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Governance and Accountability

Our work is grounded in the understanding that tackling the core challenges associated with sustainable development will require the transformation of the structures, processes and accountability mechanisms associated with governance. Through our work on sustainable development strategies and strategic initiatives, we explore the factors that determine whether strategies help reach positive outcomes. We believe that governance needs to be sensitive to change and adaptively respond to emerging risks and opportunities inherent in the world today.

We believe it is time for making real progress on the ground toward sustainability commitments, and we believe that to accomplish that, we must find ways to strengthen accountability and transparency in governance. This cannot work unless, in our governance, we can tell success from failure, and unless success and failure have the necessary incentives, disincentives and consequences. We provide principles for measurement systems that help strengthen accountability, and guidance for strengthening accountability mechanisms related to specific policy domains and institutions.

Contents

• SD Strategies & Adaptive Governance
  Public managers, policy-makers and natural resource managers need approaches to their work that embrace the inherent uncertainty and complexity of our interrelated economic, social and environmental systems. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) advances the field by engaging in projects that emphasize relevant and timely information about where we are heading and how fast we are getting there. IISD continues to research and communicate innovative practices in sustainable development strategies to government practitioners around the world.

• Principles for Measuring and Assessing Progress
  Today there are far more indicators-and far more assessment practitioners at work-than ever before; the growing intensity of work in this area and the massive amount of information already produced presents both opportunities and challenges. IISD works in this area to help fulfill the need to identify common patterns, principles and potential ways forward.

• Assessment Framework Development
  In Canada, federal and provincial funding agreements are structured to offer grants or loans to select initiatives that meet a specific set of criteria and strive to advance certain aspects of sustainability and innovation. With the treasuries on both levels increasingly pushing for accountability, the need has intensified to identify and quantify the improvements resulting from funded initiatives. Since no widely accepted measurement system appropriate for evaluating such programs existed when these funding agreements were created, governments have enlisted IISD to lead the assessment, development, integration and evaluation of an appropriate measurement system and related capacity building.

• Corporate Governance and Accountability
  IISD's Measurement and Assessment program has engaged in active research on sustainable development in the business sector since 1992, when we published the Business Strategy for Sustainable Development. Today the program's business sector efforts focus on three primary areas: corporate sustainability reporting, corporate sustainability indicators and life-cycle assessment.

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