Sustainability Indicator

Mercer Clarke, C. S. L., Roff, J. C., and Bard, S. M. 2008. Back to the future: using landscape ecology to understand changing patterns of land use in Canada, and its effects on the sustainability of coastal ecosystems. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 1534–1539. In Canada, concerns are mounting that the coastal environments may be more affected by human activities than is evidenced by current monitoring and assessment of environmental quality. Holistically orientated approaches to coastal management have concluded that indicators of coastal sustainability must include a wider array of factors that go beyond marine ecosystem health to include the health and well-being of coastal terrestrial environments and human communities. Research is needed to bridge the disciplinary and jurisdictional barriers that hamper better understanding of the relationships between terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and to help recognize the role of humans as both a contributing and an affected speci...

The concept of sustainable development (SD) has become an important objective of policy makers in the industry. The Brundtland report defines the sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future ...

The concept of a circular economy (CE) has become popular and important issue in environmental management in recent years; however, there are not particular indicators dedicated to it in regional policy. CE approach is an industrial system that is restorative by design, and it emphasises that it is important that, rather than extracting natural resources, the materials that have already been taken can and should be recovered and reused in different ways, thereby securing natural resources from over-exploitation. In order to meet CE assumptions, modern and innovative technologies that allow for the recovery of valuable materials should be developed. This also applies to eco-innovation that connects technology development with environmental aspects. It is therefore obvious that issues of CE and eco-innovation are linked, and a uniform methodology aimed at compare the levels of moving to CE including eco-innovation solutions should be established. Because the focus in European Union (EU) has been paid on regions, measuring of CE–eco-innovations levels is especially important at the regional level. In this paper, the proposals of CE indicators, based on eco-innovation factors, which can be possible to create based on existing data set (Eurostat, Cohesion policy) are presented. It is recommend to use of five group indicators for measuring regional CE–eco-innovation. Based on Eco-Innovation Scoreboard which describes innovation measurement , three of proposed indicator groups are associated directly with innovations, taking into account the principles of CE: CE–eco-innovation inputs, CE–eco-innovation activities and CE–eco-innovation outputs, and other two groups of indicators are effects of the CE–eco-innovation introduction: resource efficiency outcomes and socio-economic outcomes. This way of measuring CE–eco-innovation allows for create holistic, systematic and integrated approach for the CE concept at the regional level. Proposed indicators can be used in current transition stage for assessment of implementation regional policy and as a base for creation final CE indicators.

As part of the Integrated Coastal Management Sustainability Research Project (ICMSRP), this study investigated the relationship between tourism and the success and sustainability of processes initiated by one ICM project in particular, the Central Visayas Regional Project (CVRP). CVRP is widely regarded as the first major externally funded coastal management project to take on a community-based, yet integrated, approach to

The Spanish High Council for Scientific Research and an association for rural development are promoting the implementation of the Local Agenda 21 which aims at reaching sustainable development in La Mancha Alta Conquense. A GIS has been produced to implement Local Agenda 21 which includes environmental and socio- economic cartographic variables. Socio-economic variables from statistical sources were considered also on a municipal level. Sustainability indicators were obtained to provide a territorial diagnosis. The GIS produced is a valuable tool both to help spatial decision making on different management levels and to guide the Local Action Plan. Cartography is used as the tool to communicate this information to the local population in a double sense: showing the current situation of their territory and the proposals for territorial planning.

Sustainable construction is a relevant subject in contemporary world because it is one of approaches achieving sustainability in all the spheres of society development. The authors reveal difficulties which emerge in creating the indicator system for sustainability evaluation, searching for information concerning indicators and in making mathematical calculations. After thorough analysis of research papers, specific databases and other information sources an algorithm for indicator system creation was suggested. The set of construction sustainability indicators for a particular country was built, the values of indicators were defined and then several decision‐making methods were applied. According to a general index of construction sustainability, a conclusion was drawn about construction state in the context of sustainable development.

Sustainable development indicators (SDIs) are one of the most frequently used tools to assess sustainable development from an international to a local scale, supporting evaluation and reporting purposes. Indicators can also be particularly useful in addressing the growing need for interaction at regional and local scale in sustainability initiatives and assuring that regional assessments reflect community values, concerns and hopes. The main goal of this research is to develop a conceptual framework for common local sustainability indicators within a regional context, one that is supported by a participative approach and allows interaction between local and regional scales. Other major goals were to design the regional profile on local SDI initiatives and develop a set of common local indicators for the Algarve region – the most southerly region of Portugal. The framework is mainly supported on common strategic goals, objectives, targets, features and resources and on the existing r...

Today and years to come, one of the most challenging problems of the global economy is to keep maintaining and developing the correct balance of the environment from which resources are extracted. For this, we believe that Information Systems and formal methodologies for sustainability measures definition are related to decision making and management control. In this work, a methodology as a means to determining and implementing reliable, understandable, relevant and accessible sustainability indicators for the interaction between the environment, the economy and the society will be examined. Sustainability measures were implemented in a Decision Support System using a multidimensional modeling based architecture. The proposed methodology for indicators definition and the Information System were successfully applied to the Chilean salmon industry. The usage of the indicators and the stakeholders’ opinions over the resulting Information System, proved that the proposed Decision Suppo...

In order to protect and conserve the threatened and endangered marine life, the government has gazetted a total of 40 islands as marine parks. With the gazettement, all activities that disrupt the stability of marine's eco-system are prohibited. These prohibited activities ...

Alberto Paucar-Caceres Manchester Metropolitan University Business School Aytoun Building, Aytoun Street, Manchester, M13GH, UK a.paucar@mmu.ac.uk ... This paper reports on an on-going project on urban sustainability of the Valsequillo Lake in Puebla, Mexico ...

Development of indicators for work was designed to generate sustainability indicators for the agricultural sector of the Reventado River watershed. Land use through time increased soil cations accumulation (Ca Mg y K) but decreased acidity saturation as a result of fertilizer and lime applications. Available P also increased with the period of land use, increasing at an approximated rate of

In the course of evaluating the progress in implementing Agenda 21 [Results of the World Conference on Environment and Development: Agenda 21, UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, United Nations, New York] the “Commission on Sustainable Development” began developing a set of indicators of sustainable development. The first version was finalised in 1996 with the suggestion of 134 indicators [Indicators of Sustainable Development, Framework and Methodologies, United Nations, New York] and put to a field test, resulting in a final version published in 2001 [Indicators of Sustainable Development: Guidelines and Methodologies, United Nations, New York]. In both versions, the indicators are divided up into for issue areas: economic, environmental, social, and institutional. The further conceptual separation into driving force, state, and response indicators was given up in the final version.Generally, (inter-) governmental organisations are explicitly referred to as institutions, which in the course of decision making have to take aspects of sustainable development into consideration. The use of terms related to institutional contexts in Agenda 21 implies that the underlying understanding of institutions is broader, since it refers not only to organisations, but as well to institutional mechanisms like procedures and legal norms (formal or informal, explicit or implicit systems of rules). Applying the even more extended definition of social sciences, including institutional orientations, like societal norms and leitbilder reveals an additional wealth of institutional aspects in Agenda 21, which—as opposed to organisations and mechanisms—obviously has not been considered as institutions by the authors.We illustrate this with a complete “screening” of all chapters of Agenda 21 according to all three classes of institutions. This analysis uncovers various important institutional aspects of sustainable development that are not yet reflected in the current set of indicators. They are covered by a rather complete list of institutions in Agenda 21 [Deriving Institutional Sustainability Indicators, Final Report to the German Federal Environment Agency, Research Project No. 298 121 40, Wuppertal Institute, Cologne/Berlin, p. 188]; some examples from it are provided with this paper.Furthermore, we present a proposal for how to structure the results of the analysis. For organisations it is obvious that not their very existence (yes/no) can be the basis for indicator development, but their effectiveness has to be the point of reference. While the DSR scheme provides no suitable analytical basis for indicator development, it offers a convenient classification scheme for results derived otherwise. This applies not only to the CSD indicators, but also for the institutional mechanisms.

O objetivo do estudo foi analisar a sustentabilidade da producao tradicional e orgânica de frutas dos agricultores familiares do municipio de Itapuranga, por meio do indicador de sustentabilidade Dashboard. O principal problema e que o sistema de producao tradicional de frutas utilizado por estes agricultores estava sendo desenvolvido com o uso intensivo e inadequado de insumos quimicos (fertilizantes e agrotoxicos) causando problemas de ordem social e economica aos agricultores e impactos ao meio ambiente. De acordo com os resultados, conclui-se que: o sistema de fruticultura orgânica, mesmo se encontrando em fase inicial apresentou por meio do Indicador de Sustentabilidade Dashboard o Indice de Desenvolvimento Sustentavel Global (IDS) com uma performance razoavel. Isto indica que a implantacao da fruticultura orgânica em Itapuranga, juntos aos agricultores familiares ja da sinais de que a fruticultura esta sendo desenvolvida em bases mais sustentaveis. ----------------------------...

There was a boom in the development of sustainable development indicators (SDIs) after notion of sustainability became popular through Bruntland Commission's report. Since then numerous efforts have been made worldwide in constructing SDIs at global, national and local scales, but in India not a single city has registered any initiative for indicator development. Motivated by this dearth of studies added to the prevailing sustainability risks in million plus cities in India, a research is being undertaken at the ...

This discussion paper presents a methodological approach to sustainability indicators and scenarios that evolved within the framework of the interdisciplinary and application-oriented Risk Habitat Megacity research initiative on sustainable urban development in Santiago de Chile. The aim of this discussion paper is to support regional and local planning authorities and political decision-makers in the area of housing and other urban policy fields. It will be shown how the approach was contextualized in order to contribute to the ongoing debate on methodological approaches to social sustainability and to the policy-related understanding of socio-spatial differentiation trends and their implications for social inclusion.

The objective of this paper is to introduce fuzzy set theory and develop fuzzy mathematical models to assess sustainable development based on context-dependent economic, ecological, and societal sustainability indicators. Membership functions are at the core of fuzzy models, and define the degree to which indicators contribute to development. Although a decision-making process regarding sustainable development is subjective, fuzzy set theory links human expectations about development, expressed in linguistic propositions, to numerical data, expressed in measurements of sustainability indicators. In the future, practical implementation of such models will be based on elicitation of expert knowledge to construct a membership function. The fuzzy models developed in this paper provide a novel approach to support decisions regarding sustainable development. 5001-6182 Business 5201-5982 Business Science Library of Congress Classification (LCC) QA 76.9 Fuzzy sets M Business Administration ...