48 | IAASTD Global Report

Table 1-4. Overview of issues addressed by indicators in the IAASTD framework.

IAASTD framework components Issues addressed by indicators
Development and sustainability goals
  • Decreased hunger and poverty
  • Improved nutrition and human health
  • Sustainable economic development
  • Enhanced livelihoods and equity
  • Environmental sustainability
AKST systems
  • Research/Innovation policies
  • Local and institutional setting of AKST
  • Social organization
  • Generation, dissemination, access to, adoption and use
  • of AKST
  • Agricultural markets
Agricultural outputs and services
  • Biomass, livestock, fish, crop production
  • Forestry for food
  • Fiber
  • Carbon sequestration
  • Energy
  • Ecosystem services
Indirect drivers
  • Economic
  • Demographic
  • Sociopolitical
Direct drivers
  • Economic
  • Demographic
  • Availability and management of natural resources

Table 1-4. Overview of issues addressed by indicators in the IAASTD framework.

     Once an indicator is established, multiple issues of interpretation and meaning remain to be solved. Is an increasing mechanization in agriculture that contributes to increased area productivity on the one hand, yet increases externalities of various kinds on the other, an indicator of agricultural modernization or an indicator of the increasing lack of sustainability of that particular food system? Available indicators for agricultural mechanization in most cases provide inadequate information. Only if indicators are placed in a context of meaning determined by prior adoption of frameworks that incorporate value systems and perceptions, can indicators be used for decision making. Unfortunately, frameworks are rarely articulated explicitly, thereby greatly decreasing the utility of indicators.

     The conceptual framework of IAASTD does indeed provide tools to interpret indicators for agricultural mechanization, for example. While on the one hand, an increase in mechanization could contribute to food production in the component "Development and Sustainability Goals" and "Food System and Agricultural Products and Services", on the other hand, such an increase generates a number of negative externalities in the component "Direct / Indirect Drivers". The four components of the IAASTD conceptual framework, in turn, influence rules, norms and processes where actors are involved. This, i.e., the outer ring of the

 

AKST component in the conceptual framework, is exactly the level at which the implications of a given indicator need to be negotiated, agreed upon and fed into the policy process.

     Similarly, an indicator on female employment in agriculture needs to be interpreted in terms of the components of the conceptual framework. An increased employment rate could have a positive impact on family nutrition, but might be negatively interpreted in terms of an increased workload for women. Therefore, an interpretation of the meaning of an indicator as suggested by the outer ring of the conceptual framework needs to take place in order to equip the indicator with context and meaning.

Expert-based versus participatory indicator construction and use.Experts use indicators all the time to inform policy and to increase their scientific understanding. These are legitimate and powerful usages. Problems arise, however, when assumptions are made about indicators as information tools, and as motivators of the actions of others, because indicators rapidly lose their originally intended meaning when they are moved to other domains. A further implication of the IAASTD conceptual framework is that indicators are powerful in developing our understanding and in motivating reflection and action when they are constructed with, rather than extended to, other actors.