Ecometrics' stakeholder subjectivity: Values,issues, and effects

Stakeholder groups, defined according to their transcendent values, have different concepts of sustainability. Their prioritizations of individual, family, collective, and local and global environmental issues also differs. Given this, the metrics required for a given sustainable development path are subjective. Therefore, the questions of who should define ecometrics, their transparency, number, state of aggregation, standardization, and benchmarking are questions that require an enfranchised multi-stakeholder debate. At present, corporations have been asked to bear the burden of environmental reporting and eco-indicators have been established to account for material intensity, energy consumption and waste or toxic releases, among other factors. However, the links among these local-, product-, or service-based microecometrics and global states such as temperatures or atmospheric concentrations have yet to be established. The relationship of macroecometrics to individual definitions of sustainable development also has not been addressed. This article summarizes four plenary lectures given at ECOMETRICS '98 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The workshop involved forty participants from industry, academic and government organizations representing seven countries and three continents.