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5 Understanding the Complementarities of Environmental …
5.5.4 Trade-Offs Between Different Sustainability Gaps
Even though in some cases the geographical link between two distant regions is
weak, there is no doubt that environmental issues within the Earth’s life-supporting
systems are essentially interlinked and interactive, and hence cannot be uncoupled
from each other (Biermann 2012). The sustainability of a given region depends,
directly or indirectly, on the sustainability of many other regions (Kissinger et al.
2011). In the context of globalization, transgressing one boundary may exert profound
intraregional or interregional effects on other boundaries in ways that people do not
expect. Thus, maintaining the safe operating space for a single issue without looking
at the whole picture seems impractical and no longer a wise policy option. This finding
suggests a great need not only for simultaneous assessment of the environmental
sustainability of individual issues at different scales, but also for trade-offs between
the many sustainability gaps where anthropogenic perturbation ought to be treated
with a systematic view.
Such trade-offs can be made thoroughly by ascertaining all categories of environmental footprints and boundaries involved. One difficulty is due to the displacement
and leakage effects (Erb et al. 2012), as improvements in some overstepped boundaries are often obtained at the expense of deteriorating other boundaries. In attempts
to meet the policy demand for an overall picture of different environmental issues,
weighting has been brought to attention with the argument that trade-offs, in many
cases, cannot be tackled in a manageable and comprehensive way without some form
of weighting (Ahlroth 2014; Ridoutt and Pfister 2013).
In contrast to the existing footprint family discourses where conceivable footprints
are aggregated to yield a stand-alone, single-score footprint metric (Hadian and
Madani 2015; Ridoutt and Pfister 2013), we argue for a composite sustainability
index that results from weighting and aggregating diverse sustainability gaps into one
equation from an integrated perspective. This is accompanied by a recognition that
weighting footprints and boundaries simultaneously would offer a more meaningful
evaluation of trade-offs than weighting either footprints or boundaries on their own,
in particular when policy makers do need a direct comparison of options or entities
in terms of their overall performance on environmental sustainability. Approaches
to weighting typically include panel methods, distance-to-target, willingness to pay,
and more (Ahlroth 2014).
Weighting sustainability gaps could be considered as a practical possibility,
whereas the weighted results should be interpreted with caution. Improper interpretation may violate the intention of the planetary boundaries concept, which is
committed to a comprehensive set of non-weighted variables in order to capture
diverse global environmental challenges instead of a single-value metric (Nykvist
et al. 2013). More importantly, the weighting implicitly legitimates the substitutability of boundaries among environmental issues. While it seems likely to substitute some forms of environmental boundaries, basic life-supporting systems are
almost impossible to substitute (Barbier et al. 1994; Moldan et al. 2012).
5 Understanding the Complementarities of Environmental …
5.5.4 Trade-Offs Between Different Sustainability Gaps
Even though in some cases the geographical link between two distant regions is
weak, there is no doubt that environmental issues within the Earth’s life-supporting
systems are essentially interlinked and interactive, and hence cannot be uncoupled
from each other (Biermann 2012). The sustainability of a given region depends,
directly or indirectly, on the sustainability of many other regions (Kissinger et al.
2011). In the context of globalization, transgressing one boundary may exert profound
intraregional or interregional effects on other boundaries in ways that people do not
expect. Thus, maintaining the safe operating space for a single issue without looking
at the whole picture seems impractical and no longer a wise policy option. This finding
suggests a great need not only for simultaneous assessment of the environmental
sustainability of individual issues at different scales, but also for trade-offs between
the many sustainability gaps where anthropogenic perturbation ought to be treated
with a systematic view.
Such trade-offs can be made thoroughly by ascertaining all categories of environmental footprints and boundaries involved. One difficulty is due to the displacement
and leakage effects (Erb et al. 2012), as improvements in some overstepped boundaries are often obtained at the expense of deteriorating other boundaries. In attempts
to meet the policy demand for an overall picture of different environmental issues,
weighting has been brought to attention with the argument that trade-offs, in many
cases, cannot be tackled in a manageable and comprehensive way without some form
of weighting (Ahlroth 2014; Ridoutt and Pfister 2013).
In contrast to the existing footprint family discourses where conceivable footprints
are aggregated to yield a stand-alone, single-score footprint metric (Hadian and
Madani 2015; Ridoutt and Pfister 2013), we argue for a composite sustainability
index that results from weighting and aggregating diverse sustainability gaps into one
equation from an integrated perspective. This is accompanied by a recognition that
weighting footprints and boundaries simultaneously would offer a more meaningful
evaluation of trade-offs than weighting either footprints or boundaries on their own,
in particular when policy makers do need a direct comparison of options or entities
in terms of their overall performance on environmental sustainability. Approaches
to weighting typically include panel methods, distance-to-target, willingness to pay,
and more (Ahlroth 2014).
Weighting sustainability gaps could be considered as a practical possibility,
whereas the weighted results should be interpreted with caution. Improper interpretation may violate the intention of the planetary boundaries concept, which is
committed to a comprehensive set of non-weighted variables in order to capture
diverse global environmental challenges instead of a single-value metric (Nykvist
et al. 2013). More importantly, the weighting implicitly legitimates the substitutability of boundaries among environmental issues. While it seems likely to substitute some forms of environmental boundaries, basic life-supporting systems are
almost impossible to substitute (Barbier et al. 1994; Moldan et al. 2012).