THE INECE ENFORCEMENT INDICATORS: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND ANNOTATED OUTLINE

Executive Summary

The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 recognized the importance of enforcement and compliance in Agenda 21 and called on the international community to build compliance and enforcement capacity as an essential element of environmental management. (Chapter 8.21, Agenda 21). This commitment is reaffirmed in a number of international initiatives, including UNEP’s Montevideo III program and new enforcement and compliance guidelines for MEAs. (UNEP, 2001; UNEP, 2002). Recently, preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, being held August 26 through September 4, 2002, noted the need to “promote the establishment or strengthening of existing authorities and mechanisms necessary for policy-making, coordination and enforcement” and to “develop and maintain effective legal systems, including strong and clear laws related to compliance, monitoring, enforcement, and for citizen participation.” (UNCSD, 2002). A key element to better implementation, enforcement and compliance with environmental requirements is improved information for policy makers, partners, and civil society. The INECE Enforcement Indicator project will create a framework for developing indicators dealing with issues of implementation, enforcement and compliance in industrialized, developing and less developed nations. These indicators will build on two of INECE’s earlier accomplishments: the internationally cited Principles of Environmental Enforcement (USEPA, 1992) and our country progress/self assessments of environmental compliance and enforcement programs (INECE, Undated). Drawing on the expertise and experience gained from these past initiatives, the INECE Enforcement Indicator project will be launched at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The goal of this project is to develop effective indicators of implementation, enforcement and compliance with environmental laws around the world -- with the view that the resulting improvements in the public policy dialogue will lead to improved environmental governance on a global scale.

Chapter 40 of Agenda 21 calls for the development of indicators for sustainable development. Over the past decade, the UN, along with a number of governments, international organizations, academics and NGOs, has begun developing these indicators. (e.g. UNCSD, 2001; OECD, 2001). Their efforts are directed at delivering concise, scientifically credible information in a manner that is readily understood and communicated to decision-makers and other audiences. In addition, a number of agencies and organizations are developing more specialized indicators that are intended to be used alone or in combination with these other broader efforts. (UNCSD, 1995). However, few of these efforts have attempted to address issues of implementation, enforcement or compliance. Implementation indicators show whether a government has taken the actions necessary to implement environmental commitments. Enforcement indicators identify whether the government is enforcing its laws. Finally, compliance indicators measure compliance with the environmental laws in the regulated communities. The INECE Enforcement Indicator project will design indicators that address these issues.

The INECE indicators will be designed for a wide range of applications. Their development will be guided by principles, or criteria, selected based on the best practices of indicator projects around the world and will utilize a standardized model that will facilitate the use of the INECE indicators in conjunction with other existing indicators. (USCSD, 2001; NACEC, 1999; OECD, 2001; USEPA, 1997; WRI, 2001). The methodology, or process, for developing these indicators will follow a step-by-step approach, drawing on the expertise of INECE’s partners, as well as other indicator projects and outside experts. A principal part of our methodology will be to develop detailed case studies of existing indicator projects to inform our development of implementation, enforcement and compliance indicators. These will include analysis of work by the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation (NACEC, 1999), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2001), the World Bank (WB, 1999), the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA, 1997), the Mexican PROFEPA, and various projects led by the World Resources Institute, among others.

Indicator development will proceed in a phased approach among representative countries. This will allow the Secretariat and Indicator Subcommittee to pilot test the indicators in representative regions. After testing, the implementation and enforcement indicators will be revised and harmonized and tested again to ensure applicability. Once these indicators are developed, the project will be expanded to included compliance indicators. In addition, the project will continually reassess its approach -- including partners, users, principles and methodology – in order to expand the reach and improve the quality of the indicators.

The following is an annotated outline of the project designed to communicate the background, purpose, and proposed methodology. Comments are appreciated, especially insights drawn from experiences with other indicator projects. After comments are received, including from discussions from the 6^th Conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, the Secretariat will prepare the final description of the INECE Enforcement Indicator project, which will be published in a special issue of the Newsletter for presentation at WSSD.

Annotated Outline

Introduction

Summary. Over the next few years INECE will develop a set of environmental enforcement and compliance indicators. These indicators will be scaled to accommodate countries at varying levels of development, and will serve as a tool for evaluating enforcement and compliance policies and capacity, with a view towards identifying needed resources, including training, technology, and other financial resources. Examples of this type of indicator include the total number of inspections performed each year and the percentage of inspectors possessing advanced degrees. The INECE project will build upon existing international work on environmental indicators generally, as well as other regional and national efforts to develop enforcement and compliance indicators (see below).

Definition of Indicators. The term indicator is rooted in the Latin verb indicare, which means to disclose or point out, to announce or make publicly known, or to estimate or put a price on. (Hammond, 1995) Environmental indicators are important tools for translating and delivering concise, scientifically credible information in a manner that can be readily understood and communicated to decision-makers and other intended audiences. (Environment Canada, 2002).

Major Indicator Projects. Over the past decade, several organizations have begun developing environmental indicators to translate and deliver concise, scientifically credible information in a manner that can be readily understood and communicated to decision-makers and other intended audiences. The aim of these projects is to show the trends of a larger system that may be disclosed when multiple indicators within the same system are tracked over time and analyzed in aggregate. The following are examples of international uses of environmental indicators:

i. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Environmental Indicators. The OECD uses indicators as a tool for performance evaluation and public information. Environmental indicators help track environmental performance and progress towards sustainable development. (OECD, 2001).

ii. United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) Indicators on Sustainable Development. The CSD employs indicators to measure the full spectrum of sustainable development issues. The CSD uses indicators to translate physical and social science knowledge into manageable units of information that can facilitate the decision-making process; measure and calibrate progress towards sustainable development goals; and provide an early warning, sounding the alarm in time to prevent economic, social and environmental damage. In addition the CSD notes that indicators are also important tools to communicate ideas, thoughts and values. (UNCSD, 2001).

Current Enforcement Mandates. A number of international instruments call for strengthening the implementation, enforcement, and compliance with environmental laws and policies. In addition, there is an international need and mandate to develop indicators to measure progress towards this goal.

i. International Mandate to Strengthen Enforcement. At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the international community made a commitment to strengthening implementation, enforcement and compliance. This commitment is reaffirmed in the documents under consideration for adoption at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002.

1. Agenda 21. The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 recognized the importance of enforcement and compliance in Agenda 21. Chapter 8.21 established an international mandate to build compliance and enforcement capacity as an essential element of environmental management. It states:

8.21. Each country should develop integrated strategies to maximize compliance with its laws and regulations relating to sustainable development. The strategies could include:

(a) Enforceable, effective laws, regulations and standards based on sound economic, social and environmental principles and appropriate risk assessment, incorporating sanctions designed to punish violations, obtain redress, and deter future violations;

(b) Mechanisms for promoting compliance;

(c) Institutional capacity for collecting compliance data, regularly reviewing compliance, detecting violations, establishing enforcement priorities, undertaking effective enforcement, and conducting periodic evaluations of the effectiveness of compliance and enforcement programs;

(d) Mechanisms for appropriate involvement of individuals and groups in the development and enforcement of laws and regulations on environment and development; and

(e) Develop effective national programmes for reviewing and enforcing compliance with national, state, provincial and local laws on environment and development.

2. WSSD. Preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the ten-year follow up to the Earth Summit in Rio, discuss the need to “promote the establishment or strengthening of existing authorities and mechanisms necessary for policy-making, coordination and enforcement” and to “develop and maintain effective legal systems, including strong and clear laws related to compliance, monitoring, enforcement, and for citizen participation.” (UNCSD, 2002).

3. UNEP Guidelines. UNEP recently developed guidelines for enforcement and compliance addressing concerns at both the international and national level. (UNEP, 2002)

a. Chapter I of UNEP’s new guidelines addresses compliance with multilateral agreements. It comprises twenty-nine paragraphs, which spell out the purpose, scope and definitions of the terms used in this part of the text, as well as other issues considered necessary for enhancing compliance: preparatory work for negotiations, effective participation in negotiations, assessment of domestic capabilities during negotiations, compliance considerations in multilateral environmental agreements, review of effectiveness, compliance mechanisms after a multilateral environmental agreement comes into effect and dispute settlements provisions. Other issues covered in this chapter are national implementation, including national measures, capacity building and technology transfer. Emphasis is placed on international co-operation by the United Nations and other relevant international organizations as well as through multilateral and bilateral initiatives.

b. Chapter II of the guidelines addresses national enforcement and international co-operation in combating violations of laws implementing multilateral environmental agreements. Comprising fifteen paragraphs, this chapter spells out the purpose, scope and definitions of the terms used in this part of the text, as well as national enforcement of laws and regulations, institutional framework, national coordination, training for enhancing enforcement capabilities and public environmental awareness and education. Emphasis is placed on international co-operation and coordination, bearing in mind the need for consistency in laws and regulations, co-operation in judicial proceedings, institutional framework and capacity building and strengthening.

4. Montevideo III. Language in Agenda 21 empowered UNEP and other organizations to more actively support compliance and enforcement activities, including capacity building. UNEP responded with a number of initiatives, including the Programme for the Development and Periodic Review of Environmental Law for the First Decade of the 21^st Century (also known as “Montevideo III”). The final Montevideo III Programme, approved in 2001, lists as a priority the need to increase the effectiveness of environmental law and stresses implementation, compliance and enforcement. (UNEP, 2001).

5. North American Agreement for Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). This well known regional agreement calls for increased transparency for the efficient enforcement and compliance with environmental laws in North America, including measures for monitoring compliance and provides its Council of Ministers with authority to develop recommendations to State Parties regarding indicators for reporting the state of the environment, techniques and methodologies for data gathering and analysis on environmental law enforcement issues. [See Articles 1(f), 1(g), 1(h), 2(1)(e), 2(2), 5(1)(b), 10(2)(a), 10(2)(c), 12(2)(c)].

ii. Call for Indicators

1. Agenda 21. Chapter 40 of Agenda 21 notes that traditional indicators (for example, GNP and measurements of individual resource or pollution flows) do not provide adequate indications of sustainability. (Agenda 21, Chapter 40.4). Due to the inability of traditional indicators to provide the necessary information, chapter 40 calls on the international community to develop and promote new indicators that would, in part, help track progress towards achieving the goals of Agenda 21. (Chapter 40.6-40.11) Similarly, Chapter 8.21 calls on countries to develop “Institutional capacity for collecting compliance data . . . and conducting periodic evaluations of the effectiveness of compliance and enforcement programs.” Chapter 8.6 states that “Countries could develop systems for monitoring and evaluation of progress towards achieving sustainable development by adopting indicators that measure changes across economic, social and environmental dimensions.”

2. WSSD Preparations. Several participants in the regional and global preparations for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development have noted the value of environmental indicators generally and the profound absences of indicators dealing with issues of implementation, enforcement and compliance with environmental laws and policies. (INECE, 2001).

3. NAAEC. This agreement established the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC initiated a project in 1997 to “explore development or indicators or criteria for evaluating the performance of the Parties in implementing policies and programs for effective environmental enforcement.” The NAAEC also states that approaches and common indicators can be considered by the Council. (Article 10(2)(c)).

Implementation, Enforcement and Compliance Indicators Defined. Environmental indicators have traditionally been limited to measuring the health and status of environmental media like air and water quality, waste management and land use. To date, few efforts have attempted to address issues of implementation, enforcement and compliance. Definitions and examples of indicators for these issues are set forth below:

i. Implementation Indicators. Governments are required to take steps to implement commitments they have made in international agreements and national policies. Implementation can take the form of new laws, programs or the recognition of new rights afforded individuals. An example of an implementation indicator is whether a party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora has passed the four pieces of implementing legislation required under the agreement. (see http://www.cites.org).

ii. Enforcement Indicators. Once a government has adopted environmental laws they need to enforce them. An example of a commonly used enforcement indicator is the number of enforcement actions (civil, criminal or administrative) brought by the government during a given time period. (USEPA, 2001)

iii. Compliance Indicators. Once the laws are in place and are being enforced, other indicators measure the level of compliance in the regulated communities. The compliance rate is an example of this type of indicator. Note that this indicator is predicated on the existence of enforcement inspections. (USEPA, 1992).

Examples. While there is relatively little work on these types of indicators, the following indicator projects attempt to address issues of implementation, enforcement and compliance.

i. The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). In 1997, the CEC initiated a project to explore the development of indicators or criteria for evaluating the performance of the Parties in implementing policies and programs for effective environmental enforcement. The objectives of this project are to document current work in the area of enforcement indicators and provide a forum for dialogue with a view of establishing a baseline group of indicators. Ultimately, the CEC hopes to develop more effective indicators for use by the three parties to the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. (NACEC, 1999).

ii. United Sates-Mexico Border XXI Program. The Program’s Cooperative Enforcement and Compliance Workgroup periodically publish several indicators for the border area including: number of inspections conducted in the area, number of enforcement actions and penalties, amount of money spent on injunctive relief and supplemental environmental projects, and the amount of pollution reduced as a result of enforcement. (see U.S. Mexico Border XXI Homepage at http://www.epa.gov/usmexicoborder/index.htm).

iii. USEPA [fill in based on Mike Stahl’s paper]

iv. PROFEPA – Mexico. In recent years Mexico’s Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (PROFEPA) has initiated, with relative success, a program of compliance and enforcement indicators known as ICNA’s, or Indices de Cumplimiento de la Normatividad Ambiental (Indexes of Compliance with Environmental Normativity).

INECE’s Plan for Developing Indicators

Overview & Objective. The objective of the INECE Enforcement Indicator project is “action and accountability through better policy evaluation” in order to create a safer and healthier environment, and to promote sustainable development. The INECE environmental indicators project aims to develop a system for evaluating capabilities of environmental compliance and enforcement programs at the national, regional, and/or international level. It also aims to develop a process to allow a country or region to develop a system for evaluating compliance and enforcement. The initial stage of the project involves researching and surveying programs worldwide. The project also aims to develop a functional index of environmental compliance and enforcement indicators based on the information gathered during the first stage of the project.

Applications. The INECE indicators will be designed for a wide range of applications, including for example:

i. Parliaments and National Governments- to help set priorities and allocate budgets; and to help them identify which indicators are relevant for evaluating environmental compliance and enforcement in a particular region or field;

ii. Practitioners- to evaluate alternative enforcement policies and practices;

iii. International and Bi-lateral Donors- to help set priorities and allocate funding;

iv. The Regulated Community- to help understand their obligations and gauge their performance;

v. Citizens and NGOs- to apply political pressure to improve environmental enforcement by understanding the success or failure of the current policies;

vi. Investment Bankers and other Financial Entities- to measure and qualify investment grades in emerging markets.

Users/Partners. The design and use of the INECE indicators will draw upon a diverse group of constituencies including, for example:

i. Government Policy-Makers – legislators, judges, and high level members of the executive.

ii. Enforcement Practitioners -- regulators, inspectors, and other implementers of policy;

iii. International Actors – including UNEP, UNDP, CSD, MEA Secretariats, OECD, World Bank;

iv. Regional Actors – including the European Union, regional development banks (IDB, ADB, EBRD) and the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation;

v. Bi-lateral Donors – including the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada;

vi. Academia -- including Yale Center for Environmental Law (see Esty, 2000), University of Southern Chile (see their current work with Global Forest Watch at http://www.globalforestwatch.org ) and CESIN at Columbia University, and the Beijing Institute of Environmental Research;

vii. NGOs – including the World Resources Institute, the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA), Thailand Environment Institute, the Center for Environmental Law of the South (DASSUR) and the Environmental Management and Law Association of Hungary.

Principles. The indicator project will be guided by a set of principles, or criteria, developed from the best experiences of other leading indicator projects. (see WRI, et al., 2002; OECD, 2001; UNCSD, 2001; WB, 1999; NACEC, 1999; USEPA, 1997). The guiding principles include:

i. Transparency. Transparency refers both to the process of developing the indicators, as well as their use.

1. Transparency in development. The project will make all assumptions explicit and invite a broad coalition of stakeholders, including government representatives, to participate throughout the life of the project. (NACEC, 1999) All project terms will be explicitly defined to maintain consistency. Progress of the INECE Indicators project will be available through the Secretariat and via the Internet, with appropriate functions to enable the indicator development team to receive suggestions and comments. Data and data collection methods will also be publicly available. (UNCSD, 2001).

2. Transparency in use. The indicators will be easy to access for civil society (WRI, 2002), as well as policymakers and practitioners (EPA, 1997). The project realizes that the rights to access environmental information and to participate in environmental decision making are still in deficit in various nations. This project will serve as an additional call to those nations to guarantee such rights.

ii. Informative. The indicators will provide the information that various users/partners want and need. They will be presented in a visually engaging and easy to understand format that makes the underlying data clear and useful to civil society, government, and the regulatory community. (Hardi, 2001). Through this process, voluntary compliance by industry will be improved and international certification efforts, such as ISO 14000, will be encouraged. (NACEC, 1999). Cooperation will be encouraged between regions/networks that have similar practices and levels of enforcement. This includes sharing information, establishing common practices, and discussing the experiences of the region.

iii. Indicators will also measure values such as effectiveness in the access to justice, environmental information and civil society participation in environmental decision making.

iv. Comparable. The indicator project will balance the need for uniformity in the collection of data and the measurement of indicators with the recognition that countries at different stages of development require different measurement. (NACEC, 1999). The project will develop a graduated set of indicators for use by countries depending on the stage of their enforcement program with aggregated indexes that will allow for comparison of the different data accumulated. A measurement that is useful in one region may not be useful in another. However, there is considerable additional value in having some of the indicators for developing and developed countries being comparable. Use of a graduated set of indicators will be considered to allow countries/regions to adapt the indicators to the needs of the area. For example, enforcement indicators used by less developed or developing countries may include the number of trained staff and promulgation of environmental laws. Developed countries may use a complex set of indicators that combine indicators such as the number of air monitoring stations, number of plant audits, number of permits issued, and number of enforcement actions with indicators on pollution potential and the number of plants in a sector. The data from developing and developed countries will be weighted and aggregated by technical experts to allow for meaningful comparison despite the different measurements. The project will encourage developing and less developed nations to make their utmost effort to implement the indicators both at the national and sub-national levels, according to their legal regimes.

v. Policy Relevant. The indicators will be designed with an emphasis on utility. Specific emphasis will be placed on priority setting, resource allocation, and accountability for policy performance. (USEPA, 1997).

vi. Credible. The indicator project will draw upon expertise from around the world and across sectors to develop a more robust set of measures that allow for flexibility and continuous improvement. Every effort will be made to insure the underlying methodology, measures, and data are complete, accurate and timely. (Hardi, 2001).

vii. Compatible. The indicators will be designed to be compatible with other existing reporting requirements (e.g. UN, WB, OECD, etc.). This will have two major benefits. First, it will minimize duplicate reporting or excess reporting burdens, resulting in reduced costs. Second, it will allow the indicator project to build from the baseline of an existing framework and methodology, to be determined through further research and case studies, in order to allow for comparability and data aggregation. In the process, implementation, enforcement and compliance data will become linked to traditional measures of environmental quality and sustainability. (NACEC, 1999). Thus the indicators will not exist in a vacuum but rather will be able to “plug-in” to these other measurements giving a greater audience to the indicators and a greater reach to INECE’s message.

viii. Technologically Sophisticated. The indicators will incorporate, as possible, the latest information technologies including GIS, remote sensing (Hardi, 2001), internet search engines and complex searchable databases.

ix. Measurable. The indicators should be measurable and the process of collecting, analyzing, and publishing the data should be cost effective (USEPA, 1997; OECD, 2001). Benefits of environmental enforcement and compliance will be stressed because they often exceed the costs to implement the necessary measures, although they often may be difficult to value. Additionally, the data collected will be presented in a format that can be easily understood by policy makers, as well as the general public.

Examples of Other Principles. Both the USEPA and OECD have a set of principles that guide its indicator project. A short summary of these principles is offered for comparison to the INECE principles.

i. OECD. Three basic criteria are used in OECD indicator work: policy relevance and utility for users, analytical soundness, and measurability. (OECD, 2001).

1. Policy relevance and utility for users – An environmental indicator should provide a representative picture of environmental conditions, pressures on the environment or society’s response; be simple, easy to interpret and able to show trends over time; be responsive to changes in the environment and related human activities; provide a basis for international comparisons; be either national in scope or applicable to regional environmental issues of national significance; have a threshold or reference value against which to compare it, so that users can assess the significance of the values associated with it.

2. Analytical Soundness – An environmental indicator should be theoretically well founded in technical and scientific terms; be based on international standards and international consensus about its validity; and lend itself to being linked to economic model, forecasting and information systems.

3. Measurability – The data required to support an indicator should be readily available or made available at a reasonable cost/benefit ratio; adequately documented and of known quality; and updated at regular intervals in accordance with reliable procedures.

ii. USEPA Performance Measures criteria. (USEPA, 1997).

1. Relevant – in keeping with EPA’s mission, goals, objectives, and priorities, and the needs of external stakeholders

2. Transparent – understandable, so they enlighten users about program or agency performance

3. Credible – data to support the measures is complete and accurate

4. Feasible – the cost of collecting data does not outweigh its value

5. Functional – encourage organizations and employees to engage in effective and constructive behavior and activities

6. Comprehensive – important to many operational aspects of organizational performance.

Conceptual Framework

i.

Comment- Levels of compliance imply non-compliance. May be easier to focus on non-complianc

Importance of a Common Conceptual Framework. In order for INECE indicators to be used in connection with other existing environmental and sustainability indexes, it is important to adopt a conceptual framework that is compatible with these ongoing efforts. There are a number of frameworks in use around the world today. They include Stock/Capital & Flow, Accounting, Integrated Assessment, Human-Ecosystem Interaction, Components- Problems, and Sustainable Development Holistic. (Hardi, 2001). The INECE project will use the most commonly employed framework -- Pressure-State-Response (PSR). Alternative frameworks will continue to be reviewed as appropriate.

ii. Pressure-State-Response Model

1. PSR is Widely Used. The PSR framework follows a cause-effect-social response logic, and was developed by the OECD from earlier work by the Canadian government. (Hammond, 1995). The PSR model and modified versions are used by a number of government agencies and institutional indicator projects, including: UNCSD, Core Set of Indicators; UNEP, Global Environment Outlook; World Bank, Environmental Performance Indicators; World Bank Central American Environmental Indicators; European Union, EuroStat Environmental Pressure Indicators; European Environmental Agency Headline Indicators; EBRD-OECD Environmental Indicator Set for Countries in Transition-CEE/NIS; World Economic Forum, Environmental Sustainability Index; Statistics Canada, Human Activity and the Environment. (Hardi, 2001).

2. Example of PSR Defined: OECD Environmental Indicators. The PSR model is used to structure the OECD work on environmental policies and reporting. The PSR model helps decision makers and the public view environmental, economic, and other issues as interconnected. (OECD, 1997; Hardi, 2001).

a. Pressure indicators describe pressures from human activities exerted on the environment, including natural resources. Pressure indicators are closely related to production and consumption patterns. They can be used to show progress in decoupling economic activities from related environmental pressures, or in meeting national objectives and international commitments.

b. State indicators measure the quality or condition of the environment--particularly declines attributable to human activities. Examples of state indicators include measures of stratospheric ozone concentrations, of urban air quality, or of fish stocks.

c. Response indicators gauge the efforts taken by society or by a given institution to improve the environment or mitigate degradation. Thus they measure how policies are implemented by tracking treaty agreements, budget commitments, research, regulatory compliance, then introduction of financial incentives, or voluntary behavioral changes. These indicators measure progress toward regulatory compliance or other governmental efforts, but do not directly tell what is happening to the environment.

iii. Examples of Other Frameworks. Other frameworks also may provide valuable insights into indicator development.

1. Input-output-outcome. This is a project based approach that combines the project’s outcomes and impacts into one. This framework is organized along a project’s overall objectives, its components and its impacts. The overall objectives are those the project is designed to meet, while the components are the means by which the implementation of the project is to be carried out. The framework comprises three sets of indicators, those covering the overall objectives of the project, impact indicators; those relating to the components of the project, output indicators; and those relating to the pre-project conviction, baseline indicators. The World Bank Set of Environmental Indicators (WB, 1999) and the World Wildlife International, Living Planet Report use the input-output-outcome framework. (WWF, 2001).

2. Intentions-actions-results. This is a newly proposed indicator framework to measure and assess environmental performance. INECE is currently waiting to learn about this framework from the OECD. Updated information will be placed on the INECE Indicators Forum. (http://www.inece.org/forumsindicators.html).

Methodology. The Indicators project methodology, or process, will include the following steps.

i. Identify Working Group. The INECE Secretariat with the help of the Indicators Subcommittee of the Executive Planning Commission will recruit a team of experts in the development and implementation of performance indicators and environmental enforcement fields to serve on a working group that will review and advise on all matters related to the development, selection, and testing of the INECE Enforcement Indicators project. The working group will discuss the preliminary issues of the indicator project beginning at the 6^th INECE Conference in April 2002 and will meet as needed to discuss indicators matters and make recommendations.

ii. Identify Users and Partners. The INECE Secretariat, with the help of the Indicators Subcommittee of the Executive Planning Commission, will identify users of the INECE Enforcement Indicator and partners who will be invited to participate in various capacities to oversee, fund, and test the enforcement indicators project. Particular attention will be paid to enforcement and compliance practitioners and policymakers.

iii. Prepare Case Studies. The Secretariat, with the help of the indicators working group, will study a selected group of indicator models to review, analyze, and understand its potential value for use in the context of enforcement indicators. The initial case studies are described below and will include NACEC, EU accession countries, WRI, WB, USEPA and PROFEPA.

One comment asks why PSR? What leads to that framework?

iv. Adopt Framework. The Secretariat has tentatively selected the PSR model but the Project will ultimately select a common conceptual framework based on a common understanding of concepts and definitions. This will most likely lead to the selection of the PSR model or some variation.

v. Select Principles. A number of principles or criteria may guide the selection of the final set of indicators. INECE will first establish which principles or criteria will guide this selection process. All potential indicators will be reviewed in light of these principles or criteria.

vi. Define Indicators. The Project will identify and define the first two sets of indicators: implementation and enforcement.

vii. Use Phased Approach. The enforcement indicators will be developed, refined, and tested in a phased approach among representative countries. The phased approach will allow the Secretariat and working group to pilot test the indicators in regions with varied political, economic, societal, and environmental circumstances. After testing, the implementation and enforcement indicators will be revised and harmonized and tested again to ensure applicability. Once these indicators are developed, the project will be expanded to included compliance, sustainable development, and environmental protection indicators.

viii. Provide Continuous Reassessment. The project will continually reassess its approach -- including partners, users, principles, and methodology – in order to expand the reach and improve the quality of the indicators. New partners will be sought. New techniques will be explored to insure that the INECE Indicators remain on the cutting edge of environmental policy making.

Case Studies. These will include the following among others:

North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Since 1997 the NACEC has explored the development of indicators for evaluating the performance of the Canada, the United States, and Mexico in implementing policies and programs for effective environmental enforcement. The long term goals of this project are to explore the appropriateness of North American indicators of effective environmental enforcement policies, programs and strategies; support the development of more effective indicators; and provide public reports on the Parties’ fulfillment of their obligation, using agreed upon indicators. To date this project has issued a set of background papers (NACEC, 1998) and the proceedings their international dialogue on enforcement indicators held in May 1998 (NACEC, 1999). Most recently, the North American Working Group on Environmental Enforcement and Compliance Cooperation (EWG) of the NACEC held a workshop on informant indicators in Montreal in March 2002. The North American process is of particular interest to INECE since it is one of the few initiatives around the world currently developing enforcement indicators, admittedly with a regional focus, and therefore they are discussing many issues similar to those facing INECE.

European Union Accession Process. Every Candidate Country seeking membership in the European Union must transpose EU legislation into their national laws. Once these laws are in place, the European Commission requires that they be implemented. While the EU does not have a set of indicators in place to evaluate the status of this implementation, it has commissioned several studies to analyze the administrative structures in the individual candidate countries in order to ascertain if they have adequate capacity to enforce these laws. Recently, a report was issued that provides an overview of the current status of these administrations. (ECOTEC, et al, 2000). These studies are useful to the INECE Indicators project since they cover, in a narrative format, many of the issues that we will be attempting to quantify in our indicators.

World Resources Institute. WRI is involved in a number of projects around the world that deal with many of the same issues that the INECE Indicator project will face. WRI is also an important case study because of the number and diversity of partners, drawn from every sector and region of the world, assisting them on these projects.

i. The Access Initiative is led by WRI in cooperation with the Environmental Management and Law Association (Budapest, Hungary), Corporacion Participa (Santiago, Chile), and the Thailand Environment Institute (Bangkok, Thailand). It seeks to “improve decisions and policies that affect the environment and human lives by establishing common global practices for public access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.” (see The Access Initiative’s Homepage at http://www.accessinitiative.org). Currently, they are in the process of finalizing an indicator framework, designed to measure and establish a set of common practices in four broad areas: comprehensiveness and quality of the general legal framework; degree of available access to selected types of information about the environment; degree of public participation in decision-making processes; and comprehensiveness and quality of capacity building efforts to encourage informed and meaningful public participation. (WRI, et al. 2002).

ii. Global Forest Watch is an international data and mapping network that combines on-the-ground knowledge with digital technology to provide accurate information about the world's forests. It began in 1997 in four pilot countries; Cameroon, Canada, Gabon, and Indonesia. Their goal is to be in 21 countries, covering three fourths of the world’s remaining frontier forests, by 2005. This project draws on governments, NGOs and academics from around the world, including: Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Gabon, Indonesia, Russia, the United States, and Venezuela. Its objective is to “infuse transparency and accountability into the decision making processes that determine how forests are managed and for whom” by: tracking the actors (corporations, government agencies, individuals) that are sponsoring development activities; mapping out where these actors are operating; and monitoring the degree to which these actors are following national and local management laws and regulations. (see Global Forest Watch’s Homepage at http://www.globalforestwatch.org).

iii. Reefs at Risk is a project led by WRI in cooperation with partners around the world. It began in 1998 with a study on global pressures on reefs. (Burke, 1998). Recently they published a report on reefs in Southeast Asia. (Burke, 2002). The project is to produce map-based indicators of human pressure on coral reefs from five broad categories: coastal development, overfishing, destructive fishing, marine pollution, and sedimentation and pollution from inland activities. The modeling approach involves identifying component sources of stress that can be mapped for each threat category. Once these components have been selected, model rules are developed for translating them into measures of threat. The model incorporates the effects of management and natural features that influence how human pressures impact coral reef ecosystems. The index is designed to highlight areas where, in the absence of good management, coral reef degradation might be occurring or where it is likely to happen in the near future given ongoing levels of human activity. The combined index provides a regionally consistent indicator of human pressure on coral reefs that serves as a proxy guide to coral reef conditions. Their next project is a report on reefs at risk in the Caribbean. (see http://www.wri.org/wri/reefsatrisk/).

World Bank Environmental Performance Indicators. The World Bank is involved in a number of indicator projects. One of these projects, the EPI, is a project-based approach where an indicator’s defining characteristic is that it quantifies and simplifies information in a manner that facilitates understanding of environmental problems by both decision makers and the public. (World Bank, 1999). The goal is to assess how project activities affect the direction of change in environmental performance, and to measure the magnitude of that change. Indicators that allow a quantitative evaluation of project impacts are particularly useful because they provide more information than just whether the project is improving or degrading the state of the environment. Information on the magnitude of a benefit is required to determine whether it is worth the resources being expended to achieve it. Similarly, information on the magnitude of adverse impacts might indicate whether the harm is justified given the other benefits of the activities in question. Above all, an indicator must be practical and realistic, given the many constraints facing those that implement and monitor projects. This work is of interest to INECE since it is unique in that it uses a project-based framework (modified input-output-outcome-impact approach) in contrast to the PSR model adopted by most other indicator work. It may be particularly informative in the later phase of the INECE project when we deal with compliance indicators since compliance is often measured in terms of sites, plants, and projects.

United States Environmental Protection Agency. USEPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance began a program in 1997 to develop and implement an enhanced set of performance measure with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of their programs. The first category of the measures describes impact on the environment from enforcement and compliance assurance outputs and outcomes. The second category of measures describes changes in behavior of the public or regulated entities. The final category describes activities undertaken by EPA or (if there is available data) the states as part of the enforcement and compliance assurance program. (USEPA, 1997). EPA’s work will be helpful to INECE since they represent the cutting edge of measurement in the field of enforcement and compliance in a developed economy.

PROFEPA – Mexico. In recent years Mexico’s Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente -PROFEPA has initiated with relative success a program of compliance and enforcement indicators known as ICNA’s, or Indices de Cumplimiento de la Normatividad Ambiental (Indexes of Compliance with Environmental Normativity). Mexico’s PROFEPA work on indicators should serve to identify problems and opportunities associated with the implementation of information and analysis systems on enforcement and compliance in developing countries.

Other. INECE will continue to search out new and informative case studies to help guide the Indicator Projects work.

Staffing and Budget [TBA]

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