Ethics and Public Policy: Contemporary Issues

Zealand.

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Introduction: Ethical dimensions of public policy

Jonathan Boston, Andrew Bradstock

& David Eng

As the title of this book indicates, the essays included here explore the inter-relationship between ethics and public policy. While the perspectives of the contributors vary considerably, each starts from an assumption that there are creative questions to be asked about, not simply what governments do, but the principles that guide the decisions they take. If we assume a simple definition of ethics – that it is about what people or institutions ought or ought not to do – it is clear that ethical questions lie at the very core of public policy, from the task of defining a problem and assessing available options, through to the adoption and implementation of policies to deal with it, and their evaluation. An underlying conviction of all who have contributed to this volume is that ethical inquiry is not confined merely to the decisions and actions of individuals but relates to those taken by groups, even as large as individual nations and what we now refer to as the international community. Ethics is as relevant to the public realm as it is to the private, to the work of those who act on behalf of the public as to individual members of the public themselves.

Bringing ethical questions to bear on the sphere of public policy enables fruitful questions to be explored, as the chapters here make clear. What purpose might government action seek to fulfil? What ends should governments strive to achieve? What is government policy for? And, moving beyond these questions, what are the appropriate means of achieving agreed ends? How can means and ends be reconciled? Is it important that they are? Responses to these questions will vary enormously, and the contributions to this volume inevitably reflect the wide range of perspectives advanced in recent decades by scholars, practitioners and commentators. Should the end of public policy be the building of a ‘good society’ and, if so, what do we mean by ‘good’? Should it be the realisation of the ‘common good’? Or should the emphasis be on the pursuit of ‘justice’? Further, should values such as happiness, well-being, prosperity or equality inform policy making and, if so, how might they be prioritised?

These are far from straightforward issues, yet one thing is clear: no state can avoid exercising an ethical judgment concerning its policies. As Michael Sandel (2009) points out in Justice: What’s the right thing to do? there are some issues – for instance, abortion and stem cell research – that simply cannot be resolved without taking a stand on the underlying moral and religious factors. For example, the standard liberal position with respect to abortion is that the state should not take sides in the complex moral and theological debate over when life begins and simply allow women to decide for themselves whether to have an abortion. But, Sandel argues, this argument does not succeed, for if it is the case that the developing foetus is morally equivalent to a child, then abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide, and few people would argue that governments should let parents decide for themselves whether to kill their children. The ‘pro-choice’ position in the abortion debate is therefore not really neutral on the underlying moral and theological question, Sandel suggests, but rests implicitly on the assumption that the Catholic Church’s teaching on the moral status of the foetus – that it is a person from the moment of conception – is false.

To acknowledge this assumption is not to argue for banning abortion per se, simply to note that neutrality and freedom of choice are not sufficient grounds for affirming a right to abortion. Similarly with stem-cell research, if the early embryo is morally equivalent to a person, then opponents of research that uses embryonic stem cells have a point, since even highly promising medical research would not justify dismembering a human person. As with the question of abortion, therefore, neutrality is impossible because the issue is whether the practice in question involves taking the life of a human being. As Sandel and the contributors to this book make clear, the interplay between ethical considerations and policy making is complex and challenging; but it is also essential to the effective functioning of liberal, democratic government.

Part One: Ethical foundations

The first group of essays examines some foundational issues and broad ethical frameworks, including this question of individual sovereignty. Part One commences with reflections by Morris Altman on human motivation and behaviour, including the contrasting behavioural assumptions made by different schools of economic thought and their ethical implications. In particular, Altman outlines and assesses three distinct approaches: conventional or neoclassical economics (as articulated by numerous economists over the past century or so); contemporary behavioural economics (as exemplified by the views of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky); and an alternative approach to behavioural economics that draws on the work of scholars as diverse as Herbert Simon, John Harsanyi and Martha Nussbaum.

A basic premise of neoclassical economics is that human beings are self-interested, rational, utility maximisers. It is further assumed that individuals are the best judges of their own interests. Given such assumptions, it is argued that individuals’ preferences and choices ought to be respected; otherwise their welfare will be reduced. Accordingly, governmental interference is only ethically justified where the choices individuals make are likely to harm third parties or the environment. Contemporary behavioural economics, by contrast, assumes that individuals are strongly prone to irrationality, errors, external manipulation and biases. For such reasons, they are not always the best judges of their own interests and frequently lack the capacity to exercise genuinely free choice. Their behaviour, therefore, may deviate significantly from that deemed to be welfare-maximising under neoclassical assumptions. From this standpoint, governments are ethically justified, or so it is claimed, in reconfiguring individuals’ choice environments and ‘nudging’ them to make welfare-enhancing choices (for example, by constraining or eliminating certain choices or ‘reframing’ the context within which choices occur). But, as Altman highlights, such interventions are necessarily paternalistic in nature, and even ‘soft’ (or libertarian) paternalism raises important philosophical and ethical issues. Altman explores some of these issues, drawing on the work of notable philosophers and economists, most notably John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin and Fredrick von Hayek.

In Altman’s view, there are good reasons to question not only the key assumptions underpinning neoclassical economics but also some of the claims and policy recommendations of contemporary behavioural economics. In the latter part of his chapter, therefore, he outlines an alternative approach to understanding human behaviour. This view incorporates sociological and institutional variables, acknowledges certain physiological limitations and recognises the tendency for humans to develop certain heuristics or experience-based decision-making short-cuts. According to Altman, such heuristics are not necessarily irrational or error-prone, even though they do not sit comfortably with assumed neoclassical behaviour. From this perspective, individual choice needs to be respected and the case for ‘nudging’ is questioned. At the same time, sound ethical arguments can be advanced that governments should seek to improve the context in which individuals make decisions through a range of institutional, informational and educational strategies.

The next chapter is also concerned with human motivation and behaviour, but from a rather different angle. In his reflection on the famous biblical story of the Good Samaritan, Chris Marshall explores how the imperative with which the parable ends, ‘go and do thou likewise’, might inform public policy making. Marshall considers the contrast between the challenge Jesus lays down in relating this story, to exercise practical concern and care for our ‘neighbour’, and the assumption of contemporary liberal thought that what is most to be prized and guaranteed is the right of private citizens to do as they wish so long as they do not violate the freedom of others. He then asks what the law might look like if, instead of being ‘viewed solely as an instrument for preventing harm’, it were to serve ‘as an engine for promoting good or for facilitating human transformation’. As Marshall points out, there is no legal requirement on a passerby to save a person from drowning or even to warn others of dangerous currents in a river: indeed, it is only when a bystander does choose to intervene that civil liability may arise! As Marshall concludes, an examination of this powerful and challenging narrative in the light of contemporary practice can be instructive in showing the ‘value-commitments and ideological presuppositions underpinning social and political policy, and in particular the supreme value we place on individual autonomy’.

Margaret Bedggood also explores the question ‘who is my neighbour?’, in this case with respect to the relationship which might be said to exist between the wider international community and countries where the majority of people live in poverty. Taking as an example the issue of health care in Malawi, which is ranked 164th out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index and has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world, Bedggood raises the question of how far our obligations, as individual states and an international community, extend to other human beings, and whether such moral obligations can be transferred into legal ones. Bedggood notes that ‘the question of the nature and extent of a state’s obligations when it is acting as a donor … is still developing’. Even more problematic is the broader question of how, if the international community does have an obligation to provide assistance at the request of an impoverished state, that is to be sheeted home. Bedggood considers whether committing 0.7% of gross domestic product to overseas aid should be an obligation for rich countries, concluding that the most that can probably be asserted is that these countries should have an obligation to take a step towards such a target. However, some recent developments in international human rights law could strengthen the case for the recognition of such an obligation in the future.

In her contribution Karen Baehler argues that core ideas of justice found throughout New Zealand history support a modified version of the ‘capability’ approach to social justice pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Baehler explores the experience of early European settlers in New Zealand, who travelled, not in the expectation that their new government would make success happen for them, or guarantee them a certain income, but that they would experience capability and genuine opportunity. She notes that, while the particular circumstances that gave rise to the Kiwi tradition of egalitarianism are unlikely to be repeated, New Zealand’s ‘sustained attention’ to the question of equality and inequality was not entirely accidental either. Surveying the New Zealand scene from first European settlement to the social dislocations of the 1980s and early 1990s, she points to a modified version of the capability approach, in which: a social contract is recognised that requires society to support individual capabilities, while citizens are expected to reciprocate with productive functioning; equal opportunity is expanded to require full employment; limits are placed on material inequalities, to protect mutual respect among citizens; collective capabilities, especially those associated with easing inter-group tensions, are nurtured alongside individual capabilities; and the impulse to restrict egalitarian practices to members of an in-group is thoroughly rejected and actively resisted. As Baehler says, New Zealanders have long taken pride in their country’s international reputation as perhaps the most egalitarian of the world’s English-speaking countries, and that reputation makes New Zealand a particularly fitting object of study from the perspective of justice. Baehler’s chapter is part of a larger project that seeks to test and refine the capability approach based on comparison with a real, but imperfectly realised and continually evolving model of justice found in an actual society as observed over time.

In their chapter, Frieder Lempp, Lucas Kengmana and Jonathan Boston present an alternative to traditional foundationalist and coherentist approaches to ethical theories. According to a foundationalist approach – one might include here deontological and consequentialist theories – non-basic ethical theorems or principles are derived from basic moral principles. In contrast, on a coherentist approach, such as Rawls’ reflective equilibrium account, ethical principles are justified by virtue of cohering with other principles within the theory. Both of these approaches, according to this chapter, face significant problems. A key problem for foundationalists is that their approach provides no guidance on how to resolve conflicts between competing foundationalist accounts. This means that in practical policy settings, such as the current international climate change negotiations, the approach offers no way of resolving disputes between countries that adopt different foundational theories. The problem for coherentists is that their approach makes it difficult to rule out ethical principles even if they are strikingly counter-intuitive or based on very weak principles.

The foundherentist approach that Lempp, Kengmana and Boston defend picks the more plausible features of both approaches. Their approach embraces the foundationalist idea that more basic principles are given a greater initial degree of justification than non-basic principles. At the same time, their approach embraces the coherentist idea that less basic principles can justify to some extent more basic principles. Using climate change as an example, they illustrate how this kind of mixed approach can avoid the main problems facing foundationalism and coherentism. More specifically, they show that non-basic ethical principles, such as equality, need, and capacity, are more strongly justified than other principles, because they cohere with a greater number of competing basic theories, such as egalitarianism, utilitarianism and libertarianism.

Part Two: Ethics and policy making

The chapters in Part Two examine the ethical issues that arise in public policy making. There is no doubt that ethics and ethical considerations are relevant and important to such activity. Indeed, as we have noted, ethics and ethical considerations interact in all sorts of ways with public policy, from taking ethical values into account in decision making, to weighing harms and benefits that accrue to the public, to identifying and preserving the rights of individuals, and to developing policies that can most fairly and justly serve the public. Of course, what makes these ethical questions especially difficult for policy makers are the severe constraints on public resources and funding. Given the limited resources available, how do policy makers balance and prioritise the competing needs of various public groups?

Although it is clear that policy making raises ethical issues and considerations, it is less obvious how ethics can usefully inform policy decisions. From the perspective of politicians and policy makers, the challenge is to determine how the theoretical debates that dominate academic discussions of ethics are relevant to the practical decisions and dilemmas with which policy makers grapple. It is often quite difficult to see how the debates among various foundational and theoretical approaches – utilitarian, deontological, rights-based, or virtue-based – can help in practical terms. Most of the chapters in Part Two address this concern by linking the ethical challenges that often arise in real public policy contexts with more theoretical debates.

In the first chapter of Part Two, Scholes identifies a number of important ethical issues that arise when we explore more deeply the nature of the policy-making process. The most obvious, and perhaps most important, ethical issue for policy makers is to determine what are the most fair and just policies. Beyond this, Scholes argues that there are four other important kinds of ethical issues that arise when thinking about policy roles and decision making.

The first concerns determining an ethically acceptable process of decision making, in light of the fact that the processes involved are those where the overall ethical agency is spread across multiple people. Here, Scholes highlights the fact that public policies are typically enacted through a structured hierarchical process, and decisions are made under tight time pressures. Second, she questions how the public itself should be defined, and how their interests should be understood. Here she explores the uncertainties relating to future generations, foreign publics, dead persons, and non-human animals. Third, Scholes considers the point that if ethics is about how people are treated, then a person in a policy role ought to consider how they are treating themselves or allowing themselves to be treated through their role. Fourth and finally, she discusses how public policy accountability, whether to the public or to other agents in the policy process, also requires an ethical focus.

It is fair to say that the dominant ethical approach in policy making is a utilitarian or cost–benefit analysis (CBA) approach. In the second chapter in Part Two, Wilkinson highlights the key problems facing a utilitarian/CBA approach when discussing government interventions (for example, adding folate to bread or fluoride to water) that are not very targeted. With a utilitarian/CBA approach, interventions in general are assessed in terms of their costs and benefits. The ethically right intervention is the one that has the greatest net benefits compared to other interventions.

Drawing on examples from the public health sector, Wilkinson effectively highlights how traditional utilitarian/CBA approaches often ignore important ethical issues such as: 1) the need to give priority to the worse off; 2) asymmetries in how harms and benefits are valued; 3) the rights of individuals; and 4) issues of responsibility and fairness.

For many, the problems that Wilkinson raises for a utilitarian/CBA approach constitute sufficient reason for either developing a more sophisticated utilitarian account or rejecting this kind of approach and considering alternative options, such as a prioritarian view. However, given the extent to which a utilitarian/CBA approach is engrained in how policy makers assess policies and interventions, Wilkinson presents these issues as a toolkit of considerations to take into account when assessing interventions. This toolkit includes paying special attention to: 1) whether the agents who are harmed and benefited are those who are worse off; 2) whether the intervention prevents some people harming others or whether the intervention itself harms some people; 3) whether an intervention infringes people’s rights (for example, mandatory screening which may infringe a person’s right to bodily integrity); and 4) whether people are morally responsible for the gains and losses they would suffer without the intervention.

Perhaps the most challenging ethical issue facing most public policy makers is how to balance and prioritise the needs of various groups when budgets and resources do not allow everyone’s needs to be met. Given the rising costs of health care and, certainly in recent years, shrinking public sector budgets, the health sector perhaps faces the most difficult of these kinds of challenges. How do policy makers decide which treatments should be funded and therefore whose lives should be put at risk?

In the third chapter in Part Two, Fenton discusses the controversial decision by PHARMAC (the New Zealand government’s pharmaceutical agency) to limit funding for the use of Herceptin – a drug used for early breast cancer treatment – to nine weeks rather than the recommended twelve months. Although the PHARMAC decision placed New Zealand outside the international norm on funding for Herceptin, Fenton argues that PHARMAC’s decision was justified and that it can sometimes be morally justifiable and fair for a health system to limit its funding of expensive treatments for very serious illnesses, such as cancer.

Many will undoubtedly find Fenton’s conclusion and argument controversial. At the heart of her defense of PHARMAC’s decision are two key claims. The first is that the need to fund expensive medical treatments for serious illnesses should be balanced against the need to use resources efficiently to meet as many needs as possible. This is the case even if a prioritarian position (that is, where some degree of priority is given to the worse off ) is chosen over a strict utilitarian account. The second key claim advanced by Fenton is that research suggests that there are no additional health gains in using Herceptin over a twelvemonth period instead of a nine-week period. This is likely to be the more controversial element of Fenton’s argument for, as she herself notes, many have criticised PHARMAC’s decision on the grounds that the research relied on inadequate trial evidence. Regardless of what view one adopts about PHARMAC’s decision, Fenton’s chapter highlights some of the difficult ethical issues facing policy makers, such as: How should the cost-effectiveness of treatments or policies be assessed, especially in a context where the research findings are unclear or controversial? Should priority be given to the worse-off and, if so, to what extent?

In the final chapter in Part Two, Stace and Sullivan examine the challenges of policy making and consumer input in relation to policies for disabled consumers. Their chapter offers a very detailed and interesting history of how disabled people have been treated and the extent to which they have had input into policies that have had a significant impact on them. Stace and Sullivan trace New Zealand’s history of disabled people’s rights from when they were not seen as people with distinctive rights and had no input into the policies that affected them through to the current state where: 1) ethical principles of beneficence, respect and justice, and informed consent are internationally accepted; and 2) New Zealand has a Disability Strategy and has ratified the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But as Stace and Sullivan point out, although there have been significant improvements for the disabled, problems remain. Government policies continue to be developed that affect the disabled but do not seek their input. Stace and Sullivan argue that the Treaty of Waitangi provides a useful model for how policy makers and politicians should build ethical relationships and partnerships with disabled consumers.

Part Three: Sustainability and progress

The final part of this book explores several fundamental issues with respect to environmental ethics, sustainable development and the measurement of progress. For almost half a century, and certainly since the publication in 1972 of two landmark reports – The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome (see Meadows et al, 1972) and a special issue of The Ecologist entitled A Blueprint for Survival – there has been vigorous debate about the bio-physical limits of the planet and their implications for economic management, including the capacity of planetary ecosystems and the Earth’s resources to sustain continuing economic growth. This debate has been reinvigorated in recent years, not least because of growing concerns over the impact of anthropogenic climate change and the disturbing findings of such reports as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment published in 2005. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations by over 1,300 leading scientists, furnished a state-of-the-art appraisal of the condition and trends in the world’s ecosystems and the services they provide. More disturbingly, it contained a daunting array of evidence of how humanity is damaging the planet.

To illustrate, approximately 60% of the ecosystem services examined were found to be ‘degraded’ or being ‘used unsustainably’, including fresh water, capture fisheries, and air and water purification (2005, p 1). Similarly, there was evidence of an increasing ‘likelihood of nonlinear changes in ecosystems (including accelerating, abrupt and potentially irreversible changes) that have important consequences for human well-being’. These include ‘abrupt alterations in water quality, the creation of ‘dead zones’ in coastal waters, the collapse of fisheries, and shifts in regional climates’ (p 1). Genetic diversity is declining, as is the number of species on the planet. It is estimated, for instance, that since around 1800 ‘humans have increased the species extinction rate by as much as 1,000 times over background rates typical over the planet’s history’ (p 4). Currently, an estimated 10–30% of mammal, bird, and amphibian species are threatened with extinction (p 4). And the growing human population, projected to reach 9 billion by mid century, will increase pressures on ecosystems still further. We thus stand on the threshold of another great spasm of extinction – but caused by humanity, not natural forces.

More recently, Rockström et al (2009a, 2009b) in a series of significant articles have explored various planetary boundaries within which humanity needs to operate if it is to avoid damaging, non-linear and abrupt environment changes (with deleterious, if not catastrophic, consequences). Of nine planetary boundaries identified, the evidence suggests that humanity is already transgressing at least three (namely, climate change, the rate of biodiversity loss, and changes to the global nitrogen cycle). In a related study, Turner (2008) compared the scenarios presented in The Limits to Growth with historical data for 1970–2000. His analysis suggests that for the five main sub-systems simulated in The Limits to Growth (namely population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable resources), most of the key indicators are tracking in accordance with the features of the so-called ‘standard run’ or business-as-usual scenario. Under this scenario, the global system is destined to collapse midway through the 21st century.

Against this sobering background, the first contribution in Part Three of this volume, by Robert Howell and Wayne Cartwright, critically assesses the current dominant economic model, which is based on a combination of utilitarian, contractarian and neo-liberal principles and values. The authors argue that the current neoclassical economic approach is incompatible with the bio-physical limits of the planet and existing policy settings and human lifestyles are unsustainable. Drawing on an important report – Strong Sustainability for New Zealand: Principles and scenarios – published by Sustainable Aotearoa New Zealand in 2009, the chapter contends that there is an urgent need to embrace a steady-state model of economics and a related set of societal and environmental ethics. In so doing, Howell and Cartwright summarise the key features of their proposed ethical framework and its implications for public policy. Some of the arguments advanced in this chapter are bound to be contentious. There remains continuing debate, for instance, over many important issues (see, for instance, Arrow et al, 2004). These include: a) the precise nature of the biophysical limits to economic growth, the relevant thresholds (or tipping points), the timescales within which such thresholds are likely to be crossed, and the implication of ‘overshooting’ particular limits; b) the extent to which different types of capital stock (for example, natural, financial, built, human and social) are substitutable and whether some forms of capital are ‘critical’ (that is, they provide certain benefits that are essential and for which no current substitute exists); c) the kinds of policies that are likely to be most cost-effective in achieving greater environmental sustainability; and d) the capacity of the global community to implement coordinated and effective responses. If Howell and Cartwright are correct, a major change in ethical values and economic policy (especially in relation to use of natural resources) will be necessary to avoid potentially catastrophic consequences for human civilisation. Many will find such a thesis uncomfortable and challenging, if not highly problematic. But their arguments deserve careful scrutiny. There is much at stake and potentially very little time.

The next chapter in Part Three also tackles the subject of responsible environmental management, but from a somewhat different angle. Taking as their starting point the problem of managing common property resources (or public/collective goods), Karlheinz Knickel, Guy Salmon and Susanne von Muenchhausen consider the policy options for preventing a ‘tragedy of the commons’. In particular, their chapter outlines and assesses the approaches adopted in New Zealand and Europe for managing natural resources, most notably water resources. In so doing, they highlight some of the key principles and values at stake and the relative merits of the different conceptual frameworks that have been adopted. In the concluding part of the chapter, the authors explore options for self-organisation and self-governance, drawing on the work of Elinor Ostrom (the Nobel Laureate in Economics in 2009). Recent developments in New Zealand in relation to collaborative environmental governance are discussed, not least the establishment in 2009 of the Land and Water Forum. This forum, which brings together all the key stakeholder groups with an interest in water resources (including the major agricultural, industrial and energy users, together with environmental and recreational groups and Māori organisations), has the challenging task of developing an agreed strategy for the management of fresh water in New Zealand. If the forum succeeds – and there are indications that it has – and if the results of this process actually influence the shaping of concrete policies, it will represent a landmark development in the quest for more collaborative and, hopefully, effective mechanisms for ensuring the responsible management of scarce natural resources.

Good stewardship of resources depends, amongst other things, on accurate information, appropriately designed performance measures, and reliable, authoritative official statistics. After all, the decisions made by citizens, businesses and governments depend heavily on what is measured, how robust these measurements are and how well they are understood. Moreover, what is measured significantly influences what societies end up valuing and pursuing. For such reasons, the metrics we develop and deploy are fundamental in guiding and evaluating policy choices. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the question of what precisely should be measured and reported has been much debated in recent years, both locally and internationally. Not merely are there large analytical and technical issues to address, but there are also fundamental ethical questions at stake. For example, what is meant by ‘progress’, ‘well-being’, ‘quality of life’, ‘equity’ and ‘sustainability’, and how should they be conceptualised for measurement purposes? Any answers are bound to be both complex and controversial.

Despite this, there is general agreement on the need for better metrics, including the desirability of broadening the range of measures and indicators for assessing progress – and thereby relying less heavily on relatively narrow measures, such as gross domestic product. This approach is reflected at the global level, for instance, in the findings of the Commission on Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (generally known as the Stiglitz Commission) established by the French President in early 2008. The Commission’s report, released in September 2009, provides a sophisticated analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of existing metrics and the challenges inherent in assessing societal progress. It also offers a series of recommendations on how our metrics might be improved. For instance, the report draws a distinction

between an assessment of current well-being and an assessment of sustainability, whether this can last over time. Current well-being has to do with both economic resources, such as income, and with non-economic aspects of peoples’ life (what they do and what they can do, how they feel, and the natural environment they live in). Whether these levels of wellbeing can be sustained over time depends on whether stocks of capital that matter for our lives (natural, physical, human, social) are passed on to future generations.

More specifically in relation to sustainability, the report makes two important recommendations:

Recommendation 11: Sustainability assessment requires a well-identified dashboard of indicators. The distinctive feature of the components of this dashboard should be that they are interpretable as variations of some underlying ‘stocks’. A monetary index of sustainability has its place in such a dashboard but, under the current state of the art, it should remain essentially focused on economic aspects of sustainability.

Recommendation 12: The environmental aspects of sustainability deserve a separate follow up based on a well-chosen set of physical indicators. In particular there is a need for a clear indicator of our proximity to dangerous levels of environmental damage (such as associated with climate change or the depletion of fishing stocks).

With these recommendations in mind, the next three chapters in Part Three explore some of the key issues surrounding the measurement of progress, with particular reference to environmental sustainability and sustainable development. The first chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts by the national statistics office, Statistics New Zealand, over the past decade to address these issues. The author, Rachael Milicich (who contributed significantly to this work as an employee of Statistics New Zealand), supplies an excellent summary of the framework constructed by Statistics New Zealand for conceptualising and measuring ‘sustainable development’. She also discusses some of the intellectual challenges encountered in devising this framework and how Statistics New Zealand resolved them. For the reasons explained in the chapter, it decided against developing composite indicators, such as an Ecological Footprint or a Genuine Progress Indicator, preferring instead to adopt a capital-based approach, drawing heavily on earlier work by the Swiss Federal Statistics Office. Milicich explains the key features of this approach, including the main dimensions of ‘sustainable development’ (that is, environmental responsibility, economic efficiency and social cohesion), the principles underpinning each dimension, the 15 topic areas adopted for assessment purposes (that is, population, atmosphere, biodiversity, culture and identity, economic resilience, energy, health, and so on) and the types of indicators relevant for measuring progress in each topic area. In many respects, this framework is consistent with the ‘dashboard’ approach recommended by the Stiglitz Commission. Having laid the groundwork, the chapter then summarises some of the findings arising from Statistics New Zealand’s analysis, as published in 2009 in Measuring New Zealand’s Progress Using a Sustainable Development Approach. The results make for fascinating reading and deserve careful attention. They demonstrate, amongst other things, the value in adopting a broad approach with a wide range of indicators. Equally, they highlight the areas where improved performance is sorely needed. Nevertheless, the findings do not enable one to determine whether New Zealand’s performance is consistent with long-term sustainability or whether critical thresholds are at risk of being crossed. To answer such questions requires additional evidence and analysis.

Amongst the various issues posed by the formulation of metrics for sustainable development is the issue of how considerations of equity (or fairness and justice) ought to be incorporated, including questions of inter-generational and intra-generational equity. The report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (commonly referred to as the Brundtland report) defined sustainable development as that which ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. As a result, there is broad acceptance that any framework for assessing sustainable development should take into account inter-generational equity. In other words, development could not be regarded as sustainable if future generations do not have at least the same opportunities to meet their needs as the current generation. Against this, there is rather less agreement on the role and relevance of intra-generational equity; nor is there a consensus on how it should be measured. In their contribution to this volume, Paul Dalziel and Caroline Saunders explore what equity means and its relationship to sustainable development, and argue that any framework of indicators that excludes intra-generational equity is inadequate and incomplete. In considering the nature of equity, they draw on the wider international literature, including the importance of human rights (as embodied, for instance, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and how notions of equity have been applied in New Zealand through the development of the welfare state and against the background of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). In so doing, they identify and focus upon five core elements of social security: employment, income, housing, health, and education. Based on this analysis, they propose a framework for developing an intra-generational equity indicator that combines these five elements. The approach taken involves defining specific minimum standards for each element and then identifying indicators for measuring departures from each of the relevant standards. For instance, they suggest that ‘health equity means that all New Zealand citizens are able to maintain good health’, and that the relevant indicator for health equity should be life expectancy. They then use data from three periods (1996, 2001, and 2006) in New Zealand to ascertain metrics for