REPLY SD Impact on National Government policies (SD6313)

Fri Mar 2 06:17:32 CST 2007

Posted by  Les?aw Michnowski <kte at psl.org.pl>

Hi, all

There are good signs for system dynamicists from European policy makers.

I quote some items from:

Review of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS) - Renewed Strategy, 
COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Brussels, 9 June 2006, 10117/06:

POLICY INTEGRATION

Promote integration of economic, social and environmental considerations so that they are
coherent and mutually reinforce each other by making full use of instruments for better
regulation, such as balanced impact assessment and stakeholder consultations.

In this respect all EU institutions should ensure that major policy decisions are based on
proposals that have undergone high quality Impact Assessment (IA), assessing in a balanced
way the social, environmental and economic dimensions of sustainable development and
taking into account the external dimension of sustainable development and the costs of
inaction. Other tools for better policy-making include ex-post-assessment of policy impacts
and public and stakeholders participation. Member States should make wider use of these
tools, in particular IA, when allocating public funds and developing strategies, programmes
and projects.

18. Research into sustainable development must include short-term decision support projects and
long-term visionary concepts and has to tackle problems of a global and regional nature. It has
to promote inter- and transdisciplinary approaches involving social and natural sciences and
bridge the gap between science, policy-making and implementation. The positive role of
technology for smart growth has to be further developed. There is still a strong need for
further research in the interplay between social, economic and ecological systems, and in
methodologies and instruments for risk analysis, back- and forecasting and prevention
systems.

20. For better understanding of interlinkages between the three dimensions of SD, the core system
of national income accounting could be extended by inter alia integrating stock and flow
concepts and non-market work and be further elaborated by satellite accounts e.g.
environmental expenditures, material flows and taking into consideration international best
practices.

27. The Commission should elaborate a concrete and realistic vision of the EU on its way to
sustainable development over the next 50 years. Such a vision should be prepared in a
participatory manner and should identify the main long term objectives and describe
intermediate stages and steps towards their achievement.

33. The Commission will submit every two years (starting in September 2007) a progress report
on implementation of the SDS in the EU and the Member States also including future
priorities, orientations and actions. As for the monitoring at EU level, the Commission will, in
analysing the state of play with regard to the challenges described above, draw on a
comprehensive set of sustainable development indicators (SDIs), taking into account the
EUROSTAT SD Monitoring Report, to be updated every two years, as well as on the latest
scientific evidence and on developments in relation to key EU activities (strategies, action
plans, legislation).

34. To ensure both a comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the complexity of sustainable
development, the indicators are to be developed at the appropriate level of detail to enure
proper assessment of the situation with regard to each particular challenge.

In my opinion, it is impossible to realize EU SDS without large–scale introduction and development of System Dynamics.

As important step in above realization EUROSTAT ought to be transformed into European Office for Statistic and Dynamic Monitoring.

Dynamic monitoring (set: society–environment life-process): collecting dates, that reflect this process, and System Dynamics (stock and flow concepts) transforming them into information about its quality, dynamics, and future. Dynamic monitoring predicts future of monitored process under condition, that any intervention into it will be undertaken.
Dynamic monitoring delivers warning forecasting, i.e. long-term early warning information about up to date socio-economy activity negative consequences. Dynamic monitoring is a basic component of feedforward control subsystem.