OREANDA-NEWS. January 23, 2012. At a seminar showcasing the ‘Indicators of Sustainable Development’ compendium compiled by experts from the Government Office and Statistics Estonia, it was acknowledged that while the effects of the recession are already being seen on sustainable development, the broader impact and longer-term trends will only be able to be assessed several years down the line.

The compendium focuses on four areas, two of which in turn formed the core of seminar: changes in productivity and employment during the recession and the impact of the crisis on health indicators.

Janno Jarve, a senior analyst from the CentAR Centre for Applied Research, said that Estonia had experienced marked growth in productivity in the last twelve years.

“In terms of indicators we’ve shot up from 43% to 69% of the EU average,” he explained. “The effect of the financial crisis on productivity was modest, and expressed itself mostly as a slowdown in growth rather than a drop. It shows how good Estonian companies are at adapting, which in turn creates the kind of conditions you need for a rapid rise in employment.”

Praxis health policy analyst Riina Sikkut highlighted the general trend in developed countries at the seminar, whereby mortality and life expectancy do not fall as a result of economic downturn – the reason for this being the typically higher standard of living and the social systems that have emerged.

“It’s true of Estonia, too, that the social system – which is much more robust than it used to be – and the relatively high standard of living have kept the effects of the recession in check to some extent when it comes to health indicators,” she said.

Two positive examples Sikkut gave were the growth in life expectancy and rise in healthy years of living during the recession. “In terms of negatives, we have the higher number of new psychiatric cases in 2008 and 2010 and the worsening of availability of health care services – the proportion of people who claimed to have had difficulty getting the medical help they needed increased in both 2010 and 2011,” she added. “And while it turns out that the number of unnatural deaths fell in 2010 overall, the number of those who died in fires and because of freezing conditions rose slightly. So a long, cold winter can have more of an impact on mortality indicators than a recession.”

In summary, those giving presentations at the seminar agreed that although the recession had not had a significant worsening effect on general indicators, individual areas need to be looked at in more detail – since a particular section of society was hit by the crisis far more painfully. Another key trend highlighted at the event was that the long-term influence of the recession could be greater, since worsening in people’s standard of living tends to manifest itself later than the drop in macro-economic indicators. Also, a further key issue discussed was the fact that in terms of health indicators, Estonians remain a long way from even the European Union average.
‘Indicators of Sustainable Development’ is an overview published by Statistics Estonia every two years. It examines progress in the four objectives of the ‘Sustainable Estonia 21’ development strategy: the viability of Estonia’s cultural space; growth in well-being; cohesion within society; and ecological balance. The compendium assesses development in these areas on the basis of 75 indicators.