WIESBADEN – Today, the President of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), Roderich Egeler, presented the Indicator Report 2010 on Sustainable Development in Germany to the Head of the Federal Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Tasks, Ronald Pofalla. This was now the third stock-taking exercise following those in 2006 and 2008. The Report describes the current state of development, using 35 indicators for which concrete targets have been set at the political level as part of the national strategy for sustainable development. The evaluation makes use of eye-catching weather symbols to give a first orientation on the progress achieved by the German sustainable development strategy. The symbols show to what extent the targets will presumably be achieved if the current trends are extrapolated mathematically. The Indicator Report 2010 reveals that more than half of the indicators show favourable trends in terms of achieving the targets: 14 out of 35 indicators received the “sunny” symbol and five others were marked as “slightly cloudy”. However, ten indicators carry the “cloudy” symbol. Although they have still been developing in the direction specified in the sustainability strategy, there could be a gap of more than 20% to the target values in the target year. Six indicators received the “thunder storm” symbol, which indicates a very unfavourable trend. Over the past years, their development has either stagnated (biodiversity; earnings gap between men and women), the indicator exceeded a given threshold value (national deficit) or even developed in the wrong direction (intensity of goods transport, share of inland water transport in goods transport, proportion of obese people). Overall, the rating of six indicators of the national sustainability strategy has changed as compared with the previous Indicator Report. Except for the national deficit, all these indicators have improved. The graphics and texts in the Indicator Report provide in-depth information on the background, on interrelations and results of analyses. For reasons of data availability, the reporting period ends with the year 2008 for about half of the indicators. Therefore, only a small part of the effects of the current financial and economic crisis has been taken into account. In parallel with the Indicator Report 2010, the Federal Statistical Office has published “Data on the Indicator Report 2010” on its website (www.destatis.de → Sustainable development indicators), which comprise complete time series of the indicator values and other time series of major background data. During the time before the next report in 2012, a set of selected environmental-economic indicators will regularly be updated and published on the internet (“Indicators on the environment and the economy”). For further information please call: Regina Hoffmann-Müller, tel: +49 611 75 2676,
