Weak and Strong Sustainability Indicators, and Regional Environmental Resources
The discussion of strong operational criteria of a sustainable development has gained much
importance since the publication of the „Brundtland-report“ in 1987 (WCED, 1987). Since
then, many concrete (and not so concrete) modeling, data collection and discussion have been
led, conferences have been attended, and the public interest has increased to a large extent.
Nevertheless, many discussions in the fields of sustainability are very abstract, do not include
implementation efforts and lack (sometimes in a curious way) practical steps towards sus-
tainability.
Concentrating on one of the most important natural goods, the use of water resources within a
sustainable economic is seen by many authors as a crucial element of a sustainable develop-
ment. Being a very rich country regarding water resources Austria has tried to protect the
quantity and quality of water resources by one of the most stringent legal frameworks
(„Wasserrechtsgesetz“, 1959). Nevertheless there are regions in Austria where the sustainabil-
ity criteria are injured by the amount of water extracted from the ground resp. where agricul-
tural production and (industrial) waste sites cause serious damages to the quality of the ground
water (see for a short discussion of the legal framework and of regional water resources in
Austria section 5 below). Water in a sustainability context can be regarded as a regional
(national) resource. The target of a sustainable water resource management is to achieve a bal-
ance between the extraction and the regenerating capacity of water resources. The leading prin-
ciples could be summed up in the following way (see Hüttler and Payer, 1994; Kosz and
Brothaler, 1996):
(1) Within a naturally given catchment area the yearly extraction should not exceed the
yearly renewal rate of the water resource.
(2) The organic and anorganic load into the water resource should not exceed the regen-
eration capacity (carrying capacity).
(3) The seasonal differences between water supply and demand should be taken into ac-
count.
(4) Imports or exports from one region to another are only sustainable if principles (1) to
(3) are fulfilled.
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