Sustainability: Difference between revisions

A number of different schools have undertaken development of such a metric. In 1997 the [[Global Reporting Initiative]] (GRI) was started as a multi-stakeholder process and independent institution whose mission has been "to develop and disseminate globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines"[http://www.globalreporting.org/about/brief.asp]. The GRI uses [[ecological footprint]] analysis and became independent in 2002, and is an official collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and works in cooperation with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Global Compact. In the same year (1997) [[Systems Ecology | systems ecologists]] M.T.Brown and S.Ulgiati {{ref|Brown1997}} {{ref|Brown1999}} published their formulation of a quantitative sustainability index (SI) as a ratio of the [[emergy]] (spelled with an "m", i.e. "[[embodied energy]]", not simply "energy") yield ratio (EYR) to the environmental loading ratio (ELR). Brown and Ulgiati also called the sustainability index, the "Emergy Sustainability Index" (ESI), "an index that accounts for yield, renewability, and environmental load. It is the incremental emergy yield compared to the environmental load" (1999, p. 7).

 

 

More recently a joint initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) of Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission also attempted to construct an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). This was formally released in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on 28 January 2005. The report on this index made a comparison [http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/esi/f_comparing.pdf] of the WEF ESI to other sustainability indicators such as thh [[Ecological footprint]] Index. However there was no mention of the emergy sustainability index. Nevertheless writers like Leone{{ref|Leone2005}} and Ukidwe et al. {{ref|Ukidwe2004}} have also recently suggested that the emergy sustainability index has significant utility. In particular, Leone notes that while the GRI measures behavior, it fails to calculate supply constraints which the emergy methodology aims to calculate. See also a recent report by United States Environment Protection Agency using emergy methodology [http://www.epa.gov/nheerl/publications/files/wvevaluationposted.pdf], and compare also with the [[Dow Jones Sustainability Index]].