Environmental indicators and governance

In recent decades, the use of environmental indicators has become ubiquitous across the public, policy, and scientific spheres. Indicators provide information to guide decisions about environmental changes and leverage political power. In line with this special issue, I engage with how indicators are information dissemination interventions. I demonstrate that the reliance of indicators as key metrics for environmental governance should be treated with caution given that indicators are derived from a process of commensuration. This paper reviews some of the assumptions made in the development of indicators, and describes their use and efficacy in environmental governance. In doing so, I argue that there needs to be more careful attention to how environmental indicators are derived and deployed in place-based settings.