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There is a crucial need in Europe for indicators and measurement systems that provide a useful assessment of progress toward the simultaneous aims of economic success, human well-being, environmental protection and long-term sustainability. The goal of IN-STREAM is to bridge the gap between these types of indicators and to disseminate the results to policy-makers, economists, journalists and the public at large.

Though mainstream economic measures such as GDP are useful and have great influence on both public and private decisions, they are flawed as a measure of human welfare. In addition, they give little information as to whether economic activity is helping Europe make progress toward its environmental goals and its commitment to sustainable development.

There is, then, a crucial need in Europe for indicators and measurement systems that provide a useful assessment of progress toward the simultaneous aims of economic success, human well-being, environmental protection and long-term sustainability. The goal of IN-STREAM is to bridge the gap between these types of indicators and to disseminate the results to policy-makers, economists, journalists and the public at large.

The key IN-STREAM project objectives include:

  • Performing the required quantitative and qualitative assessments in order to link mainstream economic indicators with key well-being and sustainability indicators.
  • Providing insight into the synergies and trade-offs implicit in Europe’s pursuit of economic growth and environmental sustainability.
  • Recommending new indicator approaches (and sets of indicators) based on their robustness, feasibility and suitability to EU policy objectives.
  • In consultation with stakeholders, developing strategies for implementing these approaches.

FEEM is the Quantitative Scientific Co-ordinator, who is responsible for the management of the project quantitative work packages. FEEM coordinates the data collection and economic model development, working with the Project Co-ordinator to ensure that the quantitative assessment is well integrated into the qualitative analysis of indicators os sustainable development.

Moreover, FEEM is responsabile for two workpackages:

  • WP4, which aims at developing a list of key sustainability targets that will be quantitatively analysed in the modelling exercises for their links with macro level indicators of economic performance and at collecting the relevant stock- and flow-related data;
  • WP8, which aims at making recommendations from the study with respect to: a) use and development of modified versions of traditional macro indicators that should be useful for tracking sustainability; b) implications of the adoption of certain sustainability indicators for economic performance to 2020 or whatever date is chosen; c) future monitoring of both sets of indicators and of their linkages.