A quick one on Hungarian Progress

By Angela Hariche

Just returned from a trip to Budapest. We arrived on what was St. Martin's Day, November 11th. Each year on that day, you  must eat goose and drink the new wine to ensure financial growth and well-being for the coming year. St. Martin is indeed the patron saint of well-being.

Lake Balaton, Budapest. Photo: http://www.destination360.com

So, we did what we were told and ate our goose and drank our wine. I will report back this time next year with findings.

Then, in honour of St. Martin, I got back to the office and did a bit of digging around Wikiprogress and the Hungarian Central Statistics Office for well-being indicators. Here is a sampling of what I found:

Sustainable Development Indicators in Hungary: This publication is in Hungarian but Google translate does help. Also, the table of contents is in English.

There are 10 domains for sustainable development in this publication, these being:

Socio-Economic Development

Sustainable production and consumption

Social inclusion

Demographic changes - migration 

Public health

Climate change and energy

Sustainable transport

Natural resources

Global partnership

Governance and public life

I encourage you to have a look at this publication as their indicator breakdown is interesting and very specific. I very much like the "global partnership" and "demographic changes" domains. Nice to see that migration is included. 

Establishing Indicators for Measuring Social Progress in Hungary is also an interesting overview of measuring progress in Hungary, with emphasis on the need for indicator sets to better understand progress. 

And finally, here is a paper by GPRNet member, Laszlo Pinter, et al.: Developing a System of Sustainability Indicators for the Lake Balaton Region, which looks at measuring progress in a small area in Hungary. 

Our concierge in Budapest said that all this week "counts" as St. Martin day, so you still have time to eat that goose and drink that wine...you never know.

Thanks,

Angela