• Title: Sustainable Development in Germany

• Subtitle: Basic Elements and the Need for Monitoring and Evaluation
• Speaker: Parliamentary State Secretary Astrid Klug
• Occasion: Easy-Eco Conference
• Date/Location: 11-14 October 2006, Saarbrücken/Kirkel

I Introduction

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Over the past few days at this conference you have discussed in detail how the sustainability of projects, programmes and policies can be evaluated. To address the issue of sustainability we need - in the words of this year's motto of the annual meeting of the German Council for Sustainable Development - the imagination to "think the tomorrow". To address the issue of sustainability, we must be willing to take responsibility not only for the citizens and electorate of today, but also for the interests of future generations. And we must have the courage to fight for this today. This also calls for a great deal of expertise - not just regarding the aim of framing policies sustainably, but also in order to develop sound criteria. These criteria must take due account of the cross-sectoral principle of sustainability. They also have to enable that individual projects and programmes can be examined concretely and scientifically based in a way that results in direct ideas and suggestions for policy-making.

I attach great political importance to evaluating the sustainability of policies. The very fact that this has become a political topic - and this is shown by the activities of the European Union such as support for your project - is a real achievement. For the German sustainability strategy at least, I can say that it is a really political innovation for policy-makers to formulate and review targets in this manner, explaining the criteria and thus creating transparency for the political public.
It is not only individual projects and programmes that require a sustainability assessment. In my experience, and from my perspective as Parliamentary State Secretary in the Environment Ministry and former chair of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development, regular review of the strategy itself is essential for enabling the principles of sustainability to become firmly established in policy-making. It is also a prerequisite for political credibility.

II The main features of the sustainability policy

In June 2006 the Federal Environment Ministry celebrated its 20th anniversary. In the publication to mark this occasion, "Die Umweltmacher" - the Environmental Players - former Environment Minister and current Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote: "in the long term, economic prosperity and social justice for all people can only be achieved within the limits set by the size of the planet, the finite nature of its resources and the resilience of its natural systems."

I entirely agree with Chancellor Merkel's assessment - it is a graphic description of the guiding principle of sustainable development adopted for the 21st Century by the international community at the Summit for Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The World Summit in Rio and the follow-up conference in Johannesburg ten years later brought North and South closer together and made it clear that to secure a life of dignity, two issues must be addressed: we must combat poverty and the unequal distribution of life opportunities. Furthermore, if the ecological balance of our planet is destroyed, the natural foundations of life of all people are at danger. This impacts most heavily on the countries of the South and the poor of those countries, as we can see from the hurricanes and desertification arising from climate change. For this reason, ecological justice is the common denominator in a policy of sustainable development.

Therefore at second, no less important political innovation must be stressed at this point: The cross-sectoral principle of sustainability, which must be applied to all areas of policy. The impetus generated by Rio teaches us that it is not just a matter of simply linking the three "pillars" of sustainability - ecology, economy and social issues - and reconciling their different interests. Rather, all areas of society and politics must contribute to reversing unsustainable trends and solving the key problems of poverty and danger to health, climate change and the loss of the natural foundations of life. For Germany, it is a political achievement that in the sustainability process, political problems are not tackled solely within individual areas of competence, but also by combining contributions from the different ministries.

The formation of the Grand Coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats retained the proven "architecture" of the sustainability process in Germany. At its heart is the lead responsibility of the Federal Chancellery. The most important institution is the "sustainability cabinet" - the State Secretaries' Committee on Sustainable Development. The lead responsibility of the Federal Chancellery highlights the political importance of the strategy for all those involved. The Chancellery’s political authority draws together the different positions, resolves conflicts between ministries and integrates their policies. The Chancellery has a vested interest in showing government policy to be not only the sum of individual measures, but also a "strategy". Placing the sustainability strategy and the State Secretaries' Committee directly within the competence of the Federal Chancellery has proved to be an important condition for effectively implementing sustainable development - as can also be seen in an international comparison.

I emphasise the role of the Chancellor and the Federal Chancellery because it is also relevant for the theme of your conference. At the meeting of the Council for Sustainable Development last month, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that honest stock-taking and a self-critical review of the successes and failures of the policy are vital if we are to take sustainable development policy seriously. A strategy for sustainability must be an open, adaptive and reviewable strategy. Both in Germany and elsewhere, experience has taught us that backing from the top of the political hierarchies is needed to make national sustainability strategies a guiding principle and a yardstick for policy-making.

I referred earlier to the "architecture" of the sustainability process in Germany. After much preparation, such as several Study Commissions of the Bundestag, concrete work on the German Sustainability Strategy began in 2001. At the same time, the Federal Government established the Council for Sustainable Development, an advisory body composed of key representatives of society. The Council is a critical monitor, a think-tank, a transmitter and at times also an implementer of the Federal Government's sustainability policy. In 2004 the Bundestag decided to appoint a Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. This Council should also be seen as a critical monitor of the Federal Government's sustainability policy. Its work includes formulating requirements and expectations for defining the priority areas of the sustainability strategy. It also promotes parliamentary and public dialogue on sustainable development.

III Monitoring and evaluation as essential elements of a sustainability strategy

The German sustainability strategy provides for regular monitoring on the basis of 21 headline indicators. They cover a range of topics, from the development of energy and resource efficiency, expansion of renewables and the trend in CO2 emissions to economic indicators on economic growth, employment, investments and transport development and social indicators on wage levels of women, integration of migrants and access to education. These headline indicators are intended to reflect the basic trends of sustainable development. They are primarily linked to quantitative targets, against which real development can be measured.

Thus they also assist communication. Regular reporting exposes policy to critical public discussion. How the level of achievement is interpreted is not just a matter for governments: Is little progress interpreted as an incentive for further efforts or as a reason to assess the target values as unrealistic? Are we resting on our success or pushing the options for further action?

Yet, in order to be able to specifically steer policy, we need more: an additional set of indicators and their analysis must cover the driving forces, the current status and the effectiveness of political measures. To take environmental policy as an example, the Federal Environmental Agency has set up a key indicator system for the environmental aspect with over 50 indicators. The environmental accounting of the Federal Statistical Office has various possibilities for establishing relationships between economic and ecological factors.

The sustainability strategy prescribes the publication of a progress report every two years, which should take stock of policies and further develop the strategy. It therefore goes a step further than the reporting on indicators. It forces the government to be self-critical and accountable for its actions vis-à-vis the public and where necessary to alter its political course. However, in the past the focus has been too much on reporting and too little on implementing goals and action plans. We have to be realistic about the possibility that reporting and monitoring can lead to an "institutional overstretch". Against this background we have taken the decision to keep the two-year cycle for reporting on indicators, but to submit a progress report only every four years.

I'm sure it's no secret if I tell you that governments always strive to show off their successes. They therefore have a very ambivalent attitude towards allowing the success of their policies to be monitored on the basis of objective criteria such as indicators. But precisely for this reason, the approach of management by objectives and quantitative targets and results represents political progress. This is particularly important in areas where the relationship of developments in different policy areas is described through indicators: for example the question of decoupling growth in traffic from economic growth or when stating which economic sectors have the highest CO2 emissions.

However, this is not enough for a really "open" and "adaptive" strategy. External criticism is a prerequisite for the "honest stock-taking" that Federal Chancellor Merkel has also called for. In my view there are three essential elements that good and honest monitoring has to take account of for an adaptive strategy:

First: the process of the sustainability strategy must itself be subject to monitoring. The strategy’s success also depends on how society is involved in this process. It is crucial that the goals and interests of major groups are taken into consideration. Dialogue with society is not only a requirement of democracy. It is a precondition for public acceptance of the principle of sustainability and thus ultimately for its further development.
Sustainability cannot be achieved by the actions of governments alone; the whole of society has a contribution to make: the industry, trade and agriculture sectors, consumers, major groups and the scientific community. With its opinions and its work the German Council for Sustainable Development has made crucial contributions which have been taken up by the German Government.

Second: external evaluation is required in addition to internal monitoring instruments in order to increase the objectivity of the evaluation. This can take a variety of forms: a scientific evaluation, for example such as those carried out on the Austrian strategy by German institutions. The European Union has opened up a further opportunity. It aims to launch a process of "peer reviewing": national sustainability strategies are reviewed by other countries regarding compliance with goals and efficiency of procedures following detailed consultation with the government and the involvement of civil society. The German Council for Sustainable Development, for example, is involved in a review of the Netherlands’ strategy.

Third: it is very important that an assessment of the consequences of political measures for sustainable development is carried out ex-ante at the decision stage of political measures as well as ex-post. The environmental impact assessment, in particular its application to plans and programmes, has laid the ground for this ex-ante approach. Furthermore, we can draw on many years of experience in the field of technology assessment. Here too, the European Union has provided important impetus for Germany with its comprehensive impact assessment, resulting from the plans for a sustainability assessment, as this approach to policymaking does not have a long tradition in Germany. In guidelines on implementing the EU assessment, the German government adopted the EU’s criteria and thus took a first step in the right direction with a view to its legislative activities.

You are undoubtedly very well familiar with this final point from your work on the eco-easy project, which as far as I am aware involves the evaluation of sustainability projects and programmes. However, I would like to highlight one crucial difference: the political legitimacy of the evaluation. For the scientific community, this legitimacy comes from the well-founded systematic approach and from experience gained from its application. For a sustainability impact assessment of legislative plans and political programmes, the focus is different: who is carrying out the assessment?
Are the assessments politically enforceable? Do they contribute to an open - and public - political discussion? Do they have a real influence on political decisions?

In Germany, the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development - which I chaired during the last legislative period - put this topic on its agenda: to what extent and through which procedure is a sustainability assessment of parliament recommendable? What power of enforcement can it be given? How far-reaching can it be?

Regarding evaluation, the fundamental aspects of a sustainability policy are concentrated like in a burning glass, whether at the individual project level or relating to state policy. I addressed these earlier when outlining Germany’s sustainability strategy:

• As political self-criticism is a rather rare virtue, strong political legitimacy is required to ensure that monitoring and evaluation processes have the desired impact. In Germany the Federal Chancellery or Parliament can provide such legitimacy.
• As sustainability places high, far-reaching demands there is always a danger that these demands cannot be met and that the political process will be "overstretched". An "all encompassing" sustainability assessment can quickly reach it limits.
  This is why it is advisable to concentrate at first on a few issues and examples that can actually be implemented and can give the public a tangible idea of the principle of sustainability.
• As sustainable development is a task for the whole of society, monitoring and evaluation have to be part of a dialogue with society. The German Council for Sustainable Development has been the key actor so far with regard to monitoring the sustainability strategy. The Parliamentary Advisory Council also views its work as a contribution to public political debate.

Individually, none of these instruments will be adequate. The special circumstances and conditions needs a combination. In German politics, reluctance concerning external scientific evaluation is undoubtedly greatest. Other forms have proven their worth, such as the role of the Council for Sustainable Development.

The most important prerequisite for an evaluation to make an effective contribution to strengthening sustainability policy and developing it further is that the process is carried out publicly. The political conditions vary greatly from country to country and therefore the experience of one country cannot necessarily be transferred to another one. But without a foundation of public participation, a move towards a sustainable policy will not be possible.

IV Concluding comments

I hope that I have been able to give you an insight into Germany’s sustainability strategy and into my views on monitoring and evaluating the strategy. I also hope that this overview of the political level of the German government’s strategy has given you some useful input for your work.

I thank you and I'm sure that your conference provides impetus, ideas and proposals that can help to structure the political and social sustainability process even more effectively: more target-oriented, more result-oriented, more transparent and more participatory.

I wish your conference every success and I hope you can enjoy this location and your visit in the Saarland.

Thank you very much for your attention.