Sustainability measurement
[8] If the boundaries are not crossed and the ecological footprint does not exceed the carrying capacity of the biosphere, the mode of life can be regarded as sustainable.
[11] Sustainable development has become the primary yardstick of improvement for industries and is being integrated into effective government and business strategies.
The needs for sustainability measurement include improvement in the operations, benchmarking performances, tracking progress, and evaluating process, among others.
Social and economic developments (consumption and production) (D)rive or initiate environmental (P)ressures which, in turn, produces a change in the (S)tate of the environment which leads to (I)mpacts of various kinds.
The framework consists of six core areas: The United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme has defined sustainable political development in a way that broadens the usual definition beyond states and governance.
This definition is in accord with the view that political change is important for responding to economic, ecological and cultural challenges.
The following is a list of quantitative "tools" used by sustainability scientists - the different categories are for convenience only as defining criteria will intergrade.
These factors ensure that researchers are conscious of community values that align with positive environmental, social, and economic impacts.
[41] Human factors, however, have dominated the development of our perspective of the relationship between nature and society since at least the Industrial Revolution, and in particular, have influenced how we describe and measure the economic impacts of changes in resource quality.
A balanced view of these issues requires an understanding of the physical framework in which all human ideas, institutions, and aspirations must operate.
Many sources of energy, such as fission, solar, wind, and coal, are not subject to the same near-term supply restrictions that oil is.
Similarly, natural gas in huge amounts is used to power most Athabasca Tar Sands plants.
[48] David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), place in their study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million.
The peaking of global oil along with the decline in regional natural gas production may precipitate this agricultural crisis sooner than generally expected.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that coming decades could see spiraling food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before.
[50][51] There is an active debate about most suitable sustainability indicator's use and by adopting a thermodynamic approach through the concept of "exergy" and Hubbert peaks, it is possible to incorporate all into a single measure of resource depletion.The exergy analysis of minerals could constitute a universal and transparent tool for the management of the earth's physical stock.
In a paper in 1956,[61] after a review of US fissionable reserves, Hubbert notes of nuclear power: There is promise, however, provided mankind can solve its international problems and not destroy itself with nuclear weapons, and provided world population (which is now expanding at such a rate as to double in less than a century) can somehow be brought under control, that we may at last have found an energy supply adequate for our needs for at least the next few centuries of the "foreseeable future.
"Technologies such as the thorium fuel cycle, reprocessing and fast breeders can, in theory, considerably extend the life of uranium reserves.
Roscoe Bartlett claims [62] Our current throwaway nuclear cycle uses up the world reserve of low-cost uranium in about 20 years.Caltech physics professor David Goodstein has stated[63] that ... you would have to build 10,000 of the largest power plants that are feasible by engineering standards in order to replace the 10 terawatts of fossil fuel we're burning today ... that's a staggering amount and if you did that, the known reserves of uranium would last for 10 to 20 years at that burn rate.
But that means you're making plutonium, which is an extremely dangerous thing to do in the dangerous world that we live in.Hubbert applied his theory to "rock containing an abnormally high concentration of a given metal"[64] and reasoned that the peak production for metals such as copper, tin, lead, zinc and others would occur in the time frame of decades and iron in the time frame of two centuries like coal.
[68] Lithium availability is a concern for a fleet of Li-ion battery using cars but a paper published in 1996 estimated that world reserves are adequate for at least 50 years.
[73] Phosphorus supplies affect total agricultural output which in turn limits alternative fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol.
This turns much of the world's underground water [75] and lakes [76] into finite resources with peak usage debates similar to oil.
Sustainability measurements and indicators are part of an ever-evolving and changing process and has various gaps to be filled to achieve an integrated framework and model.
