A shared future - balanced development
3. Contents of the strategy
Denmark’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development describes the objectives and activities required to enable Denmark to contribute to sustainable development. Sustainable development affects all activities in society, and in the Strategy it has been necessary to focus on the most important key sectors and policy areas.The Strategy focuses on the work to integrate environmental considerations into seven selected sectors.The sectors are agriculture and fisheries (under the heading of "food production"), forestry, industry, trade and services, transport, energy, and urban and housing development.
The strategy also deals with important social challenges such as the threat from man-made climate changes, the correlation between the environment and health, more efficient resource consumption and the protection of biodiversity.The international initiatives, measures and knowledge base and public participation are important to all sectors and areas and are therefore necessary elements.
The strategy covers a period of twenty years. For each area of activity, Denmark presents its longterm objectives and benchmarks towards 2020. Development perspectives and challenges as well as objectives and activities in the years to come are described.
The strategy is a combined framework for Denmark’s national initiatives for sustainable development. The visions and objectives of the strategy will be followed up by action plans, programmes and concrete initiatives within the sectors and areas concerned. In its present form, the strategy does not specify expenditure for the individual areas since this serves no purpose in a perspective of twenty years. A decision about expenditure in an area requires the preparation of a concrete decision making basis to assess the relationship between the benefits and costs of a given initiative. Measures to ensure sustainable development in the form of specific initiatives, action plans, etc. will be included in the ongoing macroeconomic prioritisation.
Indicators for sustainable development enable us to monitor how far we have come in meeting the objectives.The Government will develop indicators that can follow Denmark’s progress in fulfilling essential objectives and activities in the strategy. The strategy will be adjusted as required.
