Pressure State Response Frameworks

Much of the early work on environmental indicators focused on the "state" of the environment - monitoring physical changes in the natural environment. While this approach could inform decision makers that something was going wrong, it did not explicitly deal with why it was going wrong, or what anyone was doing about it. As a result a more holistic approach was proposed which included an evaluation of human activities that resulted in change - the "pressure",  and social "responses" to try to control damaging human activities.

Understanding Change - The OECD Approach

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The OECD core set of environmental indicators is a commonly agreed set of indicators for OECD countries and for international use. The purpose of these indicators is:

• to keep track of environmental progress;
• to ensure integration of environmental concerns into sectoral policies;
• to ensure integration of environmental concerns into economic policies;
• to use indicators to measure environmental performance and to help determine whether countries are on track to sustainable development.

This simple PSR framework merely states that human activities exert pressures (such as pollution emissions or land use changes) on the environment, which can induce changes in the state of the environment (for example, changes in ambient pollutant levels, habitat diversity, water flows, etc.).  Society then responds to changes in pressures or state with environmental and economic policies and programs intended to prevent, reduce or mitigate pressures and/or environmental damage.

Pressure Indicators

These are often classified into underlying factors or forces such as population growth, consumption or poverty. The pressures on the environment are often considered from a policy perspective as the starting point for tackling environmental issues, and, from an indicator viewpoint when they are perhaps more readily available for analysis since they can be derived from socio-economic, environmental and other monitiring databases.

State Indicators

The state refers to the condition of the environment that results from the above pressures, e.g. the levels of air pollution, land degratation or deforestation.  The staste of the environment will, in turn, affect human health and well-being as well as the socio-economic fabric of society.  For example, increased land degradation will lead to one or a combination of the following: decreased food production, increased food imports, increased fertilizer use, malnutrition, etc.  It is important to have an understanding of both the State of the Environment as well as the indirect effects. Indicators of state should be designed to be responsive to the pressures and at the same time facilitate corrective action.

Response Indicators

The response component of the PSR framework relates to the actions taken by society either individually or collectivly, that are designed to ease or prevent negative environmental impacts, to correct existing damage, or to conserve natural resources. These responses may include regulatory action, environmental or research expenditure, public opinion and consumer preference, changes in management strategies, and the provision of environmental information. Responses should be designed to act on the pressures but may at the same time also have an impact modifying the indicators of state.

The PSR framework is now widely used but is continuing to evolve. One of the main problems has been trying to differentiate between pressure and state indicators, and the need to expand the framework to deal more specifically with the needs for describing sustainable development.

A development of PSR has been the "Driving Force - State - Response" (DSR) framework selected by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.
 

Driving Force - State - Response Framework

In the Driving Force - State - Response Framework for Sustainable Development (DSR), the components are:

• Driving Force - human activities, processes and patterns that impact on sustainable development

• State - the "state" of sustainable development

• Response - policy options and other responses to changes in sustainable development

In the DSR framework, the term "pressure" has been replaced by that of "driving force" in order to accommodate more accurately the addition of social, economic, and institutional indicators. In addition, the use of the term "driving force" allows that the impact on sustainable development may be both positive and negative as is often the case for social, economic, and institutional indicators.

The DSR framework is actually a matrix that incorporates three types of indicators horizontally and the different dimensions of sustainable development vertically, namely social, economic, environmental, and institutional.

State of the environment indicators in the DSR framework can be used to bring scientific findings from the field and lab to the general public and decision-makers. To be effective, in the sense that indicators steer action, the indicators should as a rule, have an explicit target group in the country or region in mind. A set of indicators should not only give information on the development in specific environmental problem areas, but also give a general impression of the state of the environment. Ideally, a set of indicators is a means devised to reduce a large quantity of data to a simpler form, while retaining essential meaning for the question that are being asked of the data.

Information on the environment may be difficult to evaluate in isolation. Therefore, points of reference are needed. Preferably, a set of indicators should be the same as or closely related to the sets of indicators used in other countries and other regions of the same country.

However, even this model is changing, and the EU is now looking at the "Driving Force - Pressure - State - Impact - Response"  (DPSIR) Framework.
 

Driving Force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response Framework

The Driving Force - Pressure - State - Impact - Response Framework (DPSIR) provides an overall mechanism for analysing environmental problems.

• Driving forces, such as industry and transport, produce

• Pressures on the environment, such as polluting emissions, which then degrade the

• State of the environment, which then

• Impacts on human health and eco-systems, causing society to

• Respond with various policy measures, such as regulations, information and taxes, which can be directed at any other part of the system.