From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 2003, Maine ^[1] brought attention to the qualitative nature of sustainability discourses and suggested that they needed to become more quantitative, with an associated sustainability metric and indicators or index. According to the University of Reading website[2], there are three basic functions of indicators. simplification, quantification, and communication. Indicators generally simplify in order to make complex phenomena quantifiable so that information can be communicated. In this context, in 1996 the International Institute for Sustainable Development developed a Sample Policy Framework which proposed that a sustainability index "would give decision- makers tools to rate policies and programs against each other" (1996, p.9). Like Maine, Ravi Jain (2005)^[3] argued that, "The ability to analyze different alternatives or to assess progress towards sustainability will then depend on establishing measurable entities or metrics used for sustainability." Likewise the International Institute For Environment And Development, Environmental Planning Group (1993, p.2) said,

The need for sustainability analysis and particularly for indicators of sustainability is a key requirement to implement and monitor the development of national sustainable development plans, as required by Agenda 21 agreed at UNCED in June 1992.

A number of different schools have undertaken development of such a metric. In 1997 the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was started as a multi-stakeholder process and independent institution whose mission has been "to develop and disseminate globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines"[4]. The GRI uses ecological footprint analysis and became independent in 2002, and is an official collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and works in cooperation with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Global Compact. In the same year (1997) systems ecologists M.T.Brown and S.Ulgiati ^{[5] [6]} published their formulation of a quantitative sustainability index (SI) as a ratio of the emergy (spelled with an "m", i.e. "embodied energy", not simply "energy") yield ratio (EYR) to the environmental loading ratio (ELR). Brown and Ulgiati also called the sustainability index, the "Emergy Sustainability Index" (ESI), "an index that accounts for yield, renewability, and environmental load. It is the incremental emergy yield compared to the environmental load" (1999, p. 7).

• NOTE: The numerator is called "emergy" and is spelled with an "m". It is an abbreviation of the term, "embodied energy". The numerator is not "energy yield ratio" which is different. (This index is from Table 3. 'Global Energy Indices' in Brown and Ulgiati 1999, p.23)

More recently a joint initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) of Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission also attempted to construct an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). This was formally released in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on 28 January 2005. The report on this index made a comparison [7] of the WEF ESI to other sustainability indicators such as thh Ecological footprint Index. However there was no mention of the emergy sustainability index. Nevertheless writers like Leone^[8] and Ukidwe et al. ^[9] have also recently suggested that the emergy sustainability index has significant utility. In particular, Leone notes that while the GRI measures behavior, it fails to calculate supply constraints which the emergy methodology aims to calculate. See also a recent report by United States Environment Protection Agency using emergy methodology [10].

"Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide." Dow Jones

One of the key concerns about sustainability lies in the context of what external development interventions are appropriate and can contribute to sustainability. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which was given the Task Manager responsibility for reporting World Progress on implementing four Chapters of Agenda 21 (Land, Forests, Mountains, Sustainable Agriculture & Rural Development) by the United Nations, acknowledges:

Sustainability concerns one of the most fundamental questions for technical cooperation: will the benefits and results achieved through the project be maintained and enhanced by the ultimate end-users and their community, based on their own commitment and resources, after the termination of the external assistance? The question entails a complex analysis of aspects related to this broad concept, including the acceptability and use to be made of project outputs and results by the intended groups targeted their capacity to maintain the results, and the institutional and policy environments to enable them to do so.