Beijing environmental sustainable development from 1983 to 2003

Ever since the Earth Summit was launched at Rio de Janeiro, research has been done on the problems of developing indices for the health of the environment and for its sustainable development. However, this research has concentrated more on national and regional levels than on local levels, more on spatial comparisons than on time series analysis, more on short-term than on long-time analysis, more on qualitative than on quantitative analysis. In contrast, therefore, this paper presents an indicator system procedure for measuring Beijing (the capital of China) environmental sustainability based on the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) philosophy, evaluates the trend of Beijing environmental sustainability index (BESI) quantitatively for 21 years, from 1983 to 2003, and suggests three great opportunities in the near future that are expected to provide some dependable information to policy makers. The results suggest that Beijing is still far from environmental sustainable development. The total trend was better in the 1980s than in the 1990s, and has improved slightly since 2000.     

PICABUE: a methodological framework for the development of indicators of sustainable development

SUMMARY

Significant interest in the concept of sustainable development exists amongst scientists, planners, policy makers and the public, and considerable effort and expenditure is made or envisaged at local, national and international levels to promote a more sustainable society. Until ‘green accounting’ and similar systems are made available and are implemented, the sustainability indicator will be the most effective tool available for monitoring progress towards a more sustainable society. Sustainability indicators are already available but are characterized by a poor or absent theoretical underpinning. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a methodological framework that can be applied to the construction of indicators of sustainable development. In order to be consistent with widely accepted definitions of sustainable development, considerations relating to the measurement of quality of life and ecological integrity are central to the methodology. The methodological framework has relevance to a variety of spatial scales and to geographically diverse areas (urban or rural, developed or developing countries) so that a suite of sustainability indicators can be produced that is tailored to the needs and resources of the indicator user, but which remains rooted firmly in the fundamental principles of sustainable development.     

Sustainability of Nations

SUMMARY

A method is presented to interrelate the development of economy, environment and social quality in communities. Economy and environment, in initial development stages, oppose each other. Social welfare and economy generally develop simultaneously. To assess overall progress in sustainable development, an integrated and quantifiable framework is presented which defines five levels of sustainability. Increasing sustainability is characterized by growing responsibility for the impacts of man's actions in space and time. Through increased eco-efficiency and changed awareness, nations and companies arrive at a synergistic relationship between environment and economy. It is indicated that social security benefits expenditure increases by a factor 3.5 and carbon dioxide emissions per capita decreases by a factor 3 at each higher level of sustainability. Quantified differences in sustainability levels of 24 nations are shown. Priorities for improving and safeguarding sustainability are indicated.     

A regional-scale sustainable development index: the case of Baja California Sur,Mexico

Sustainable development, as a multi-dimensional concept, is difficult to measure. Some efforts using indicators and indices have appeared in recent years, but most were developed on a national scale. Use of sustainability indicators has proven valuable for attaining better management of the environment by minimizing information gaps and maximizing community capabilities in terms of economic, social, environmental, and institutional sustainability dimensions. However, at least in the case of developing countries, the potential exists that national sustainability measures, based on national level indicators, may mask problems in sub-national zones with highly unsustainable conditions. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate sustainable development at a local level, the use of which could be helpful in comparing different regions within a country or even among different countries. National sustainability indicators should result from a combination (whether additive or proportional) of regional sustainability indicators, as developed in this paper.     

Principal sustainability components: empirical analysis of synergies between the three pillars of sustainability

Starting from the concept of three fundamental sustainability dimensions (environmental, social, and economic), this study investigated professional contributions to sustainability by means of principal component analysis (PCA). Graduates from the Environmental Sciences program (N?=?542) at ETH Zurich described their best professional contributions to sustainable development. Next, they evaluated whether their best practice example contributed to achieving any of the five environmental, social, and economic objectives of the Swiss national sustainability strategy. These judgments served as the basis for a PCA aiming to identify principal sustainability components (PSCs) covering typical synergies between sustainability objectives within and transcending the three fundamental dimensions. Three PSCs capturing important synergies were identified. PSC 1 Product and Process Development reflects how ecological innovation and modernization can generate social and economic benefits and at the same time facilitate the reduction in use of as well as the responsible use of natural resources. PSC 2 Education and Social Economics reflects how educational activities and sociocultural sustainability initiatives can simultaneously promote income and employment, social and human capital, and free personal development. PSC 3 Protection of Nature and Humans covers the synergetic benefits which protection of natural spaces and biodiversity and the reduction of environmental risks have for the protection of health and safety of the population. The study also revealed that integration of environmental, social, and economic aspects is often connected to conflicts between these dimensions. However, contributions which consider the economic situation of future generations or enhance social and human capital achieved considerable integration but showed no inclination toward such conflicts.     

The ecological footprint from a systems perspective of sustainability

Summary

The Ecological Footprint (EF) is a method for estimating the biologically productive area necessary to support current consumption patterns, given prevailing technical and economic processes. By comparing human impact with the planet's limited bioproductive area. this method tests a basic ecological condition for sustainability. The ecological footprint has gained popularity for its pedagogical strength as it expresses the results of its analysis in spatial units that can easily be communicated. Many EF estimates have been performed on a global, national and sulrnationallevel. In this paper. we review the method and critically assess it from a sustainability perspective based on first order principles. We examine: ? Which aspects of sustainability are already covered by existing EF assessments;

? Which further aspects ofsustainability could be made accountable through the EF (such as areas needed to assimilate waste streams that are not yet accounted for in present assessments); and

? Those aspects ofsustainability that cannot be accountable through the EF. Thereby needing complimentary auditing tools.

Since the EF is a measure of renewable biocapacity, we argue that some dimensions of ecological sustainability should not be included in the EF. These include human activities that should be phased out to obtain sustainability, such as emissions of persistent compounds foreign to nature and qualitative aspects that represent secondary uses of ecological areas and do not, therefore, occupy a clearly identifiable additional ecological space. We also conclude that the EF is useful for documenting the overall human use or abuse of the potentially renewable functions and services of nature. Particularly, by aggregating in a consistentway a varity of human impacts, it can effectively identify the scale of the human economy by companson with the size of the biosphere.     

流域水生态功能区划及其关键问题

作为流域生态系统管理和水资源保护的重要手段,如何科学合理地开展流域水生态功能区划,已成为世界各国可持续发展所面临的关键挑战之一.本文立足我国流域综合管理的特点和发展趋势,针对我国现行水功能区划的问题,结合国外流域水生态区划的经验,提出了基于流域生态学、地域分异规律、生态系统健康与生态完整性、流域生态系统管理等理论基础的,以恢复流域持续性、完整性生态系统健康为目标,反映流域水陆耦合体在不同时空尺度景观异质性的流域水生态功能区划及其原则,重点分析了流域水生态系统的空间格局、生态过程以及动态演替等3个区划的关键问题,并提出了区划的方法,以期为我国流域水生态功能区划和流域生态系统管理提供战略层次的科学依据.     

Practical application of sustainable development in decision-making processes in the Great Lakes Basin

SUMMARY

Sustainable development has become the conceptual framework within which societal, economic and environmental issues are addressed at every level around the world. In 1993, a United States-Canada assembly of more than 250 Great Lakes leaders was convened to evaluate the efficacy of creative processes under way in the Great Lakes Basin relative to sustainable development and to identify key success factors and process characteristics which are consistent with principles of sustainable development. A combination of eight criteria for effective project management (i.e. stakeholder involvement; leadership; information and interpretation; planning; human resource development; results and indicators; review and feedback; stakeholder satisfaction) and six principles of sustainable development (i.e. long-range planning and intergenerational responsibility; carrying capacity; anticipation and prevention; full cost accounting; integration of economic, social and environmental factors; efficiency, innovation and continuous improvement) were developed to evaluate and help improve decision-making processes. Such criteria and principles may be useful in improving decision-making processes in other parts of the world.     

Measuring sustainable development - the creative economy perspective

ABSTRACT

World literature presents a variety of approaches to measuring the creative economy at global, national and regional levels, but so far not enough attention has been paid to the issue of sustainability of creative economies. Creative economies do not rely heavily on natural resources which means that their negative impact on the climate is relatively weaker than in the case of other industries. The measurement of sustainable development is an important contribution to the overall efforts in fighting the climate change. Statistical figures show that the share of the creative economy in GDP of the most developed countries is steadily increasing. Therefore, it is legitimate to analyse the sustainable development issues not only through the lenses of utilization of natural resources and environmental issues but also to look at the sustainability challenge for the creative economies. The growth of creative industries may be hindered by scarcity and improper utilization of resouces, but the main threat to the sustainability is the scarcity of intangible resources and goods such as ideas, freedom of thought, leadership, tolerance, quality of education, etc. Based on a literature review, we endeavoured to investigate the sustainability issues which are relevant specifically for the creative economy. In particular, we were interested in the role of local government in supporting the growth of creative economies. This study contributes to the literature in the sense that it provides understanding on how to assess the impact of local government on the sustainability of creative economy.     

Localising the global food system

Agricultural systems have become increasingly industrialized and mechanized, relying on machinery and chemical inputs, rather than people and natural processes, to increase yields of food. The trend towards an increasingly globalised food system encourages unsustainable transportation of food around the world. Agricultural intensification and the globalisation of the agrofood chain has resulted in adverse environmental, social and economic consequences impeding moves towards sustainability. Organic farming can overcome many of the environmental problems associated with agricultural intensification. However, it does not have the potential to fully address the social and economic problems caused by the globalisation of the food system. Organic farming must be combined with local and regional sourcing of food products, for instance through forms of direct marketing of organic produce. Direct marketing schemes such as farmers' markets, food box delivery schemes and community-supported agriculture are all projects which, if managed with sustainability as the prime objective, have the potential to move towards a more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable agrofood system.     

Exploring the role of local community perceptions in sustainability measurements

Measuring sustainability is an integral part of decision-making processes in order to promote sustainable development. The present paper focuses on sustainability indicators as these are measured on local level and explores two main issues: firstly, the subjective measurement of indicators focusing especially on social dimensions of sustainability, secondly, the incorporation of local perceptions in sustainability assessments. These two issues are explored in the Asopos River basin in Greece, an area where significant environmental degradation has been observed in the past decades and is also under financial pressure due to the ongoing national recession. A large-scale research study was conducted measuring environmental, economic and social indicators while, at a second stage, a model was developed, estimating new indicators that incorporate local communities’ perceptions on what they considered as important for their area. The results of the study reveal that the most important indicators for the sustainable development of the area, according to locals’ perceptions, are environmental quality as well as quality of life. By contrast, trust in local and central institutions and also local enterprises were not considered as important by locals. These results illustrate the importance of combining global and national scale assessment with locally focused social measurements of sustainability in order to better understand what is important for local communities prior to embarking on public policy planning.     

Sustainability assessment of entire forest value chains: Integrating stakeholder perspectives and indicators in decision support tools

The optimization of value chains is an important process to promote sustainable development, since value chains are closely linked to the satisfaction of human needs and combine different driving forces for environmental change. This article presents a methodological approach for the participatory development of value-chain wide sustainability indicator sets and their integration into a decision support tool in the specific case study of the chain “construction and refurbishment with wood”. There are numerous indicator sets for sustainable development of forests and sustainable forestry available at different levels, ranging from local, regional and national to global scale assessments. Some efforts were also made to integrate later production stages of forest value chains (such as wood processing) in the assessment scope (e.g. for chain-of-custody certification). However, no indicator set has so far been available covering environmental, social and economic aspects for the entire value chain of building with timber. This gap was closed through applied sustainability research in the project “Holzwende 2020: Sustainable future markets for wood in the building sector”.     

Defining and achieving sustainable development

SUMMARY

This paper analyses the fundamental problems of defining and achieving sustainable development. A common core of the various definitions of sustainability circulating is identified. Economic and scientific approaches to operationalize sustainability generally lead to management rules, which — if obeyed — should guarantee sustainability. Since it is not possible to precisely predict the future, this scientific—technical—economic route to sustainability may fail. A second, ethical way, to sustainability which interprets sustainability as an ideal for fair play is introduced. How the two different ways may complement one another with a three-step hierarchy of political goals is elucidated.     

Book reviews and notices

The aim of sustainable development is to balance social, economic, and environmental needs. In order to justify the decisions they make, stakeholders must quantify the different impacts found in the operations and developments of companies and/or projects throughout their life cycle. However, as some areas are subjective in nature, the quantification process of the different impacts and the assessment of sustainable development performance become arduous tasks of development, validation, and application of scientific and empirical methods with the intrinsic objective of finding an agreement among the involved parties (i.e., stakeholders). Several environmental and sustainability assessment tools, instruments, processes, and methodologies have been developed; rating systems stand out and have gained attention and credibility, as demonstrated by the vast number of certified projects around the world and the widely-known usefulness and advantages of their application. The Wa-Pa-Su project sustainability rating system presents an integrated approach to sustainability assessment by integrating three distinctive areas of knowledge: (1) sustainable development theory and fundamentals supports the ultimate goal of the rating system, which is to contribute to sustainability, with the aim of finding a path to balance social, economic, and environmental needs; (2) continual performance improvement becomes essential due to the duration of the projects, as it is critical to allow organizations or projects to improve performance over time; and (3) multi-criteria decision analysis assists with the assessment process through stakeholder engagement and participation, and the design and implementation of a criteria weighting system.     

Community sustainability: a holistic approach to measuring the sustainability of rural communities in Scotland

ABSTRACT

Although sustainable development was defined in the Brundtland Report almost 30 years ago, the current usage of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development remain highly equivocal. In the context of rural communities, multiple interpretations and weak definitions lead to confusion in understanding what comprises a sustainable rural community. Building on existing definitions (e.g. Baker’s, 2006, ‘Ladder of Sustainable Development’), models (principally, The Egan Review’s, 2004, ‘Components of Sustainable Communities’) and findings of this study, a sustainable community is defined and a holistic model of a sustainable place-based rural community is presented. This model, the sustainable community design (SCD) is used as the basis for analysing community sustainability, which is measured using mixed methods and scorecard assessment. Sensitivity of the method is demonstrated with inter- and intra-community variations in sustainability across three diverse Scottish rural communities. Intra-community variations illustrate heterogeneity in community sustainability, explain ambiguity in characterisations of an individual community’s sustainability, and highlight the importance of an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to community development. The SCD framework is presented as a useful tool for meso-level sustainability assessment and to facilitate the sustainable development of rural communities.     

Theorising pathways to sustainability

Using a Pathways approach, controversies over environmental and natural resource management are viewed as expressions of alternative, or competing, pathways to sustainability. This supports deeper understanding of the underlying causes of natural resource management controversies. The framework is composed of two elements: the STEPS (Social, Technological, and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Pathways approach and frame analysis. Many sustainable development dilemmas are played out in specific places and consequently, the Pathways approach is integrated with a place-based frame analysis. The resulting framework guides empirical investigation in place-based contexts. This theorising about sustainability science can be used to cast light on contested natural resource management issues, in this case mining in northern Sweden. By exposing the range of alternative Pathways to critical norms of sustainable development, we ascertain whether action alternatives are compatible with sustainable futures. The framework provides a way in which sustainability science can better understand the origins of natural resource management conflicts, characterise the positions of the actors involved, identify the potential for cooperation between stakeholders leading to policy resolution and judge what Pathways help or hinder the pursuit of sustainable development. In addition, it can enhance sustainability science by guiding integrative sustainability research at the project scale.     

国外的环境移民问题及启示

工业的发展、人口的不断增长、经济全球一体化、气候变化等,导致生态环境的持续恶化,环境移民已成为困扰世界社会经济可持续发展的严重问题之一。国际社会的环境移民状况表明,环境移民主要是自发性的移民,缺乏政府的主导,容易形成环境难民和种族冲突,移民的人权难以得到保证,也不具有可持续发展性;可持续的环境移民要以政府为主导,以国内迁移为主实施移民工程;环境移民工程需要借鉴世界银行工程移民的经验,关键是做好迁人地的选择和评估。未来气候变化和突发环境灾难将不断加大人口的迁移范围和规模,需要给予特别的关注。总结国外环境移民的经验和教训,对我国实施有效的环境移民具有十分重要的意义。     

Methodological integration for sustainable natural resource management beyond field/farm level: lessons from the ecoregional initiative for the humid and sub-humid tropics of Asia

SUMMARY

Integrated natural resources management (INRM) has to address both the livelihood goals of farmers and the ecological sustainability of agroecosystems and natural resources. Under the Ecoregional Initiative for the Humid and Sub-Humid Tropics of Asia — Ecor(1)Asia — one major set of activities has been the development of approaches, methodologies, and tools to meet the challenges of INRM research for sustainable agricultural development. Examples provided illustrate the role of these methodologies in the three main phases of knowledge development for improving INRM impact: knowledge generation, knowledge capitalization, and knowledge mobilization. The methodologies are designed for better integration across disciplines, spatial scales, and hierarchical levels of social organization. Attempts are made to quantify trade-offs between biophysical sustainability and socio-economic considerations. The case is made for using these methodologies in a more complementary manner to help bridge the topdown and bottom-up approaches in INRM. Inherent in the developing and implementing of these methodologies is the forging of partnerships and fostering linkages with multiple stakeholders, as well as using the knowledge base and integrative tools as communication platforms.