Introduction

Indicators are widely used as devices or tools to help capture and simplify complexity and present it to those people who need to make decisions. Included here are the important indicators designed to help us make the world more sustainable. As all indicators are the products of decisions made by people as to how best to capture the complexity, the methodology involved and how to interpret and present the indicators, they can be said to exist within a worldview of “relativism”. After all, whether we realise it or not, these decisions may be influenced by our beliefs, culture, likes, dislikes, wishes and wants. This chapter is an introduction to the world of sustainability indicators, especially those designed to capture people’s perspectives of the world. The chapter uses examples from the world of indicators designed to capture the crime rate and makes the distinction between what some people regard as indicators based on “reality” and those based on perception. Finally, the chapter sets out the aims of the book and outlines its structure and the assumptions that have been made.