Towards monitoring a socio-ecological transition

The achievement of individual well-being while guaranteeing a sustainable development path represents an important objective of a socio-ecological transition. This objective indicates that targets referring to the economic, social and environmental dimensions are taken into account simultaneously. However, so far too little attention has been paid to the problems and opportunities of monitoring such a transition process. The identification of building blocks derived from the WWWforEurope project's vision for Europe in 2050 allows attaining measurability and hence breaking down the complexity inherent in the transition objective. Based on the distinction between the environmental, social and economic dimensions, synergies and trade-offs are derived and analysed indicating possible conflicts between the aspects of the three dimensions. The investigation of those conflicts reveals to be highly important for detecting progress in the transition process. This deliverable introduces a new approach for designing a tool for monitoring a socio-ecological transition. However, more research is needed to be able to bring the tool into action. In particular, a more detailed elaboration of the synergies and trade-offs would improve the accuracy of the monitoring tool.