You are here:
THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY INFLUENCE OF COMMON SUSTAINABILITY INDICES
Citation:
Mayer*,A.L., A., H. W. Thurston*, AND C. W. Pawlowski**. THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY INFLUENCE OF COMMON SUSTAINABILITY INDICES. S. Silver (ed.), FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT. Ecological Society of America, Ithaca, NY, 2(8):419-426, (2004).
Description:
Sustainability is often poorly defined and difficult to measure. We describe several concepts based in ecology, economics, and physics that have contributed to sustainability indices, and discuss their positive and negative aspects. Indices range from mostly ecological (such as ecosystem resilience and global human carrying capacity), to indices inspired by both economics and ecology (green income and maximum sustainable yield), to a mix of ecology and physics (exergy and emergy). Economic concepts such as substitutability of natural and human capital (the "weak" versus "strong" sustainability debate), and throughput of natural resources through an economic system, are at the basis of several strictly economic indices. The second law of thermodynamics, dictating the unidirectional decrease in usable energy, has had an increasing influence on sustainability discussions. The indices described here address different aspects of the interaction between human societies and ecosystems, and therefore are probably most effectively used in combination.