ESG metrics, which seek to quantify the performance of an economic or business activity across the three main pillars (environment, social impact, and regulation of the activity) upon which quality of life is based, have given rise to several proposals for calculating and, subsequently, rating a given economic activity, especially for financing purposes.
There are key indicators beyond carbon emissions, such as water consumption, waste production, or the diversification of the labor market and/or its capacity for wealth distribution.
The current leadership of the Azores Tourism Promotion agency reports on the positive impact of tourism development, while classifying it as sustainable, before calculating the poor environmental performance (still lacking consistent data for public consultation) or, above all, the deterioration of the local quality of life, especially in the rural areas of most islands (more sensitive to tourism development), directly related to tourism intensity rates growing by more than 300% in a few years, as is the case of Pico Island.
The indicators of Environmental and Social Sustainability are being developed at a rapid pace and should become the subject of regular analysis by the data production services, accessible to interested Civil Society, in order to support the subjective impression of deterioration in the quality of life of the Azorean people, as known before March 2015.