Gawel, Antonia, Nathan Cooper, and Lukas Bester. "The IPCC Report and the Need for Radical Climate Action". World Economic Forum. March 03, 2022. https://www.weforum.org/...
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report demonstrates that climate breakdown is happening more quickly than anticipated and warns that much of the planet will soon become uninhabitable. The science-driven report emphasizes the urgent need for radical climate action to stay in a climate safety zone and to accelerate transformational adaptation measures. Other organizations, like the EU European Environment Agency (EEA), have an apparent optimism bias, stating there has been "remarkable progress" – even "overachievement" – towards meeting the EU's climate and energy targets, even that Europe is "well on track in its journey" to avoid the life-threatening climate catastrophe.
Posted on 11/05/24
Recent Abstracts
- Athias Neto, Marcos. "Why ESG is Failing Sustainable Development".
Sustainable Finance Hub.
"n.d."
https://sdgfinance.undp.org/...
Financial markets are the principal means for financing socioeconomic activity and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Governments and financial market regulators define the parameters and incentives within which market participants make investment and financing decisions and operate, while the providers of capital decide on capital allocation and influence business behavior. Seeking infinite rewards, our finite economic system aims to maximize financial value and confuses ESG financing with serving society’s needs. To meet their ESG strategy, the stakeholders must instead understand the urgent need to achieve the SDGs and facilitate the SDG-targeted financing of the transition for socioeconomic sustainability.Posted on 16/07/23
- WorldGBC. "Beyond the Business Case".
World Green Building Council.
November 04, 2021.
https://worldgbc.org/...
The building and construction industry has a critical role to play in achieving global sustainability goals, especially in tackling the global climate crisis, as one of the largest economic ecosystems worldwide. The scope and breadth of sustainability encompass the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Meeting equivalent levels of SDG for sustainable building performance leads to the creation of better quality and higher value assets as well as compliance with incoming building regulations and market and consumer expectations. The SDGs in constructing buildings and infrastructure consider all stages of the building and construction lifecycle of the built environment components.Posted on 13/07/23
- Motesharrei, Safa, Jorge Rivas, and Eugenia Kalnay. "Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies".
Ecological Economics.
(April 2014).
https://doi.org/...
The over-exploitation and depletion of nature and natural resources and the strong economic stratification of society into the rich elites and the poor commoners are the two features evident in all historical societal collapses. Either one of these two features can independently result in full socioeconomic collapse. Collapse can be avoided and Earth’s human population can reach equilibrium only through a major reduction in the per capita rate of resource depletion to a sustainable level and population growth and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion. Major policy changes are needed to avoid the complete collapse of society.Posted on 12/07/23
-
Sustainable Fitch.
"Sustainable Fitch: Climate Scenario Limitations Are Surfacing as Usage Rises". April 26, 2023.
https://www.sustainablefitch.com/...
Climate scenario analysis is a key tool for evaluating complex physical and transition risks of companies and communities. This raises questions about the credibility of transition plans and long-term risk management processes that do not apply the scenarios. Limited standardization and transparency make it difficult to compare results across entities. There is increasing recognition of the ESG rating limitations, notwithstanding their ignoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Current models exclude or underestimate significant risks from climate tipping points or macroeconomic and financial second-order effects. This suggests that scenario analysis must be adjusted to better inform supervisory and regulatory actions.Posted on 02/07/23
- Blum, N.U., M. Haupt, and C.R. Bening. "Why ‘Circular’ Doesn’t Always Mean ‘Sustainable’".
Resources, Conservation and Recycling.
(
https://doi.org/...
Material circularity (MC) develops positively when material is circulated through reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture or recycling at its highest quality, it usually measured through material flow analysis (MFA). When economic value is generated as commonly measured through life cycle costing (LCC), economic sustainability (EconSus) is positive. Environmental sustainability (EnvSus) develops positively as the environment suffers less harm through product systems, where life cycle assessment (LCA) is used for assessing their life-cycle environmental impacts. Social sustainability (SocSus) develops positively if social conditions improve for all people, which is tricky to measure. Where these four dimensions overlap, a sustainable circular economy (SCE) occurs.Posted on 30/06/23
- Sarkar Christian, Philip Kotler, and Enrico Foglia. "Sustainability, Resilience, Regeneration – What’s the Difference?".
Regeneration Journal.
(June 04, 2023).
https://www.regenerationjournal.org/...
Sustainability postpones social, environmental and economic disasters in attempt to meet present economic growth while minimizing the impacts of current socioeconomic development for future generations. Although sustainability is widely considered a positive concept, it has numerous weaknesses that make it unsustainable. Resilience is disaster-recovery that focuses on the capacity to withstand and recover from shocks and stress, it prioritizing short-to medium-term responses and recovery of mainstream economic interests. Regeneration is the ideal approach that involves restoring and revitalizing the “common good” in natural and social systems to address urgent needs, it fixing of the human causes that lead to disaster.Posted on 13/06/23
-
LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions.
"SDGs vs ESGs: What Is the Better Measure of Sustainability?". (November 23, 2021).
https://www.lexisnexisip.com/...
SDGs are the most commonly used framework for the sustainability reporting of the top patent holders. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a globally agreed and accepted framework of practices with clearly defined indicators and goal-oriented recommendations that enable criteria-unbiased sustainability assessment. ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) is ineffective for measuring development sustainability, with so many subjective interpretations of what constitutes sustainability and the difficulty in quantifying certain actions. There is no global definition of ESG or standardized metrics, with assessments based on proprietary models. Nor is it target-oriented or process focused, thereby fostering corporate greenwashing.Posted on 05/06/23
- Chung, Ming-Kuang, Jenny Rios Martinez, Yris Olaya, Dirk Helbing, and Ling-Jyh Chen. "Translating Citizen-Generated Air Quality Data into Evidence for Shaping Policy".
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
(
https://www.researchgate.net/...
The practice of participatory sensing for environment monitoring has rapidly evolved over the years. There has been a steady growth of citizen-based environmental monitoring projects that aim to build partnerships, knowledge-sharing platforms, awareness, and ultimately environmental resilience. Citizen science has reshaped research by bringing a fresh perspective on democratizing science for the public good. The Evidence Co-creation Framework (ECF) is an iterative process for creating evidence using citizen-generated data that has several interconnected components. The ECF is integrated within the policy-making process and complements the official data that is used as evidence before formulating a policy and for policy action.Posted on 04/06/23
- Gregory, Robert. "Assessing ‘Good Governance’ and Corruption in New Zealand: ‘Scientific’ Measurement, Political Discourse, and Historical Narrative".
Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, School of Government.
(October 2013).
https://www.victoria.ac.nz/...
New Zealand is ranked highly on the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), which assess performance on six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. Moreover, New Zealand has long been rated by Transparency International‘s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) as having the very lowest rates of corruption globally. This paper gives attention to methodological and related arguments about the general validity of both the WGI and the CPI, which are widely accepted as relative fact.Posted on 02/04/23
- Fnais, Abdulrahman, Yacine Rezgui, Ioan Petri, Thomas Beach, Jonathan Yeung, Ali Ghoroghi, and Sylvain Kubicki. "The Application of Life Cycle Assessment in Buildings: Challenges, and Directions for Future Research".
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.
(May 01, 2022).
https://doi.org/...
New generation life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and tools can positively influence the environmental impact of the built environment and help mitigate the effects of climate change. They continuously learn from real-time data while allowing for effective operation and management strategies of buildings and districts. This time dimension is essential to better understand resource use. Semantic-based dynamic (real-time) LCA, which assesses the “cradle-to-grave-to-reincarnation” environmental sustainability capability of building projects, addresses temporal and spatial variations in the local built and environmental ecosystem. Further combination of time-dependent life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models can lead to more comprehensive and reliable LCA results.Posted on 28/10/22
- Corona, Blanca, Li Shen, Denise Reike, Jesús Rosales Carreón, and Ernst Worrell. "Towards Sustainable Development through the Circular Economy—A Review and Critical Assessment on Current Circularity Metrics".
Resources, Conservation and Recycling.
(December 01, 2019).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
The circular economy (CE) is an optimal pathway to sustainable development and companies, governments and academics have formulated various proposals to measure circularity. Ideally, circularity metrics indicate how well circularity is applied to the whole life cycle of products and services in terms of society, the environment and economy. Myriad frameworks and indices are available for measuring resource efficiency and sustainability performance. However, most of them are criticized for ignoring the characteristics of the circular loops, not representing the systemic and multidisciplinary nature of circularity, and failing to consider its multidimensional social, environmental and economic sustainability impacts and benefits.Posted on 24/10/22
- Larsen, Vibeke Grupe, Nicola Tollin, Peter Andreas Sattrup, Morten Birkved, and Tine Holmboe. "What are the challenges in assessing circular economy for the built environment? A literature review on integrating LCA, LCC and S-LCA in life cycle sustainability assessment, LCSA".
Journal of Building Engineering.
(February 2022).
https://www.researchgate.net/...
For circular economy (CE) to succeed, focus must be given to the service life phase and the reuse/recycle phase of building projects. This involves more stakeholders both in the early decision-making phases of projects as well as in the design phase and impacts the project value chain. Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) integrates complementary measurement tools and techniques to support the transition towards circularity. Life cycle assessment (LCA) measures environmental and resource impacts, life cycle costing (LCC) reveals various lifetime costs, and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) evaluates potential social impacts of a product in its whole life cycle.Posted on 19/10/22
-
Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
"Delivering the Circular Economy: A Toolkit for Policymakers". "n.d."
https://emf.thirdlight.com/...
The circular economy offers business leaders and government a clear opportunity for long-term growth that is less dependent on cheap materials and energy and can restore and regenerate natural capital. This report provides an actionable toolkit for policymakers for embarking on a circular economy transformation that describes a methodology for circular economy policymaking. The toolkit identifies eight key insights, details policy options, opportunities and barriers and explores a range of policy options that countries and the policymakers could choose to pursue. It demonstrates how the tools may be applied and that circularity brings about lasting socioeconomic benefits to the stakeholders.Posted on 14/10/22
- Carra, Guglielmo, and Nitesh Magdani. "Circular Business Models for the Built Environment".
ARUP.
"n.d."
https://www.arup.com/...
Circular business models (CBMs) create additional value by taking a systemic view across the whole life cycle of assets, using new technologies, and applying advanced design approaches. This added value demonstrates the feasibility of the business case for adopting CBMs, the social, economic and environmental benefits, and the stakeholder value proposition. Funders, owners and occupiers drive the circular built environment by adopting the development strategies, ownerships structures, and operations models. Architects, designers, engineers, suppliers, contractors and facilities managers as well as local authorities and citizens also play a key role in creating circular solutions for a sustainable built environment.Posted on 12/10/22
- Hirsch, Peter, and Christian Schempp. "Categorisation System for the Circular Economy".
European Commission.
March 2020.
https://op.europa.eu/...
The lack of a commonly accepted and sufficiently inclusive definition and circularity measurement methodology hampers the transition to a more circular economy in numerous ways. To counter this, this circular economy categorization system was proposed comprising 14 circular categories organized in four high-level groups and a set of minimum criteria. The 14 circular categories contribute to increasing resource efficiency and decreasing environmental impacts throughout project value chains. This can be achieved by applying or enabling one or more of the 9 circular economy "R" strategies or principles – the “9 R’s”: Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, and Recycle.Posted on 10/10/22
English
Albanian
Arabic
Bosnian
Chinese (Simplified)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Estonian
Finnish
French
Georgian
German
Greek
Hungarian
Icelandic
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Maltese
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian