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This paper provides an overview of some of the main environmental threats to human health and discusses the need for improving information required for decision making at all levels. Issues related to measuring and monitoring the effect of the environment on health and well-being are also raised. The paper likewise draws attention to the key role of indicators for the monitoring and assessment of policies. Although monitoring systems cannot replace policies and actions directly aimed at improving environmental health conditions, such systems should nonetheless form an intrinsic part of the decision-making process from the very beginning. Governments are increasingly recurring to quantitative targets and benchmarks as a way of enhancing credibility, and indicator development and performance monitoring have become integral to the overall planning process and good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Environment Agency (EEA) produces assessments based on (environmental) indicators to support policy. With the publication of the Sustainable Development Strategy for the European Union, and the European Commissions' intention to publish a progress report on sustainable development for the Prime Ministers each year in spring, the EEA becomes involved in regular assessments of progress in the environment within the context of sustainable development. The selection of the indicators for the EU progress report will be done by the policy makers, which is a good starting point to increase the accountability for their actions or lack of action and which eventually may lead to "sustainability convergence criteria". The EEA has developed a number of tools, frameworks and typologies which will be applied to provide an integrated assessment of progress around the limited selection of sustainable development indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]