National monitoring system

Indicator 28: National transport and environment monitoring systems

Policy and targets

Monitoring at the national level is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of national and regional policy measures and strategies in more depth than is possible within TERM. Following the Cardiff and Vienna Summits, some countries have started preparatory work to establish national indicator-based monitoring systems. While TERM can serve as a common framework, national reports are expected to be more detailed. Regular updates of this indicator should facilitate coordination between TERM and national initiatives.

Reporting on transport and the environment in EU Member States was reviewed in the TERM feasibility study (ERM, 1999) which examined:

• the status of transport and environment indicators and the processes used by Member States to develop them;
• the type of indicators developed and their links with TERM and other relevant indicators.

The findings are summarised in Table 7.3.

Reporting varies between Member States; most countries report transport and environment indicators under state-of-the-environment reports or reports on environmental/sustainability indicators. Only Austria and Finland have, as yet, set up an indicator-based monitoring system specifically for transport. Sweden and France are planning to do so. The Portuguese Ministry of Environment has conducted a methodological study to identify integration indicators. Indicator and reporting initiatives are likely to increase with the Cardiff Process providing an impetus to report on integration at sectoral level.

Comparing the scope of the national reports with the TERM indicator list shows that national reports mostly concentrate on a few indicators such as air emissions, noise, fuel prices, taxes and length of road infrastructure. Less frequently reported indicators include fragmentation of land, uptake of cleaner fuels, public awareness, price and subsidies.

In the majority of Member States the environment ministry or environmental protection agency has taken the lead in developing sustainability reporting or state-of-the-environment reports and indicators. Systems are however often developed in partnerships. In Sweden, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency works closely with the Swedish Institute for Communication Analysis.

Finland is an exception: the Ministry of Transport and Communications liaises with other ministries to collect relevant statistics. The Ministry of Environment is responsible for producing and publishing other state-of-the-environment and related indicator reports.

Future work

• Updating this indicator could most effectively be done through an interactive forum where Member States contribute information on their transport and environment indicator reports. The EEA’s interest group on Transport and Environment (http://service.eea.eu.int/envirowindows/) could be extended for this purpose.
• Information on national transport and environment reports could be integrated and made accessible through the EEA’s on-line database on the State of the Environment Reporting Information System (SERIS).