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6 Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints …
6.1 Introduction
6.1.1 Environmental Sustainability Assessment (ESA):
A Brief Overview
Humanity has entered a new era of sustainability challenges, the Anthropocene, in
which the planet’s environment is under significant pressure from social, economic,
and demographic forces. In striving to prevent our society and future generations
from tipping into disastrous states, sustainable development has remained one of the
primary policy goals in the large majority of countries over the world (Griggs et al.
2013). The United Nations is scheduled to announce the Sustainable Development
Goals by 2015, an evolving program that is underway to replace the Millennium
Development Goals (Costanza et al. 2014). In measuring progress towards sustainable transitions and human well-being, it is necessary to create ways to assess environmental sustainability—a non-negotiable prerequisite for the economic and social
pillars of sustainable development (Goodland and Daly 1996).
There have been many attempts to promote transparency and standardization of
ESA. One example is the ecological footprint, which compares human demand for
bioproduct provision and carbon sinks with the relevant regenerative and assimilative
capacity of the biosphere, thereby explaining why the current economy lives on
the depletion of exhaustible stocks rather than on sustainable flows (Wackernagel
and Rees 1997). Apparently, this is by no means the only way of implementing
ESA. The Environmental Sustainability Index (Samuel-Johnson and Esty 2000) and
its updated version, the Environmental Performance Index (Esty et al. 2006), for
instance, have attracted considerable interest and discussions among science, policy,
and in the media. Other influential ESA tools include the Environmental Quality
Index (Steinhart et al. 1982), the Index of Environmental Friendliness (Puolamaa
et al. 1996), the Environmental Vulnerability Index (Kaly et al. 1999), and the Critical
Natural Capital (Sutton and Costanza 2002).
Despite the continuous efforts made by a large group of researchers, there is no
agreement on the most appropriate definition and method for ESA. Nevertheless,
on the basis of an in-depth discussion performed in our previous study (Fang et al.
2015), we come up with some key observations on ESA: (1) the essential property of
ESA is the comparison of current environmental states and critical capacity thresholds; (2) a descriptive pressure indicator that measures what is currently happening
to the environment has no relation to ESA unless it is benchmarked against a critical
threshold indicator serving as a reference; (3) the difficulty in prediction of environmental boundaries poses a major challenge to ESA due to uncertainties surrounding
the position of the thresholds; and (4) the estimates of ESA are normally expressed
either in difference or in ratio, but not in both.
6 Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints …
6.1 Introduction
6.1.1 Environmental Sustainability Assessment (ESA):
A Brief Overview
Humanity has entered a new era of sustainability challenges, the Anthropocene, in
which the planet’s environment is under significant pressure from social, economic,
and demographic forces. In striving to prevent our society and future generations
from tipping into disastrous states, sustainable development has remained one of the
primary policy goals in the large majority of countries over the world (Griggs et al.
2013). The United Nations is scheduled to announce the Sustainable Development
Goals by 2015, an evolving program that is underway to replace the Millennium
Development Goals (Costanza et al. 2014). In measuring progress towards sustainable transitions and human well-being, it is necessary to create ways to assess environmental sustainability—a non-negotiable prerequisite for the economic and social
pillars of sustainable development (Goodland and Daly 1996).
There have been many attempts to promote transparency and standardization of
ESA. One example is the ecological footprint, which compares human demand for
bioproduct provision and carbon sinks with the relevant regenerative and assimilative
capacity of the biosphere, thereby explaining why the current economy lives on
the depletion of exhaustible stocks rather than on sustainable flows (Wackernagel
and Rees 1997). Apparently, this is by no means the only way of implementing
ESA. The Environmental Sustainability Index (Samuel-Johnson and Esty 2000) and
its updated version, the Environmental Performance Index (Esty et al. 2006), for
instance, have attracted considerable interest and discussions among science, policy,
and in the media. Other influential ESA tools include the Environmental Quality
Index (Steinhart et al. 1982), the Index of Environmental Friendliness (Puolamaa
et al. 1996), the Environmental Vulnerability Index (Kaly et al. 1999), and the Critical
Natural Capital (Sutton and Costanza 2002).
Despite the continuous efforts made by a large group of researchers, there is no
agreement on the most appropriate definition and method for ESA. Nevertheless,
on the basis of an in-depth discussion performed in our previous study (Fang et al.
2015), we come up with some key observations on ESA: (1) the essential property of
ESA is the comparison of current environmental states and critical capacity thresholds; (2) a descriptive pressure indicator that measures what is currently happening
to the environment has no relation to ESA unless it is benchmarked against a critical
threshold indicator serving as a reference; (3) the difficulty in prediction of environmental boundaries poses a major challenge to ESA due to uncertainties surrounding
the position of the thresholds; and (4) the estimates of ESA are normally expressed
either in difference or in ratio, but not in both.