sustainability tools and techniques

Blackburn, W.R. 2007. EPA-SAB-09-012. mutually reinforcing, cumulative and lasting contributions and must favor achievement of the most positive feasible overall result while avoiding significant adverse effects. The Sustainability Assessment and Management process should incorporate certain key features: The committee recognizes that the formal Sustainability Assessment and Management process can be quite involved and may require EPA to devote. Biomass … Screening is particularly important to avoid undue delays in taking action in the face of environmental problems. Harrington, W., L. Heinzerling, and R. Morgenstern, eds. The Sustainability Assessment and Management process should be undertaken for major decisions that could have large impacts on multiple pillars of sustainability. EPA SAB (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board). EPA may not be the lead federal agency but may be a collaborator, perhaps having an important role in articulating the health and environmental impacts. Environ. For NGOs that are reviewing the same macrodevelopments as business, a perceptible shift has evolved in the approach to working with government and business. Methods, tools and techniques for measuring sustainability in tourism based communities S. Conway1, R. Cameron2 & I. Navis3 1Urban Environmental Research, LLC, USA 2Casias & Cameron, LLC, USA … New Sustainable Infrastructure Certificate Program. EPA should pursue this embedding throughout the agency. As is the case with alternatives analysis under NEPA, options in a sustainability assessment allow the decision maker to understand different ways of taking a particular action and thus provide the decision maker with more choices to reduce adverse impacts. 2008a. The Sustainability Framework outlined in this report contemplates that EPA will involve stakeholders at appropriate times throughout the process. Forecasting conditions relevant to sustainability poses a paradox. 4.4. Collectively, the suite of tools should have the ability to analyze present and future consequences of alternative decision options on the full range of social, environmental, and economic indicators. For example, a well-known indicator for assessing health and well-being in developing countries is infant mortality, as this indicator can be used singularly to infer information about maternal health, behaviors, and economic conditions in a particular country. This point is discussed further in the screening evaluation section below. 2011. Integrated assessment models, such as the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), arose in the study of climate change, bringing together global circulation models and economic models to assess the probable benefits and costs of alternative energy- and climate-policy choices (Hannam et al. 53- 58 in The New “Public”: The Globalization of Public Participation, C. Bruch, ed. These models illustrated how predictions could be used to analyze alternative conservation and management strategies, and by comparing maps of ecosystem services and biodiversity, decision makers could identify areas that provide high levels of both. To achieve this, an integrated framework for managing the continuous enhancement of their brand equity level by adopting digital marketing tools and techniques … Transitioning from a “pollution source” to a “value chain” unit of problem formulation and analysis will provide EPA with important insights into how pollution is created and distributed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Open process: Proposed compromises and trade-offs must be addressed and justified through processes that include open and effective involvement of all stakeholders. This step is followed by problem definition and scoping, which includes identification of options, preliminary scoping of the analysis, stakeholder involvement, and opportunities for collaboration. 2010). EPA would benefit from this kind of analysis and reporting as part of future reports on the environment. Such an in-depth analysis should not be undertaken for routine or minor decisions, but a systematic approach for addressing sustainability for such decisions could be desirable. 2005. Examples include reducing packaging in consumer products, such as clothing, electronics, and food; decreasing the carbon and water footprints of the manufacturing and service sectors; and reducing the carbon intensity and fine-particle emission of the nation’s energy-production system. Convening for Collaboration for System-Level Solutions. View our suggested citation for this chapter. 2014). An approach for assessing inequalities in environmental exposures has also been developed similar to one used to assess income distribution inequities (Su et al. Available: http://oehha.ca.gov/ej/pdf/CIReport123110.pdf [accessed May 2, 2011]. *free* shipping on qualifying offers. Modeling is the standard tool used for conducting an integrated assessment. J. Inherent in sustainability is concern about intergenerational impacts, thus differentiating sustainability indicators from many commonly used environmental indicators that reflect the current state of the environment. This step is followed by presentation of results to the decision makers. Trade, Societies and Sustainable Development SUSTRA Network: Sustainability Impact Assessment. IRIS provides a platform for public discussion and exchange of information; it provides access to scientific tools and enables users to link to related databases. The Sustainability Handbook: The Complete Management Guide to Achieving Social, Economic, and Environmental Responsibility. Life-cycle assessments are already used by EPA and have been used to compare the environmental impacts of transportation fuels and specifically to judge whether biofuels meet requirements for carbon-emissions reductions relative to fossil fuels (EPA 2009). There is no standardized universally accepted way to forecast the future and, in fact, most forecasts are wrong to a greater or lesser degree. Resour. Environ. Given that each decision making framework has its own set of implementing tools and methods, it is important that EPA achieve greater internal consistency, clarity, and priority-setting among these tools and their applications. PNNL-19231. A small subset of the most appropriate tools, including risk assessment, life-cycle assessment, benefit-cost analysis, ecosystem services valuation, integrated assessment models, sustainability impact assessment, environmental justice tools, and present and future scenario tools are described below. Reducing the usage of plastic: Leaders of the hospitality industry are taking appreciable measures … EPA’s decision making frameworks function in parallel and are in various states of transition, but they are not in integrated relationships with each other. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. 18, 2011]. In addition, better methods are needed to support consideration of health and environmental effects for the green chemistry goal of safer products and more sustainable chemical usage (p.60). Finally, once decisions are taken and implemented there should be follow-up evaluation of outcomes on important dimensions of sustainability. 2008. • Obtaining access to scientific and other data generated by less traditional sources that are relevant to EPA decision-making, such as information from private sector and NGO partnerships, initiatives led by NGOs to develop global standards, and newer consortia of private companies, NGOs, and universities (for example, The Sustainability Consortium). Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment. Ready to take your reading offline? aged with consideration of sustainability factors as part of the planning process and may provide insights for EPA and other institutions. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities. 23(6):628-647. Environ. For further discussions on alternative discounting methods, see Pearce (2006); with specific reference to the use of discounting in climate policy, see Nordhaus (2007) and Stern and Taylor (2007). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. The plan also foresees development and use of indicators to advance the sustainable communities program. Sustainability is usually understood as a form of intergenerational ethics that accommodates the … By Cority. Evaluation is useful in identifying best practices, reducing uncertainties, and identifying additional linkages. However, Pereira et al. You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. potential impacts. The cost effectiveness of such an approach is likely to be higher than if single source categories are focused on in isolation. Johnson. Early on, the NRC (1983) recognized that risk assessments could not always be quantitative, and most recently, the NRC (2009) emphasized the need for tools for fuller characterizations of cumulative risks, including qualitative ones, that adequately account for the full range of chemical and other stressors, particularly for environmental justice contexts. This chapter describes the steps involved in this approach, beginning with a screening evaluation to determine whether to conduct the Sustainability Assessment and Management process and to determine the appropriate level of effort or depth of such an assessment. Discrepancies should be evaluated to identify weaknesses in the assessment process, including the tools and data used. In sustainability decision making, environmental justice tools may be similarly used. (Recommendation 7c). Paris: OECD [online]. EPA/600/FR-91/001. Some tools will need modification or expansion to be appropriate and some new tools will need to be developed (p.60-65). Available: http://www.pnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-19231.pdf [accessed June 8, 2011]. Varying assessments in the scope and depth of analysis according to the action being considered has long been practiced in the field of risk assessment. 30(5):879-887. Acad. The research on sustainability measurement flourishes with various tools, techniques, models, and systems, and the measure of writing on sustainability evaluation connected to the field of assembling is quickly developing. Not all applications of the sustainability assessment tools need to be done at the same level of depth and detail. Global Deployment of Geothermal Energy Using a New Characterization in GCAM 1.0. Available: http://www.eli.org/pdf/PPP/part1chap3.pdf [accessed July 13, 2011]. ETIS is a tool aimed to improve the sustainable management of destinations through a set of indicators, based on the direct involvement of public and private stakeholders. Communication from the Commission on the practical implementation of the EU biofuels and bioliquids sustainability scheme and on counting rules for biofuels. IOM (Institute of Medicine). Policy Brief Paper based on the Conclusion of the SUTRA Seminar on Sustainability Impact Assessment, March 26-27, 2003, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium [online]. EPA has a major opportunity to embed sustainability considerations further in its decision-making methods and to communicate and disseminate its application of sustainability tools and approaches outside the agency. Available: http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_Subject/result.php?2A34ECC7-2E42-3883-BF819AEFA12F396E§or=CROPS&group=FIELD%20CROPS&comm=CORN [accessed May 2, 2011]. As discussed in Chapter 3, risk assessment can be used to inform considerations of sustainability concepts by estimating whether and to what extent public health and the environment will be affected if an action is taken. 2EPA’s Common Sense Initiative and Project XL were prominent examples of these types of initiatives in the 1990s. Economic valuation methods for ecosystem-service valuation are well described in both NRC (2005a,b) and EPA SAB (2009). MyNAP members SAVE 10% off online. The stakeholder convergence: Public participation and sustainable business practices. Serving as a convener for collaboration in system-level solutions to leverage knowledge and problem-solving beyond the capability of any single institution or group, to foster cross-business sector collaboration and public–private partnerships, and to design system-level evaluation approaches throughout specific value chains. Office of Transportation and Air Quality, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 34 Sustainable Design Techniques posted by John Spacey, January 24, 2016 updated on March 11, 2017. Supplementary Guidance for Conducting Health Risk Assessment of Chemical Mixtures. 2010. sustainability indicators would be transferable and scalable and be adaptable at a regional, state, or local level. Lett. Evaluation, like tools and indicators, is founded on having the appropriate data. Scenarios, such as a range of scenarios about land-use change, can be used at local or regional levels. First determine whether the response was within the range of risk Assessment Forum, U.S. environmental Protection Agency Washington. Detail, and H. Huo to establish a systematic way to analyze and quantify alternatives climate change a energy. 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