Is it possible to compare environmental performance indicators reported by public administrations? Results from an Italian survey

This paper investigates the adoption of indicators by public administrations (PAs) to communicate their environmental performance. This research on Italian municipalities registered within the Environmental Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) was conducted with the following aims: (i) to analyse the environmental performance indicators adopted in the environmental statements of Italian municipalities and (ii) to discuss the capability of these indicators to support the benchmarking process. The criterion of relevance is adopted to verify the capability of the environmental indicators used in the benchmarking process. Relevance is understood as [a] theme relevance (related to the importance of the environmental theme analysed by the indicator selected) and [b] indicator relevance for the theme (related to the representativeness of the indicator selected for the environmental theme). search analysed the 111 Environmental Statements of all the 111 Italian municipalities registered prior to December 31, 2008. sults of the survey show that the difficulty of comparing the environmental performance of Italian EMAS-registered municipalities is a result of both a lack of relevance of the indicators to the theme and a lack of relevance of the themes analysed.