Series Editors

Sustainability

Sustainability assessment is a growing concern worldwide with United Nations' Agenda 2030 being implemented. As sustainability refers to the consideration of environmental, social and economic issues in light of cultural, historic-retrospective and prospective-and institutional perspectives, appropriate tools are needed to ensure the complete coverage of these aspects and allow the participation of multiple stakeholders. This article presents a scientifically robust and flexible tool, developed over the last 25 years and tested in different cultural and development contexts to build a framework for sustainability assessment of policies, strategies, programs and projects in light of Agenda 2030. A selected case study conducted on a major mining project in Québec (Canada) illustrates the Sustainable Development Analytical Grid performance for sustainability assessment. This tool and process is part of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals Acceleration Toolkit; it is one of the most adaptable, addresses all 17 SDGs and is fully accessible for free. Other advantages and limitations of the tool and process are discussed.

1997

French version available in IDRC Digital Library: Baromètre de la durabilité : mesurer et faire connaître le bien-être et le développement durableSpanish version available in IDRC Digital Library: Barómetro de la sostenibilidad : medición y comunicación del bienestar y el desarrollo sostenibl

2016

A myriad of sustainability assessment (SA) frameworks, metrics and tools have been developed. As the TempAg network aims to deliver resilient agricultural production systems, a.o. by comparing their sustainability performance, the first step was to identify currently used SAs and discern their characteristics. Therefore, from an SA inventory, integrated sustainability assessment (ISA) methods (assessing multiple dimensions) for agriculture were selected for an in-depth survey with the ISA methods’ developers or users. A large variation in ISAs was found. Strictly reductionist representations were rare, but holistic ones ranged from less than ten to hundreds of indicators. Next to farm development, other (combinations of) purposes were found; a wide range of end-users; a spectrum of data collection, processing and scoring methods; and variate methods to combine indicators into an ISA. Stakeholder involvement in ISA development was found common practice, especially in the early phases...

This paper outlines research on a model for Integrated Sustainability Assessment (ISA). The model combines 20 key elements of sustainability assessment into a workable sustainability framework. The model was applied in the assessment, generation and modification of 12 sustainability projects with findings indicating wider applications. The paper describes the 20 components used in the ISA process, provides a definition of ISA and each component of the ISA model used, explains the reason for the necessary inclusion of each component, the effect if omitted from an ISA process, and the descriptive labels for 20 conceptual types of sustainability assessment identified.

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 2007

Striving for sustainability, who could be opposed to such a well respected goal? Nobody of course, but agreement on action is not following directly. There are two fundamental reasons why such agreement does not follow from the goal. One is that the sustainability is a composite goal, involving the three pillars and within each pillar many relevant goals again. The multitude of relevant issues are to be combined in practical decision making, somehow based on priorities and trade-offs. The second reason is that insight in empirical relations is limited and conditional. Combining the two, modelling and evaluation of specific actions can lead to fundamentally conflicting outcomes. One may love biofuel for climate reasons or hate it for biodiversity reasons, which require land use model not present and not fitting in most sustainability models now. Is that all we can say, and leave what will happen to the dynamics of social and political discourse? That is what is currently happening. There are at least four domains of analysis, all legitimate of course, which have their own sustainability discourses. They are hardly connected and result in conflicting outcomes in a practical sense. Boundaries may not be sharp but here the four are, in arbitrary order. 1. Industrial ecology approaches with a mass orientation, exemplified in MFA and SFA 1 . 2. Technology oriented life cycle approaches, exemplified in ISO-LCA 2 and EIOA 3 . 3. Main stream economists taking into account market relations, exemplified in CBA and CGE modelling 4 . 4. Ecological economists, refraining from general approaches, focussing at multi-criteria analysis at a case level, and therefore lacking an acronym 5 .

Ecological Indicators, 2010

Ness, B., Urbel, E., Anderberg, S., Olsson, L. (2007): Categorising Assessment Tools for Sustainability. Ecological Economics 60:3: 498-508 , 2007

The aim of this paper is to provide a categorisation of sustainability assessment tools within the broader objective of lifting the understanding of sustainability assessment from the environmental-focused realm to a wider interpretation of sustainability. The suggested framework is based on three main categories: indicators/indices, product-related assessment, and integrated assessment tools. There is furthermore the overarching category of monetary valuation tools that can be used as a part of many of the tools listed in the three categories. The tools are also divided by their spatial focus and the level of nature–society system integration. Discussion focuses on if and how the tools fulfil the objectives from the more current understanding of sustainability assessment.

Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 2008

The increasing prominence of Sustainable Development as a policy objective has initiated a debate on appropriate frameworks and tools that will both provide guidance for a shift towards sustainability as well as a measure, preferably quantitative, of that shift. Sustainability assessment has thus the challenging task of capturing, addressing and suggesting solutions for a diverse set of issues that affect stakeholders with different values and span over different spatial and temporal scales. However sustainability assessment is still not a mature framework in the sense that Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) are. This paper aims to provide suggestions for improving the sustainability evaluation part of a sustainability assessment. In particular it will provide a comprehensive review of different sustainability evaluation tools (from a reductionist perspective) as well as the feasibility of incorporating them within a sustainability assessment framework. Reviewed tools include monetary tools, biophysical models and sustainability indicators/composite indices that have been developed within different disciplines such as economics, statistics, ecology, engineering and town planning.

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