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Goods
(consumption)
= ends
⇓
Measures of utility

Resources
= means
⇓
Measures of opportunity

Economic system

Relationship between sustainability indicators

Natural systems

Indicators that relate the size of the economic system to the size of the natural systems:
HANPP (Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production;
EF (Ecological Footprint)

Non “monetary-only” indicators
MFA (Material Flow Analysis); 
MIPS (Material Input Per unit of Service); EROI (Energy Return On energy Input) 

SD = increasing welfare over time
= non decreasing utility
(some indicators^°: GDP, NNP, Green NNP, ISEW)
^°all monetary indicators, as if welfare could be reduced to a money value

SD = maintaining the resource base over time
= non decreasing capital
weak view = non decreasing sum of capital^*
strong view = non decreasing sum of capital and non decreasing stock of natural capital
^* genuine savings is the indicator (in monetary terms only)

<<Contradictions between the tendencies of the indicators are water for the mill of ecological economics, intended as multicriteria evaluation. It is important to think on how to judge a development when a synthetic indicator, like MIPS, improves while another, like HANPP, goes worse. It should therefore be applied a “multicriterial” macroeconomic analysis. Commensurability could be reached reducing these values to a third more general value, but this is not necessary for a reasonable judgement. We can learn to live happily with the incommensurability (with comparability in the weak sense, that is to say, with the possibility to compare without necessity to reduce everything to a unique unity of measure) and to use something that has been called “discursive democracy” to judge if we are on a good path.>>

Translated from: Martinez-Alier, J. y Roca, J. “Economia ecologica y politica ambiental”, p 412