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The Need for an Integrated Assessment Framework to Account for Humanity's Pressure on the Earth System
Abstract
The challenge of accounting for our impact on the Earth System has been addressed in the last three decades by an intensive social and scientific search for concepts, regulations, methodologies and techniques. Such search has been based on indicators, which helped us improve our understanding of the state of the planet. We live in a technological era: we have never had so many information systems, so much knowledge, so many and strong legal protections, international environmental agreements and yet evidence suggests that we have never damaged the planet so much. Setting sustainability targets requires the identification of minimum thresholds – beyond which human impact on the Earth system is unsustainable – and the adoption of a systemic approach reflecting the complex interactions that characterize the Earth and the human systems.
In this chapter we discuss the need for building an integrated assessment framework to assess human pressure on the Earth System and its implications. Building on the existing literature, we propose a set of principles to guide the integration of a new assessment framework into a new legal order thus creating a system of incentives to approach, preserve and/or restore our common intangible heritage.
... This is why Sachs (2015, p. 4) calls SD "the most important challenge facing our generation". Shedding light on the multidimensional aspects of these challenges and their interrelations remains of key importance (Pulselli et al., 2016). The lessons from the young and deeply interdisciplinary Earth system science are vital for the understanding of how the human-related systems interact with the nature-related system of our planet. ...
... As research from the Earth system science evolves, it renews familiar environmental political controversies, such as the contested tension between economic growth and environmental sustainability, but embraces a new focus on Earth system complexity, and the unprecedented trade-offs in time and space (Galaz, 2014). Pulselli et al. (2016) pose critical questions: how can we reconcile all the pieces of information, from the sectoral and local to the transversal and global, to assess whether the whole system is sustainable or not? ...
... When the world has a window of opportunity of no more than 15 years to limit the impact of climate change and reverse the loss of biodiversity (Steffen et al., 2018), what are the key critical parameters decision-makers should pay attention to? And, most importantly, could it be that many of the parameters that local decision-makers are currently looking at are not relevant to measuring and monitoring the "sustainable/unsustainable" state of a global system (Pulselli et al., 2016)? ...
The goal of the chapter is to demonstrate how the core literature of urban governance is still blind to the current environmental crisis. Recognizing this pressing challenge and the difficulties of cities to deliver a global sustainable trajectory, the chapter raises critical questions on how to redirect local governance principles and research agendas and on the need to integrate the global system thinking lenses of Earth system science in the theories of urban governance.
... With a global population now exceeding 7.6 billion people and estimated to reach over 11 billion by 2100 [1], humanity consumes significantly more resources than our planet can provide in the long term, and our patterns of consumption and the waste we produce cannot be absorbed by the world's natural systems. In short, our use of natural resources is stretching beyond regenerative capacities [2][3][4][5], or even more succinctly, the world has reached planetary limits [6]. ...
... should be a balance between protection and utilization in any successful national park, so that it can offer both development opportunities and effective protection" [81]. 5 The national park system also aims to be a showcase for "ecological civilization", the government's vision for a sustainable relationship with the environment [82,83]. ...
... Ultimately, it was decided that a national park model of conservation-with its dual mandate-was the most appropriate form to adopt for addressing both the ecological significance (and need for protection) and human development interests in the region. 5 Both national parks and natures reserves are legal entities in China. Development of the national parks system aims to centralize and "rationalize" the planning and management of nationally prioritized areas. ...
Environmental conservation has developed significantly in China over the past 20 years, including more collaborative approaches and recent advances in establishing a national parks system. This study reviews the development of protected areas in the headwaters of the Yangtze River, drawing lessons from experiences of community development and co-management approaches. Community engagement and participation in developing localized plans for natural resource utilization and conservation have been critical features of successful ventures. Government programs and policies, the emergence of grassroots civil society, and the development of herders’ cooperatives and protected areas, are all tracked, each pointing towards the significant value of inclusive biodiversity conservation approaches for meeting broadly agreed development agendas, such as achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Observations from the vast, high, arid, and semi-arid lands of the Tibetan Plateau are then considered in light of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is bringing vast financial and technical resources to the world. Special attention is given to applying the lessons that have been learned in China to the mountains of Central Asia, globally recognized as a biodiversity hotspot and a water tower for large downstream populations. Keeping local people at the heart of conservation is deemed fundamentally important.
... Since the 1992 Rio Summitcalling for "indicators that show us if we are creating a more sustainable world" in chapter 40 of Agenda 21 (UN, 1992)many indicators, indices, and dashboards have been produced (e.g., Hak et al., 2016;Pulselli et al., 2016;Singh et al., 2012), stimulating political, academic, scientific, and community debates on the best way to assess and operationalize sustainable development at various territorial scales (Hezri and Dovers, 2006;Galli, 2015;Moreno Pires, 2014). Despite a 'spreading indicator culture' (see Pulselli et al., 2016;Riley, 2001), consensus on how to measure sustainable development has yet to be achieved (e.g. ...
... Since the 1992 Rio Summitcalling for "indicators that show us if we are creating a more sustainable world" in chapter 40 of Agenda 21 (UN, 1992)many indicators, indices, and dashboards have been produced (e.g., Hak et al., 2016;Pulselli et al., 2016;Singh et al., 2012), stimulating political, academic, scientific, and community debates on the best way to assess and operationalize sustainable development at various territorial scales (Hezri and Dovers, 2006;Galli, 2015;Moreno Pires, 2014). Despite a 'spreading indicator culture' (see Pulselli et al., 2016;Riley, 2001), consensus on how to measure sustainable development has yet to be achieved (e.g. UNECE et al., 2008;Lawn, 2006;Stiglitz et al., 2009), and the debate on appropriate sustainable development metrics has been recently re-ignited by the IEAG-SDGs identification of a global SDG indicator framework (Sachs, 2012;SDSN, 2015;Wackernagel et al., 2017) and by the introduction of the planetary boundaries framework (Steffen et al., 2015). ...
... Despite the SDG effort, the lack of systems thinking in most societal attempts to articulate and measure sustainable development has been increasingly highlighted in recent years (e.g., Broman et al., 2017;Costanza et al., 2014a,b;Fiksel, 2012;Galli, 2015;Pulselli et al., 2016;Quandt, 2016;Steffen et al., 2015). This is likely because although systemic knowledge of the functioning of Earth's physical systems is needed from a scientific viewpoint (Steffen et al., 2015), policy decisions are ultimately taken and implemented at national and local levels (with the exception of a few international agreements) (see Dahl, 2012;Fidélis and Moreno Pires, 2009;Pulselli et al., 2016) and usually structured around society's sectors. ...
Following the UN adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015, the Government of Montenegro entered in the final phase of revising of National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSSD 2030). Under the supervision of the National Council for Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Integrated Coastal Zone Management, an NSSD team of national and international experts was assembled under the coordination of the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism. To demonstrate commitment to the UN 2030 Agenda, Montenegro decided to center the NSSD 2030 on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), targets and indicators. One of the first UN member countries to implement the UN 2030 Agenda within the national policy context, Montenegro adopted its NSSD 2030 on July 7, 2016. As members of the NSSD team, here we 1) describe how the UN 2030 Agenda has been implemented within the policy context of Montenegro’s NSSD 2030, and 2) focus on the identification of the NSSD 2030 monitoring and reporting framework. Our key finding is that 26 institutions will be handling data for assessing 137 out of the 241 (56.8%) SDG indicators in the first reporting period scheduled for 2019. Although the paper deals with the implementation of the SDGs in Montenegro and its implications, we believe it will be useful in informing other countries in their process of national transposition and operationalization of the UN 2030 Agenda.
... This approach has led to significant debate over the interrelationship (Wilson & Wu, 2017) that sustainability requires among environmental, social, and economic demands (Hou et al., 2014), complemented by core institutional objectives (Spangenberg, 2002). Pulselli et al. (2016) for instance, argue that sustainability is the opportunity to talk about humankind and to study the relations between humans and their context (physical, environmental, social, economic, political, urban, juridical, etc.). As already argued by Odum in 1977, sustainability implies a holistic approach in "the sense of seeking to understand large components as functional wholes" (Odum, 1977). ...
... As already argued by Odum in 1977, sustainability implies a holistic approach in "the sense of seeking to understand large components as functional wholes" (Odum, 1977). Pulselli et al. (2016) argue that it is the opportunity to raise critical questions such as: ...
... This does not mean an overburdening myriad of indicators, but a set that is qualitatively different and variegated to depict the complex multidimensional characteristics of the states' anthrome mosaics. Currently, our mental models are guided by the quasi-imposed limited set of concepts, the economic circulation modeling, which severely limits our knowledge horizon (Maria Pulselli et al., 2016). Our strategies to address the ecological and injustice crises of this century are then skewed toward greater consideration of economic output factors at the expense of physical relationship between humanity and non-human nature, and our social relationships between humans within and between communities and states. ...
... The symbiosis between the economy, environment, culture and politics must be taken into account in our mental models, strategizing for an integrated system as a whole rather than single parts in isolation from each other. As Maria Pulselli et al. (2016) have advocated that the systemic analysis unites global pressures with local actions, the mental model of the degrowth doughnut should bridge the gap between the "scientific need" for a global systemic transformation and the "governance need" for local action and policy implementation (Maria Pulselli et al., 2016, p. 228). ...
Due to the concern that achieving human wellbeing through material development is “costing the Earth,” a mental model was developed to show in a single image the aspiration of social foundations of development to be achieved and biospheric boundaries not to be crossed. Anthromes analysis, combined with the cultural imperative of maintenance of global sustainability through coordinated transformation of social metabolism and its environmental impact, makes nation states the immediately available units of sustainability modeling. In this century humans must meet their needs equitably within the biophysical means of the planet. A downscaling of planetary boundaries and social wellbeing foundations (thresholds) to
national level through calculations of the impacts and attainments of nation states’ socioeconomic activities makes the doughnut model a conceptual tool bringing sustainability closer to political a and organizational impact. To visualize the scale and the possible pathways for the transformation of national and global sociometabolic practices in the 21st century within the “degrowth doughnut” includes the boundaries and thresholds in three domains: cultural, socioeconomic, and biophysical. This way it aims to avoid the conceptually paralyzing trade-off between exclusively biophysical boundaries and exclusively social thresholds of the other doughnut models. Understanding that excesses and shortfalls of current and
foreseeable socio-metabolic practices exist in cultural, socioeconomic, and biophysical aspects of nations’ social metabolism allows us to build on nations’ sustainability potentials. The aim of the model and its visual tool is to inform their populations
about the direction and scale of the change strategies that they could adopt to contribute to the global effort of maintaining the planetary population within the safe and just operating space of the doughnut under known advantages and constraints of the 21st century.
... The pursuit of sustainability has been recognized as the challenge of current time [8] as far as in the last three decades the need to sustainably manage Earth's resources has grown among decision makers around the World [9]. In parallel, the social and scientific research of concepts, tools, and methodologies that are able to track impact of mankind on the Planet have also arisen [10]. ...
... The phenomenon of growing number and application of sustainability indicators has been recognized as "spreading indicator culture" [10,11]. However, the decision making process should be guided by a set of sustainability indicators that are able to represent the complexity of the Earth paying special attention in some case? ...
One of the main goals of any (sustainability) indicator should be the communication of a clear, unambiguous, and simplified message about the status of the analyzed system. The selected indicator is expected to declare explicitly how its numerical value depicts a situation, for example, positive or negative, sustainable or unsustainable, especially when a comparison among similar or competitive systems is performed. This aspect should be a primary and discriminating issue when the selection of a set of opportune indicators is operated. The Ecological Footprint (EF) has become one of the most popular and widely used sustainability indicators. It is a resource accounting method with an area based metric in which the units of measure are global hectares or hectares with world average bio-productivity. Its main goal is to underline the link between the (un)sustainability level of a product, a system, an activity or a population life style, with the land demand for providing goods, energy, and ecological services needed to sustain that product, system, activity, or population. Therefore, the traditional rationale behind the message of EF is: the larger EF value, the larger environmental impact in terms of resources use, the lower position in the sustainability rank. The aim of this paper was to investigate if this rationale is everywhere opportune and unambiguous, or if sometimes its use requires paying a special attention. Then, a three-dimensional modification of the classical EF framework for the sustainability evaluation of a product has been proposed following a previous work by Niccolucci and co-authors (2009). Finally, the potentialities of the model have been tested by using a case study from the agricultural context.
... In the past 30 years, the science of sustainability has emerged as a prominent field to address the challenges that arise from human-nature interactions [1][2][3][4][5]. At its core, the science of sustainability is a "solution-oriented discipline that studies the complex relationship between nature and humankind", which implies a "holistic approach, able to capitalize and integrate sectoral knowledge as well as a variety of epistemic and normative stances and methodologies towards the definition of solutions" [2]. ...
... Agenda 21 (Chapter 40) of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio [6] called for improved quality and availability of sustainability data for decision making. The need for relevant and reliable data to measure sustainability launched the development of hundreds of indicators with the intent of driving policy and assessing progress toward sustainability [4]. ...
Ecological Footprint accounting quantifies the supply and demand of Earth's biocapacity. The National Footprint Accounts (NFA) are the most widely used Ecological Footprint (EF) dataset, and provide results for most countries and the world from 1961 to 2014, based primarily on publicly available UN datasets. Here, we review the evolution of the NFA, describe and quantify the effects of improvements that have been implemented into the accounts since the 2012 edition, and review the latest global trends. Comparing results over six editions of NFAs, we find that time-series trends in world results remain stable, and that the world Ecological Footprint for the latest common year (2008) has increased six percent after four major accounting improvements and more than thirty minor improvements. The latest results from the NFA 2018 Edition for the year 2014 indicate that humanity's Ecological Footprint is 1.7 Earths, and that global ecological overshoot continues to grow. While improved management practices and increased agricultural yields have assisted in a steady increase of Earth's biocapacity since 1961, humanity's Ecological Footprint continues to increase at a faster pace than global biocapacity, particularly in Asia, where the total and per capita Ecological Footprint are increasing faster than all other regions.
... In the past 30 years, the science of sustainability has emerged as a prominent field to address the challenges that arise from human-nature interactions [1][2][3][4][5]. At its core, the science of sustainability is a "solution-oriented discipline that studies the complex relationship between nature and humankind", which implies a "holistic approach, able to capitalize and integrate sectoral knowledge as well as a variety of epistemic and normative stances and methodologies towards the definition of solutions" [2]. ...
... Agenda 21 (Chapter 40) of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio [6] called for improved quality and availability of sustainability data for decision making. The need for relevant and reliable data to measure sustainability launched the development of hundreds of indicators with the intent of driving policy and assessing progress toward sustainability [4]. ...
The Ecological Footprint is a resource accounting tool that measures the amount of the Earth's regenerative capacity (or ‘biocapacity’) demanded by a given activity. Many human activities place demands on the planet's capacity, including the provision and processing of food, the construction and maintenance of housing, transportation, and the consumption of goods and services. Since these demands compete for biologically productive space, both demand on and availability of regenerative capacity can be approximated by adding up the mutually exclusive biologically productive areas for providing these services. By comparing the amount of capacity demanded with the amount of capacity available each year, Ecological Footprint accounting can measure the extent to which human demands on the biosphere exceed the biosphere's capacity to meet those demands. Globally, human society is currently operating in a state of overshoot, with the global Footprint exceeding global biocapacity by over 50% in 2011. This overshoot depletes the natural capital on which human society depends – reducing stocks and filling up waste sinks. Levels of Ecological Footprint and biocapacity vary widely between regions and nations.
... Another trend was also observed regarding the efforts of countries to integrate sets of common sustainability indicators for different countries, such as in Europe (e.g., European Commission work, the Eurostat's Sustainable Development Indicators, and the European Environmental Agency core set of indicators), in North Europe (e.g., Nordic Set of Indicators), in Latin America and the Caribbean (e.g., Sustainable Development Indicators in Latin America and the Caribbean), or in Northeast Asia (e.g., Northeast Asia Sustainable Development Indicators) as well as efforts to integrate national with subnational indicator systems, within countries (e.g., the UK common regional indicators; the Algarve Region experience in Portugal). Similar trends toward the use of big data, new digital tools, standardization processes (via Agenda 2030 SDGs), and mostly the new global understanding of the complex nature of the Earth Systemwith the Planetary Boundaries framework (Steffen et al. 2015)and of the emergency to put in place critical transition policies are calling for an urgent and still missing shift in the development of indicators that provide a systemic-thinking view toward sustainability (Pulselli et al. 2016). ...
... On the other side, a key characteristic of this international cooperation has been the emergence of several international networks, particularly in Canada and the United States, such as the US-based International Sustainability Indicators Network, The Community Indicators Consortium, the Canadian Sustainability Indicator Network, or the international cooperation of experts to design guidelines for establishing sustainability indicators, such as the well-known Bellagio principles developed in 1996 (Hardi and Zdan 1997) and revised and updated in 2012 (Pintér et al. 2012). New guiding principles necessary to define a systemic indicator framework for managing human development within the Earth System are proposed by Pulselli et al. (2016): (i) from relative indicators to absolute measures; (ii) from silos to systemic thinking; (iii) from short terminism to long terminism; (iv) from addressing symptoms to addressing causes; (v) addressing both production and consumption sides; (vi) including ethical judgments on the distribution of burdens; and (vii) including "scientific need" for systemic thinking and "governance need" for local actions. ...
... Several reviews discuss these studies, that used different indicators, especially Life Cycle Assessment [24][25][26][27]. Even if the growing number (and, application) of sustainable indicators has been defined as a "spreading indicator culture" [41], the decision making process needs to be guided by a set of sustainable indicators able to represent the complexity of the impact generated on the Earth [28]. Agreeing in the complexity of implementing a calculation model for the O&M phase, these reviews found out a good option to assess the environmental impact of in-use buildings, namely the Ecological Footprint indicator. ...
... Sustainability is a multidisciplinary issue, with no single statistic capable of addressing its entire complexity 8 . To address this, decision-makers must sift through a plethora of data, information and indicators 9 . In order to attain sustainability, the use of sustainability indicators is becoming increasingly important 10 . ...
19. Sneeuw, N. et al., One year of time-variable CHAMP-only gravity field models using kinematic orbits. In. 20. Chander, S. and Majumdar, T. J., Comparison of SARAL and Ja-son-1/2 altimetry-derived geoids for geophysical exploration over the Indian offshore. Geocarto Int., 2015, 31(2), 18; http:// dx.
... Sustainability is a multidisciplinary issue, with no single statistic capable of addressing its entire complexity 8 . To address this, decision-makers must sift through a plethora of data, information and indicators 9 . In order to attain sustainability, the use of sustainability indicators is becoming increasingly important 10 . ...
Urbanization is one of the most significant global trends of modern times, driving and driven by multiple social, economic and environmental processes. Due to uncontrolled urbanization, there is rapid environmental degradation which causes many problems. Scientific assessments can help provide solutions by considering the local realities. Numerous assessment strategies have been suggested such as emerge analysis, material flow analysis, data development analysis and ecological footprint analysis (EFA). EFA has been implemented as a useful analytical and planning tool for assessing urban sustainability in numerous cities. The aim of this study is to use one of the EFA components, viz. built-up land footprint (EFbuilt-up) to evaluate the urban sustainability of Solan district, Himachal Pradesh (HP), India, in terms of settlements. The study concludes that EFbuilt-up of Solan district, HP, exceeds its biocapacity, resulting in an ecological deficit. Therefore, element of built-up land in Solan district is considered as an unsustainable system.
... In conclusione, possiamo mettere in evidenza tre punti chiave operativi (Pulselli et al., 2016) che caratterizzano i fondamenti del concetto di sostenibilità: a) Cosa deve essere sostenibile? L'oggetto è tutto il sistema e non una singola parte. ...
Obiettivo 15_Nanotecnologie e ambiente: nuove soluzioni sostenibili ed ecocompatibili
... Sustainability is a trans-disciplinary issue with no single metric able to address its full complexity alone (Galli et al., 2012;Sala, Ciuffo, & Nijkamp, 2015). To deal with this challenge, decision makers must navigate through a wealth of diverse information, data and indicators (Pulselli, Moreno Pires, & Galli, 2016), whose interpretation might be difficult. Quantitatively assessing and monitoring each dimension of sustainability (e.g., the environmental pillar) is a challenge that municipalities face, in Portugal and elsewhere. ...
The unsustainable use of our planet's resources needs to be tackled from different angles and multiple levels of governance. As the human population urbanizes, having access to reliable, cross-cutting, quantitative city-level sustainability metrics is key to understanding the environmental impacts of urban dwellers and the role cities can play in the 21st century sustainability challenge. Framing the environmental pillar of urban sustainability with an overarching metric like the Ecological Footprint informs stakeholders and citizens about a city's overall pressure on the biosphere. In Portugal, six cities established a pioneering collaborative project to guide their transition to sustainability and support city governance; this paper presents the results of the first phase of the project. We tracked annual demand for natural resources and ecological services by the city residents and compared it against the "carrying capacity" of the cities' ecological assets. We then assessed the ability of this new data to increase local environmental awareness and support local public policies in Portugal and elsewhere. Lessons from this study inform the ongoing debate on the Ecological Footprint's usefulness as sustainability metric for cities, and point to specific policy insights for managing key consumption sectors and reaching key targets such as the UN SDGs.
... In these cases, to optimize the immediate functionality of a very complicated and variegated set of measures ("a dashboard of indicators, " see Ciommi et al., 2017), a selection of dimensions or indicators is necessary. This selection must however follow a logic rationale or model in order to combine informative power of the selected indicators and computation feasibility or data availability, after identifying the context in which the evaluation must be made (e.g., sustainability, well-being, etc.: for an overview of indicator-based approaches, see Pulselli et al., 2016). ...
An Input-State-Output (I-S-O) framework has been recently introduced to investigate the multidimensional aspects of sustainability (namely environmental, social and economic ones) of economic systems through a thermodynamically and logically ordered scheme. This approach provides an overall view of sustainability (the three dimensions together) facilitating the convergence of information from sets of indicators without aggregating results into single numbers and, consequently, losing information. In this paper we present the application of the I-S-O framework for the 20 regions of Italy. The emergy flow, the Gini Index of income distribution, and the regional Gross Domestic Product are used as systemic indicators for input, state, and output of the systems, respectively. We observe diversity among regions in the light of very different values of the three indicators. The per capita use of resources in the North of Italy is generally 2 to 4 times larger than in the South (excluding Puglia and Sardegna); the regional GDP per capita in the North doubles that of the Southern regions. The distribution of income, that is slightly better in two regions of the north (Trentino AA and Friuli VG), some of Center Italy, and Puglia in the South, only partially reflects that North-South discrepancy. Using the same measures, the 20 Regions are included in a global overview recently produced for 99 world countries. Regional values cover a wide range of countries; nevertheless, our values tend to be more similar to those of developed countries. Based on indicator values, Regions are also categorized, which enables interpretation of this overview at both sub-national and supra-national level.
... Over the last two decades, many indicators and tools have been proposed by different actors (Moreno Pires, 2014) to help society better understand the environmental consequences of their activities. This has been referred to as the "spreading indicator culture" (e.g., Pulselli et al., 2016;Riley, 2001). While the primary goal of most of these indicators has been to inform and support policy making, some have also gained public attention due to their immediateness and the simplicity of their message. ...
Consumption habits imply responsibility. Progressive awareness of the scale of materials, energy, goods
and services consumed on a daily basis and knowledge of the implications of consumption choices are
prerequisites for designing steps towards sustainable behavior. This article explores, for the first time, the
educational value of personal Footprint calculators and their contribution in terms of enhancing
awareness of the environmental consequences of consumption behaviors. Our study involved the
application of Global Footprint Networks’ personal Ecological Footprint (EF) calculator in teaching aimed
at High School and postgraduate University students in two geographical areas (Italy and UK). Students
calculated their individual EF, and used the results to explore the environmental consequences of their
current consumption behaviors and the effects associated with selected changes in daily consumption
activities. Our analysis shows that students were able to appreciate the difference between their individual
Footprints and national and global averages. The calculator also enabled them to debate sustainable
consumption in the context of their everyday life, inducing them to personally experience the
multidimensional character of sustainability. Students finally demonstrated an ability to quantitatively
capture how knowledge and awareness of the environmental consequences associated with certain
consumption behaviors may facilitate better choices, and encourage greater commitment to sustainable
resource use.
... and Ravallion (2012) presented interesting discussions on aggregate sustainability indices, questioning on their explanatory power and correctness of their design. In sum, using one measure for every single aspect of sustainability may result in a totally reductionist approach that is not able to provide a view of a system as a whole; on the other hand, the need to aggregate more measures/aspects into one multi-dimensional number may result in an excessive loss of information due to the over-simplification of the reality (on this trade-off, see also Pulselli et al., 2016). ...
In this paper a cluster analysis is applied to an input-state-output indicator framework that represents the interconnection of the three aspects of sustainability, namely environmental, social and economic. This framework is a useful and comprehensive tool for assessing country performances over time and improving guidelines for the classification of countries under a sustainability perspective. The method enables identification of trends and traps that characterize the evolution of countries over time. The analysis is performed for 83 countries in 2000 and 2008 in order to observe system behaviour and development patterns.
O Acordo União Europeia-Mercado Comum do Sul, negociado desde o início de 2000, possui objetivos que vão além das relações comerciais. A cooperação proposta traz em seu conjunto a redução de barreiras tarifárias e não tarifárias, investimentos para o desenvolvimento de tecnologias, transporte, educação e, sobretudo, a promoção do desenvolvimento sustentável. Considerado como um dos maiores acordos inter-regionais, são grandes as perspectivas de uma próxima conclusão. Sopesando as questões que dificultam sua conclusão, o presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar, por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica e estudo documental, as implicações dos diversos cenários para a definitiva aprovação do Acordo. Para tanto, buscou-se estudar seu contexto histórico, desde a proposta inicial, passando pelas negociações e diversas interrupções ocorridas, para então avaliar o estado da arte e as perspectivas de concretização. A partir da análise realizada, concluiu-se que houve melhoria nas expectativas sobre a aprovação do Acordo, considerando a mudança recente no contexto político do Brasil e as diversas forças que têm sido realizadas nesse sentido. Contudo, as negociações são permeadas por influências políticas e cenários dinâmicos, que podem inviabilizar o consenso pretendido. A importância do presente estudo está relacionada às crescentes discussões sobre os efeitos do Acordo, principalmente no que tange à efetividade das cláusulas socioambientais negociadas, questão que pode ser analisada em trabalhos futuros, que avaliem a efetividade das cláusulas propostas e a possibilidade de harmonização das normas e políticas adotadas no âmbito das duas regiões.
"This paper provides an overview of what the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) calls 'indirect and direct drivers' of change in ecosystem services at a global level. The MA definition of a driver is any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly causes a change in an ecosystem. A direct driver unequivocally influences ecosystem processes. An indirect driver operates more diffusely by altering one or more direct drivers. Global driving forces are categorized as demographic, economic, sociopolitical, cultural and religious, scientific and technological, and physical and biological. Drivers in all categories other than physical and biological are considered indirect. Important direct drivers include changes in climate, plant nutrient use, land conversion, and diseases and invasive species. This paper does not discuss natural drivers such as climate variability, extreme weather events, or volcanic eruptions."
The ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs, originally published in 2004 to show socio-economic and Earth System trends from 1750 to 2000, have now been updated to 2010. In the graphs of socio-economic trends, where the data permit, the activity of the wealthy (OECD) countries, those countries with emerging economies, and the rest of the world have now been differentiated. The dominant feature of the socio-economic trends is that the economic activity of the human enterprise continues to grow at a rapid rate. However, the differentiated graphs clearly show that strong equity issues are masked by considering global aggregates only. Most of the population growth since 1950 has been in the non-OECD world but the world’s economy (GDP), and hence consumption, is still strongly dominated by the OECD world. The Earth System indicators, in general, continued their long-term, post-industrial rise, although a few, such as atmospheric methane concentration and stratospheric ozone loss, showed a slowing or apparent stabilisation over the past decade. The post-1950 acceleration in the Earth System indicators remains clear. Only beyond the mid-20th century is there clear evidence for fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth System that are beyond the range of variability of the Holocene and driven by human activities. Thus, of all the candidates for a start date for the Anthropocene, the beginning of the Great Acceleration is by far the most convincing from an Earth System science perspective.
Ecological Footprint and biocapacity metrics have been widely used in natural capital and ecosystem accounting, and are frequently cited in the sustainability debate. Given their potential role as metrics for environmental science and policy, a critical scrutiny is needed.
Moreover, these metrics remain unclear to many, are subject to criticisms, and discussion continues regarding their policy relevance. This paper aims to explain the rationale behind Ecological Footprint Accounting (EFA) and help ensure that Ecological Footprint and biocapacity results are properly interpreted and effectively used in evaluating risks and developing policy recommendations. The conclusion of this paper is that the main value-added of Ecological Footprint Accounting is highlighting trade-offs between human activities by providing both a final aggregate indicator and an accounting framework that
shed light on the relationships between many of the anthropogenic drivers that contribute to ecological overshoot.
Kitchin et al. offer clear warnings about the proliferation and use of increasingly automated,
standardized and digitized urban data systems. These risks and warnings resonate
for us, both social scientists who study, and sometimes design, these systems in practice
in the cities of North America, Australia and Europe. What Kitchin et al. overlook is
the set of opportunities that also accompany the increased use of urban indicators. From
a perspective of local democracy, empowerment and social learning, such opportunities
do exist and are worth considering by anyone interested in building momentum to move
the city toward awareness of its development path and, ultimately, changing this path.
We offer this perspective here, recognizing that this is indeed the ‘minority report’ of
those who see potential for social hope and enlightenment in monitory and numerate
local democracy. We discuss, in turn, the potential of instrumentalism, abandoning the
god’s-eye view, the tie between indicators and managerialism, standardization and localization
agendas, and the prospect of social learning.
The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes
that regulate the stability of the Earth system. Here, we revise and update the planetary boundary framework, with a focus
on the underpinning biophysical science, based on targeted input from expert research communities and on more general scientific
advances over the past 5 years. Several of the boundaries now have a two-tier approach, reflecting the importance of cross-scale
interactions and the regional-level heterogeneity of the processes that underpin the boundaries. Two core boundaries—climate
change and biosphere integrity—have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth system
into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed.
Significance
We have downscaled planetary boundaries and applied the “safe and just space for humanity” framework at the national scale, for the first time, creating a “barometer” for inclusive sustainable development for South Africa. The barometer presents the state and trajectory of a broad but manageable set of indicators for environmental and social priorities, and highlights the country’s proximity to environmental boundaries and the distance from eradication of social deprivation. This creates a monitoring and communication tool for national government for thinking in an integrated manner about environmental and social-development issues. Our case study provides insight into the challenges and complexities of developing indicators and targets for the proposed global Sustainable Development Goals that that are globally, regionally, and nationally relevant.
In 2010, the international community, under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed on 20 biodiversity-related “Aichi Targets” to be achieved within a decade. We provide a comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets. We projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series. On current trajectories, results suggest that despite accelerating policy and management responses to the biodiversity crisis, the impacts of these efforts are unlikely to be reflected in improved trends in the state of biodiversity by 2020. We highlight areas of societal endeavor requiring additional efforts to achieve the Aichi Targets, and provide a baseline against which to assess future progress.
The article shows how a joint application of the 2006 IPCC methodology and the ISO 14064-1 standard of certification, as well as the co-operation between academic, legislative and administrative organizations, are important points for a sustainable management of an administrative jurisdiction, providing positive environmental effects. The administrative systems can choose validated ISO 14064-1 GHG inventories, produced in time series, as a strategy tool for local management, as a compass to orient future policy decisions. The Province of Siena (Tuscany, Central Italy) was one regional system in Europe to achieve the ISO 14064-1 certification of its GHG inventories, developed in time series applying the 2006 IPCC methodology. The results of the time series (year 2006–2010) of GHG inventories elaborated for the Province of Siena point out that the performed environmental management policies may bring about a significant reduction of GHG emission released to the atmosphere over time (net emission: 449 Gg CO2eq in 2006, 84 Gg CO2eq in 2010). The experience of the Province of Siena can be considered a significant reference model for all public authorities at the micro and macro scale who are interested in reducing GHG emission.
Indicators are considered a key tool in assessing whether societies are progressing towards sustainability. In indicator development, the main emphasis has been on the production of new indicators. Various kinds of sustainable development indicators and indicator sets have been developed to describe and assess key trends at local, national and global level. We argue that it is at least equally important to focus on how, when and by whom indicators are actually used. In addition, the focus should be on what kinds of desirable and undesirable effects are related to the use or non-use of indicators. Here, attention is paid to the negative, unintended effects of sustainability indicators in communication processes. Starting from an earlier typology focusing on health communication, various types of negative unintended effects of sustainable development indicators are identified and discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success. Countries should act now to embrace new metrics, urge Robert Costanza and colleagues.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has defined a comprehensive method for takinginto account greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions released from different countries. The geographical orproducer-based perspective currently used in the IPCC framework does not consider (and may thereforeencourage) delocalization of production from industrialized to other countries, thus allocating responsi-bility for emissions associated with goods and services, consumed in one country but produced elsewhere,exclusively to the producer. The Environmentally Extended Input–Output (EEIO) analysis has long beenrecognized as a useful tool for attributing GHG emissions or resource use to final consumers in a consis-tent accounting framework. While it is clear that there are several advantages to using a consumer-basedperspective with the EEIO analysis, questions regarding the implementation of this methodology havearisen, and its adoption in dealing with GHGs inventory has so far been limited. Here, we propose aformalization, in order to evaluate GHG emissions associated with goods and services that are tradedinternationally, based on a systemic approach that places the responsibility on consumer countries, andweighs imported and exported goods by applying national carbon intensity factors. The use of theseaggregate indicators is appropriate to have a reference point for a worldwide application of this tool inorder to implement policies for GHG emission reduction.
In this short welcome note for the new journal “Ecosystem Services”, the main interrelations between the ecosystem service concept and the approach of ecological indicators are briefly discussed with respect to three key issues: at first, some definitions are analyzed to answer the question if ecosystem services can be understood as ecological indicators. Due to a positive answer, the position of ecosystem services in the DPSIR indicator framework is determined as the central impact component. It is stated that different viewpoints are possible to interrelate the services; an environmental starting point focusing on the linkage to ecological processes and functions on the one side, and the relations with human well-being criteria and management obligations on the other. Finally, the actual needs for further research and application are outlined from an indicator-based aspect and the broad field of potential contributions for the new journal is summarized.
Innovation is increasingly based upon a “Triple Helix” of university-industry-government interactions. The increased importance of knowledge and the role of the university in incubation of technology-based firms has given it a more prominent place in the institutional firmament. The entrepreneurial university takes a proactive stance in putting knowledge to use and in broadening the input into the creation of academic knowledge. Thus it operates according to an interactive rather than a linear model of innovation. As firms raise their technological level, they move closer to an academic model, engaging in higher levels of training and in sharing of knowledge. Government acts as a public entrepreneur and venture capitalist in addition to its traditional regulatory role in setting the rules of the game. Moving beyond product development, innovation then becomes an endogenous process of “taking the role of the other”, encouraging hybridization among the institutional spheres.
Global increases in population, consumption, and gross domestic product raise concerns about the sustainability of the current and future use of natural resources. The human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) provides a useful measure of human intervention into the biosphere. The productive capacity of land is appropriated by harvesting or burning biomass and by converting natural ecosystems to managed lands with lower productivity. This work analyzes trends in HANPP from 1910 to 2005 and finds that although human population has grown fourfold and economic output 17-fold, global HANPP has only doubled. Despite this increase in efficiency, HANPP has still risen from 6.9 Gt of carbon per y in 1910 to 14.8 GtC/y in 2005, i.e., from 13% to 25% of the net primary production of potential vegetation. Biomass harvested per capita and year has slightly declined despite growth in consumption because of a decline in reliance on bioenergy and higher conversion efficiencies of primary biomass to products. The rise in efficiency is overwhelmingly due to increased crop yields, albeit frequently associated with substantial ecological costs, such as fossil energy inputs, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss. If humans can maintain the past trend lines in efficiency gains, we estimate that HANPP might only grow to 27-29% by 2050, but providing large amounts of bioenergy could increase global HANPP to 44%. This result calls for caution in refocusing the energy economy on land-based resources and for strategies that foster the continuation of increases in land-use efficiency without excessively increasing ecological costs of intensification.
'This book presents a comprehensive collection of essays from some of the world's leading experts, surveying and highlighting both the potential and the limitations of a number of indicators specifically designed to measure sustainable development. Illustrative applications are presented throughout in order to demonstrate the value of the approaches discussed. This book is highly recommended for all those who are interested in a better understanding of what sustainable development is and its likely associated indicators, and ultimately aims to contribute to a better foundation for public decision-making.' - Paulo A.L.D. Nunes, Venice International University, Cà Foscari University, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Venice, Italy and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, national governments have introduced a range of policy measures designed to steer their economies along a more sustainable path. Yet how are we to know how successful these have been? This significant new book discusses the ways in which sustainable development indicators can be improved in order to both assess the impact of past policies and avoid the repetition of previous failings.
Policymakers often have difficulty assessing the overall state of the environment. Indices are a way of combining a wide range of environmental data, but they can only be as good as the data base used in their formulation. There are still many areas in which data collection is quite inadequate to group national trends in environmental quality. Aspects of the relationship between monitoring and indices are explored.
In this extraordinary book, the authors combine the latest science with compelling storytelling and amazing photography to create a new narrative for humanity's future. Johan Rockstom and Mattias Klum reject the notion that economic growth and human prosperity can only be achieved at the expense of the environment. They contend that we have unprecedented opportunities to navigate a "good Anthropocene." By embracing a deep mind-shift, humanity can reconnect to Earth, discover universal values, and take on the essential role of planetary steward. With eloquence and profound optimism, Rockstrom and Klum envision a future of abundance within planetary boundaries-a revolutionary future that is at once necessary, possible, and sustainable for coming generations. © Bokförlaget Max Strböm 2015, Text Johan Rockstrom, Text pages 114-115 and photo captions Mattias Klum, All photos Mattias Klum, except photo page 3, NASA/William Anders, and page 51 (top left, polar bear, Johan Rockstrom. All rights reserved.
Ways have to be found to improve life quality and food security in Africa's semiarid countries, despite the environmental constraints of hydroclimatically-induced water scarcity and the considerable interannual fluctuations which characterize the natural freshwater supply. A water-stress profile is presented on a) the role of improved water supply for self-sufficient crop production and b) the number of individuals jointly depending on each flow unit of water available to the country from the water cycle. There is an urgent need for increased awareness among African leaders so that adequate strategies can be made for development under conditions of severe water scarcity. -from Author
The sustainable use of environmental resources is an important tenet guiding future governance and management in the Anthropocene. However, the concept of sustainability is based on underlying assumptions of how sustainable development policies are formulated and applied. This commentary describes some of the flaws of ‘sustainability’ which are that (1) it requires full knowledge of the workings of Earth’s multiple physical systems and their sensitivities; and (2) the structures and management tools used by societal actors have low adaptive capacity to address ongoing changes to the physical environment. This commentary considers that societal actors and their future roles are likely to emerge from changing economic patterns, community structures and geopolitical contexts over coming decades. This providing an alternative Anthropocene future to that which is commonly posited, and emphasizes the use and limitations of sustainable development and the societal actors that are concerned with it.
Conversion of land to grow crops, raise animals, obtain timber, and build cities is one of the foundations of human civilization. While land use provides these essential ecosystem goods, it alters a range of other ecosystem functions, such as the provisioning of freshwater, regulation of climate and biogeochemical cycles, and maintenance of soil fertility. It also alters habitat for biological diversity. Balancing the inherent trade-offs between satisfying immediate human needs and maintaining other ecosystem functions requires quantitative knowledge about ecosystem responses to land use. These responses vary according to the type of land-use change and the ecological setting, and have local, short-term as well as global, long-term effects. Land-use decisions ultimately weigh the need to satisfy human demands and the unintended ecosystem responses based on societal values, but ecological knowledge can provide a basis for assessing the trade-offs.
Earths resources are consumed by one of its 5-30 million species homo sapiens or man at a rate disproportionately greater than any other species. Mans impact on the biosphere is measured in terms of net primary production (NPP). NPP is the amount of energy remaining after the respiration of primary producers (mostly plants) is subtracted from the total amount of biologically fixed energy (mostly solar). Human output is determined by 1) the direct NPP used for food fuel fiber or timber which yields a low estimate 2) all NPP of cropland devoted to human activity and 3) both 1) and 2) and land conversion for cities or pastures as well as conversion which results in desertification and overuse of lands. This last output determination yields a high estimate. Calculations are made for global NPP and each of the 3 estimates of low intermediate and high human output. Data are based on estimates by Ajtay et al. Armentano and Loucks and Houghton et al. and on the Food and Agriculture Organizations (FAO) summaries. Petagram (Pg) is used to calculate organic matter; this is equivalent to 10 to the 15th power grams or 10 to the 9th power metric tons. Carbon has been converted to organic matter by multiplying by 2.2. Matter in kilocalories has been converted to organic matter by dividing by 5. Intermediate or conservative estimates have been included. The standard of biomass is 1244 Pg and an annual NPP to 132.1. The NPP of marine and freshwater ecosystems is considered to be 92.4 Pg which is a low estimate. The low calculation of human (5 billion persons) consumption of plants at a caloric intake of 2500 kilocalories/person/day is .91 Pg of organic matter which equals .76 Pg of vegetable matter. The global production of human food is 1/7 Pg for grains and for human and livestock fed or .85 Pg of dry grain material and .3 Pg in nongrain dry material with dry grain material and .3 Pg in nongrain dry material with a subtraction of 20% for water content. 34% or .39 Pg is lost to waste and spoilage. Consumption by livestock forest usage and aquatic ecosystems is computed. The overall estimate for human use if 7.2 Pg of organic matter/year or 3% of total NPP/year. The intermediate figures take into account cropland pastureland forest use and conversion; the overall estimate of human use is 42.6 Pg of NPP/year of 19.0% (42.6/224.5) of NPP (30.7% on land and 2.2% on seas). The high estimate yields human use of 58.1 Pg/year on land or 40% (58.1/149.6) of potential land productivity or 25% (60.1/149.8 + 92.4) of land and water NPP. The remaining 60% of land is also affected by humans. The figures reflect the current patterns of exploitation distribution and consumption of a much larger population. These patterns amount to using >50% of NPP of land; there must be limits to growth.
This paper assesses the implementation and use of sustainability indicators (SI) in local governance contexts in Portugal. The need to analyse the development of local SI is considered critical, given the lack of research on the understanding of how, when and by whom SI are implemented and used, particularly in the Portuguese local governance context. The first aim of this article is to map experiences of SI in Portugal by assessing how many local councils developed indicator systems and when, and the major driving-forces and general features of those systems. The second aim is to analyse and compare 7 case studies, in further detail, to explore the governance factors that influence indicator success and how indicators are used within local contexts. Two particular conceptual frameworks were applied to structure research and analysis. Based on a national survey and case study methodology, findings reveal that local SI in Portugal are still in early stages of development. Where SI have been designed earlier, there has been a lack of political commitment and vision, and a need to overcome local government malfunctioning more than the complex obstacles of sustainable development governance. Applying both conceptual frameworks enabled to present critical lessons on the relationship among governance factors and types of uses when implementing SI in Portugal and to suggest the value of this integrated analysis for other governance contexts.
Eco-cities strive to become more liveable, enjoyable, and healthy. Indicators can be an effective mechanism for understanding people's values, needs, concerns, and expectations; guiding development decisions; evaluating progress and making revisions; and gaining support for desired actions. This Viewpoint describes how sustainability indicators can be developed to measure a community's environment, economy, quality of life, and governance. Five helpful hints are offered to guide this process.
In October 2010, world leaders gathered in Nagoya, Japan, for the CBD COP10 and agreed on the adoption of new biodiversity targets and new indicators for the period 2011-2020. This represents a positive development. But given the previous failure in achieving the 2010 biodiversity targets, new approaches to implementation as well as relevant measuring and monitoring systems are needed, for this renewed effort to have lasting success in preserving biodiversity.
The need to adopt a comprehensive approach in monitoring biodiversity clearly emerged and it can be seen in the five strategic goals within which the 2020 Aichi Biodiversity targets are classified. Among them, is the strategic goal A, which aims to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society. The aim of this paper is to describe the role of the Ecological Footprint in tracking human-induced pressures on biodiversity thus providing a synthesis of how the Ecological Footprint tool can contribute to the advancement of conservation science. Information is provided on the main features of the Footprint indicator and its dataset, the ongoing work to improve the methodology as well as the geographical (more than 150 countries covered) and temporal coverage (a period of almost five decades) of the Ecological Footprint accounting tool.
In a world faced with accelerating climate change, economic instability and resource limits, it is urgent to find better indicators of progress towards sustainability. The available indicators mostly succeed at measuring unsustainable trends that can be targeted by management action, but fall short of defining or ensuring sustainability. A recent review of environmental assessment and reporting at the national level for the United Nations Environment Programme shows about half of reporting countries to be using indicators and provides some lessons learned. However indicators at the national level are not sufficient. The challenges ahead include finding indicators of change in dynamic systems, establishing sustainability targets towards which national progress can be measured, developing global level indicators of planetary sustainability, and providing individuals with indicators reflecting their own progress and providing positive incentives for further efforts. Finally, since achieving sustainability is fundamentally an ethical challenge, a new set of values-based indicators is required to measure and motivate the implementation of ethical principles necessary to guide the transition towards sustainability.
All people use indicators in making day-to-day decisions. For example, in deciding on what type of clothes to wear, the cloud
cover, sunlight, and outside temperature are rapidly evaluated. Even faster evaluations of numerous indicators take place
when driving a car in traffic. The indicators used in daily life are selected, often not even consciously, for their known
or assumed information content and its easy digestibility. The information is in many situations also implicitly assumed to
have predictive power, an assumption which is rarely tested for its accuracy. Over time, with proper training and growing
experience, most people manage, however, to sustain their lives based on such uncertain information flows.
This study examines sustainability indicators using the sustainability report of the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as the case study. The report is a compilation of indicators designed to assess the sustainability of natural resource management. The interviews with the users revealed, however, that the indicators have not been particularly effective in informing the actors or in affecting their behaviour. Clearly, the informative value of the indicators has been overrated and the complexity of the information transfer has been underestimated. At least partly, the difficulties were due to the obscurity of the indicator-concept itself and consequently to their improper use. First, the statistics with the objective state-of-affairs information should be distinguished from the indicators that are always related to policy discussion. In addition, the technical and communicative use of the indicators should be distinguished from each other as they have different relationship between the information, policy values and the associated activities.
After more than a decade of sustainable development indicator promotion, indicators have not been integrated into policy-making procedures as expected. Sustainable development indicators were developed in 2000 to support Finnish policy-making, but indications of their use are minimal. In2001, a study of 41 people involved in high-level policy-making in Finland was launched, its purpose was to assess the use of indicators and the potential for increasing their use. Th e research method was qualitative interviews concerning selected themes. Evaluation research use findings were used as a framework for the results. Th e interviews revealed that the indicators were most likely to be used conceptually as learning tools and symbolically in the political debate. Direct use in decision-making was less likely. Th e politicians named the most important criteria for useful indicators as reliability, simplicity, inclusion of longer trends, and comparability to other countries and regions. In addition to the indicators’ characteristics, use is also affected by the ideology, information and the interests of the user and by the efforts of the developers to provide the indicators at a right time, to update them regularly, present them attractively and to ensure easy access to them. Th e indicator qualities, user profile and the efforts by the developer determine the type of use that prevails. Keywords:Sustainable development indicators, research use, policy-making, use of indicators
Indicators and performance measures have become an important element in policy initiatives relating to sustainability and to the re-invention of government. This article reviews the research and practice of indicator development and use, summarizing several key lessons from this review. One of the key lessons is that to be useful, indicators must be developed with the participation of those who will use and learn from them. The article then proposes a strategy for community indicators based upon the conception that cities are like living organisms functioning as complex adaptive systems. Three types of indicators are needed. System performance indicators are required to provide information to the public about the overall health of a community or region. Policy and program measures are required to provide policy-makers with feedback about how speci® c programs and policies are working. Rapid feedback indicators are required to assist individuals and businesses to make more sustainable decisions on a day-to-day basis. There is no simple formula for how to develop a system of indicators. Each community and region should develop a system based upon their own circumstances and needs.
Due to the growing human demand for planetary resources and ecosystem services, ensuring sustainable development through the management of the planet’s ecological assets is becoming a central issue for policy and decision makers around the world. To understand the driving forces behind these demands and to find ways to reduce them while maintaining economic and societal well-being, new empirical measurements
are needed, which can complement traditional analyses. One such tool could be the Ecological Footprint. Starting from a detailed review of the most up-to-date theory and practice in Ecological Footprint analyses, the rationale of the footprint methodology, its research question, as well as its accounting framework is explained. The Ecological Footprint is a resource accounting tool that measures humanity’s demands
upon the natural biosphere. It tracks the biologically productive land and water required to produce all the resources a population consumes and to sequester its wastes (in this case, carbon dioxide emissions).
A detailed discussion of the role that the Ecological Footprint can have as a tool for measuring (minimum criteria for) sustainable development is provided. There are a variety of applications for the Ecological Footprint, from the individual to the global level. It is primarily used at the national level, where decision makers can extract information about their consumption patterns and availability of biocapacity. National governments and local administrations are already utilizing the Ecological Footprint; a summary of these case studies is included. Recently, the Ecological Footprint has also been extended to the level of products and businesses to assess the efficiency of production or the impacts that products and services have upon the planet; a summary of the main case studies is also provided.
In recent years, attempts have been made to develop an integrated Footprint approach for the assessment of the environmental impacts of production and consumption. In this paper, we provide for the first time a definition of the “Footprint Family” as a suite of indicators to track human pressure on the planet and under different angles. This work has been developed under the 7th Framework Programme in the European Commission (EC) funded One Planet Economy Network: Europe (OPEN:EU) project. It builds on the premise that no single indicator per se is able to comprehensively monitor human impact on the environment, but indicators rather need to be used and interpreted jointly. A description of the research question, rationale and methodology of the Ecological, Carbon and Water Footprint is first provided. Similarities and differences among the three indicators are then highlighted to show how these indicators overlap, interact, and complement each other. The paper concludes by defining the “Footprint Family” of indicators and outlining its appropriate policy use for the European Union (EU). We believe this paper can be of high interest for both policy makers and researchers in the field of ecological indicators, as it brings clarity on most of the misconceptions and misunderstanding around Footprint indicators, their accounting frameworks, messages, and range of application.
