Sustainability Assessment and Indicators: Tools in a Decision-Making Strategy for Sustainable Development

Sustainability

Tom Waas¹  Jean Hugé¹  Thomas Block¹  Tarah Wright³  Francisco Benitez-Capistros² 

[1] Centre for Sustainable Development, Ghent University, Poel 16, 9000 Ghent, Belgium; E-Mails:;Laboratory of Systems Ecology and Resource Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50, 1050 Brussels, Belgium; E-Mail:;Environmental Science Department, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford Street, P.O. Box, Halifax, NS 15000, Canada; E-Mail:

关键词: sustainability assessment;    sustainability indicators;    decision-making;    impact assessment;    sustainable development;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su6095512

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Recognizing the urgent need for sustainability, we argue that to move beyond the rhetoric and to actually realize sustainable development, it must be considered as a decision-making strategy. We demonstrate that sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators can be powerful decision-supporting tools that foster sustainable development by addressing three sustainability decision-making challenges: interpretation, information-structuring, and influence. Particularly, since the 1990s many substantial and often promising sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators efforts are made. However, better practices and a broader shared understanding are still required. We aim to contribute to that objective by adopting a theoretical perspective that frames SA and SI in the context of sustainable development as a decision-making strategy and that introduces both fields along several essential aspects in a structured and comparable manner.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.