

The Solent Forum ran a workshop on behalf of the EU Working Group on Indicators and Data the purpose of which was to:

• to demonstrate the work now underway in calculating the Sustainable Development (SD) indicators;
• to get delegates to help in assessing how far ICZM is being implemented in the UK;
• to show how agencies, authorities and coastal partnerships can join the rapidly growing network of indicator practitioners who are, at last, contributing some much-needed rigour to formulating and implementing coastal and marine policy.

Delegates were invited from a range of local and regional government departments (including planning, coastal defence, leisure, research and intelligence etc), national coastal and maritime organisations, office of national statistics, representatives from government departments, government agencies, industry, Port and Harbour authorities, NGOs etc. In total 90 delegates attended the event representing a range of sectors from the local, national and regional levels.

Session 1 set the scene with presentations giving background to the development of the 2 sets of indicators, the coastal sustainable development set and the ICZM progress indicator. These have both been developed by the EU Working Group on Indicators and Data in response to the EU Recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM).

Defra then outlined how the UK was responding to the EU recommendation on ICZM and how the 2 sets of indicators would be incorporated into the strategy which is due to be produced early next year.

Session 2 concentrated on work which had been done to date on coastal sustainable development indicators at the European, regional and local levels. The presentations looked at how SD indicators had been used and the barriers and solutions to their development, measurement and interpretation. Following these sessions there was a general discussion which raised a number of issues which to be considered in any further work.

Session 3 was a workshop session during which delegates were split into groups with facilitators to work through the ICZM progress indicator. The outputs from this session will be analysed by the EU Working Group on Indicators and Data and the information fed back to delegates in due course.

Presentations are available online as PDF files. To access the file you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. Some of these are large files and the sizes are given. Please contact the Solent Forum office if you are unable to download them.

• The EU ICZM Recommendation, the EU ICZM Expert Group and the Working Group on Indicators and Data (WG-ID) - Clive Gilbert, SAIL and EU Working Group on Indicators and Data (3.9MB)
• UK response to the EU ICZM Recommendation - Karen Morgan, Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (81KB)
• Quality of Life Indicators for the South East Region - Nikki Nicholson, South East England Regional Assembly (210KB)
• Development of the State of the Solent report - Gemma Conway, Solent Forum (155KB)

OTHER NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL INDICATOR SETS

See other Solent Forum Projects