A pilot index for environmental policy in The Netherlands

A pilot environmental index for The Netherlands shows a downward trend of environmental pressure in the last decade, The index measures environmental pressure from the policy perspective and the observed downward trend does not imply that environmental quality has increased, The aggregation weights which are used to combine various theme indicators of environmental policy to one overall index are derived from public opinion polls on the concern for environmental problems, Following Hope c.s., who constructed a similar pilot environmental index: for the UK, we used the analogy of compilation of quality of life indices. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.