Making sense of the minefield of footprint indicators

In recent years, footprint indicators have emerged as a popular mode of reporting environmental performance. The prospect is that these simplified metrics will guide investors, businesses, public sector policymakers and even consumers of everyday goods and services in making decisions which lead to better environmental outcomes. However, without a common "DNA", the ever expanding lexicon of footprints lacks coherence and may even report contradictory results for the same subject matter. The danger is that this will ultimately lead to policy confusion and general mistrust of all environmental disclosures.