Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of our generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. It is therefore the kind of development that we should aim towards. But, how can progress towards sustainable development be monitored and assessed? The answer to this question, regarding the particular case of coastal areas, was given within the INTERREG IVC project SUSTAIN, and specifically the DeCyDe-4-Sustainability tool that was developed within the framework of the project by ISOTECH Ltd.
DeCyDe-4-Sustainability is an indicator based methodology and scoring system, which enables a self- assessment approach for local and regional authorities so they can evaluate their sustainability performance for the purpose of improving the management of their coastal zones.
The ‘Measuring Coastal Sustainability‘ report describes how the indicator set for DeCyDe-4-Sustainability was developed, whereas the ‘Scoring Coastal Sustainability‘ report describes the tool’s innovative scoring through ranges approach. The document ‘DeCyDe for Sustainability‘ describes the application of the tool in 12 case study areas around Europe.