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On the Science of Sustainability Metrics
Citation:
CABEZAS, H. On the Science of Sustainability Metrics. Presented at Research Seminar, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, September 07, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Sustainability is widely associated with the statement from the World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: “… development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…” Hence, sustainability is about the likelihood of the world supporting human society for the indefinite future. However, one needs at least semi-quantitative means of measuring progress to implement a sustainability strategy in any practical sense. There is, therefore, a need for scientifically sound metrics to provide quantitative measures that assess the degree to which the system is or is not on an integrated path towards sustainability. It is also necessary to know whether management actions taken are or are not efficacious in “steering” the system on a sustainable path. Unfortunately, all sustainability questions involve a complex, integrated, and interacting system that includes ecosystems, the economy, society, and technology as minimum. While we might never fully understand such a complex system, we still have to manage it. To help with this process we have selected metrics of sustainability based on ecological footprint, emergy analysis, green net regional product, and Fisher information. These respectively represent human burden on the environment, energy resources flow in the system, economic vitality, and overall system order and organization. Together these metrics are meant to represent system processes and properties that must be preserved for sustainability. This is done in the context of a system that is not static but evolutionary and cyclic. Therefore, the criteria that define sustainability are constructed for trends in these metrics rather than absolute values. The goal is to know whether the system is moving over time toward or away from sustainability. For example, an increasing ecological footprint signifies movement away from sustainability. The first application has been to the San Luis Valley in Colorado where we have collected data that allow us to compute these four metrics as a function of time for approximately twenty years. A future application now starting is to the island of Puerto Rico, and the methodology is, in fact potable to urban areas.