Are science-led sustainability development processes more
accurate and comprehensive with regard to the knowledge they
are able to embody in their indicator sets? Not necessarily, as
government agency experts are also often technical experts with
‘‘scientist’’ standards, and not elected policy-makers. Neither do
government-led sustainability development processes automatically
achieve more policy relevance. It seems that this is only the
case if such processes directly link indicators to concrete policystrategies and government commitments. One could assert that
the higher the political ‘‘weight’’ of such commitments, the higher
the political relevance (and use) of related indicator sets. This is at
least what a recent comparison of EU SDI and EU structural
indicators across EU Member States would imply. It found that, while objectives and structural indicators used
in the EU Lisbon Process across Europe are closely aligned, EU and
national SD strategies and related SDI, and – it seems – their actual
use, are much more diverse.