Normative, systemic and procedural aspects: a review of indicator-based sustainability assessments in agriculture

Methods for assessing the sustainability of agricultural systems do often not fully (i) take into account the multifunctionality of agriculture, (ii) include multidimensionality, (iii) utilize and implement the assessment knowledge and (iv) identify conflicting goals and trade-offs. This chapter reviews seven recently developed multidisciplinary indicator-based assessment methods with respect to their contribution to these shortcomings. All approaches include (1) normative aspects such as goal setting, (2) systemic aspects such as a specification of scale of analysis and (3) a reproducible structure of the approach. The approaches can be categorized into three typologies: first, top-down farm assessments, which focus on field or farm assessment; second, top-down regional assessments, which assess the on-farm and the regional effects; and third, bottom-up, integrated participatory or transdisciplinary approaches, which focus on a regional scale. Our analysis shows that the bottom-up, integrated participatory or transdisciplinary approaches seem to better overcome the four shortcomings mentioned above

The Sustainability Perspective: A New Governance Model

Whatever criticisms, there is little doubt that the involvement of enterprises with issues of social concern take greater prominence. This book examines the questions and challenges surrounding the concept and application of the social responsibilities of the enterprise

Integrated scenarios for assessing biodiversity risks

The rapid loss of biodiversity (however measured) constitutes an urgent need to develop policy strategies that reduce the anthropogenic pressures on biodiversity. To go beyond short-term curative measures, such strategies must address the driving forces causing the pressures in an integrated fashion, covering a wide range of policy domains. The development of scenarios and their illustration by modelling are essential tools to study the aggregate human impacts on biodiversity, and to derive well founded policy options to preserve it. However, so far socio-economic, climate and biodiversity models exhibit a wide range of assumptions concerning population development, economic growth and the resulting pressures on biodiversity. This paper summarizes the efforts undertaken in the framework of the ALARM project by an interdisciplinary team of economists, climatologists, land use experts and modellers to identify pressures and drivers, and to derive effective policy strategies. It describes the challenges of such a kind of work, bringing together different world views necessarily inherent to the different fields of investigation, presents preliminary results, indicates necessary policy priorities and suggests urgent issues for future research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Clean Energy Trade Governance: Reconciling Trade Liberalism and Climate Interventionism?

Scaling-up clean energy is vital to global efforts to address climate change. Promoting international trade in clean energy products (e.g. wind turbines, solar panels) can make an important contribution to this end through business and market expansion effects. If ratified, the landmark Paris COP21 Agreement will commit states to firmer climate actions, this necessarily requiring them to strengthen their promotion of clean energy technologies. Well over a hundred countries already have active policies in this area, many including industrial policy measures that impact on the international competitiveness of their clean energy sector. At the same time, governments have gradually liberalised their clean energy trade regimes, and large producers are negotiating an Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA). Clean energy trade is expanding and disputes among nations in this sector are growing. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) still has limited ‘policy space’ for climate action. Meanwhile, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) still had narrow and infrequent connections with trade matters. Moreover, WTO-UNFCCC engagement on trade-climate issues overall has been largely confined to information sharing and secretariat-level dialogue. This paper explores the extent to which clean energy trade is currently governed, where certain governance gaps and deficiencies exists, and argues why addressing them could help expand trade in clean energy products. It also contends that the most fundamental challenge for the future governance of clean energy trade concerns how to reconcile ramped-up interventionist climate action with an essentially liberal trade order