Environmental indicator: A Definition Environmental Indicator is a metric describing the state or dynamics of an environment.  Indicators can be presented as absolute values, particularly where the units are physically meaningful, or as anomalies, ratios or percentages. Indicators can also have a synthetic dimension, combining more than one variable into a composite index.

Quality of a candidate indicator should be

  • specific to each potential pressure, state and response
  • easily measurable at reasonable cost
  • sufficiently well defined as to capture the main properties of the environment.

Key indicators of ICZM:


1. Socio-economic indicators: designed to capture interactions between human activities and coastal and marine environments. Socio-economic activities in the
coastal zone are varied and encompass a number of dimensions including economic, environmental, safety and public health.


2. Environmental indicators: measure the condition and trends of the state of the ecosystem, in particular its biological organization, vigour and geological,physical and chemical properties.


3. Governance indicators: designed to measure the performance of the responses to mitigate human pressures on the coastal and marine environment. They also measure the progress and quality of the governance process itself, that is, the extent to which a programme in addressing the issue(s) that triggered the development of the programme in the first place”

Key indicator

Category

Objective

Measurement

Socio-economic indicator

Tourism

To achieve sustainable
levels of tourism in the
coastal zone.

- Number of lodging places
- Number of hotel rooms
- Ratio of spaces in lodging places per 100 residents
- Ratio of hotel rooms per 100 residents
- Growth in lodging places and hotel rooms

Environmental indicators

Keystone and indicator species

Monitor ecosystem health
through the identification
and use of keystone and
indicator species.

Identification of priority species that could serve as
indicators of ecosystem health.
- Measurement of quality (e.g. contaminant exposure,
disease) and abundance of species identified above.

Governance indicator

Institutions

To establish a network of
organizations, at all levels of
governance, that supports and
facilitates the implementation
ICZM.

Qualitative assessment of the following dimensions:
- The number and characteristics of organizations
(government, NGO, community level etc.) active in
fields related to ICZM
- Description and level of activities carried out by these
organizations related to ICZM (participation in
meetings, education, field projects, enforcement etc.)
- Degree of influence such activities on the
advancement of ICZM related activities

Indicator framework (DPSIR)-a tool for indicator selection: The DPSIR (driving forces-pressure-state-impactresponse) framework is designed to take different cultural, social, economic, institutional, political, and environmental aspects into account. The framework is structured to follow causal chains from an indirect root cause (‘driving forces’—D) to a direct pressure and finally a management response (R) between interacting components of social, economic, and environmental systems;

    • Driving forces of environmental change (e.g. industrial production)
    • Pressures on the environment (e.g. discharges of waste water)
    • State of the environment (e.g. water quality in rivers and lakes)
    • Impacts on population, economy, ecosystems (e.g. water unsuitable for drinking)
    • Response of the society (e.g. watershed protection)