ENVIRONMENTAL WELL-BEING

Advancement of people‘s well-being in the area of environment is measured by factors divided into the following subareas: land and ecosystems, air, water, climate, energy sources, non-energy sources, and waste. The selected headline indicators generally have a positive impact on the well-being when their value grows in the subareas of land and ecosystems, and energy sources, and a negative impact when their value grows in the subareas of air, water, climate, non-energy sources, and waste.

Table: Changes in the well-being in Slovenia and Slovenia’s position compared to the EU, shown with headline indicators by subareas, 2008–2013

SUBAREA, HEADLINE INDICATOR	SLOVENIA	SLOVENIA vs. EU
Land and ecosystems: Farmland birds index, index	-	-*
Air: Urban population exposure to air pollution by particulate matter, in µg/m3	+	+*
Water: Nitrates in groundwater, in mg/l	+	+*
Climate: Severe weather warnings, number of days per year	-**	-**
Energy sources: Share of renewables in gross final energy consumption, in %	+	+
Non-energy sources: Domestic material consumption per person, in kg	+	+
Waste: Landfilled municipal waste per capita, in kg	+	+

Source of data: The calculation is performed on data in the database (unstandardized data).
Note : * 2008−2012, ** 2008−2010.
Legend: improvement is marked green with the + sign, deterioration is marked red with the - sign.

In general, the selected headline indicators of environmental well-being have shown improvement in the past decade. The exceptions are, both in terms of trends in the past few years and compared to progress in the EU, the subareas of climate and of land and ecosystems. After 2008, there has been a significant decrease in the farmland birds index, which shows well-being in the subarea of land and ecosystem, but this indicator varies from year to year also due to the weather conditions. Weather variability is also one of the causes of variability in the indicator in the subarea of air quality, which shows improvement over a longer period. Improvement of the situation in the 2008−2013 period in energy and non-energy sources, and in waste to a large extent stems from the decline in economic activity. Better state and favourable trends compared to the EU average are shown by the headline indicator of water quality.