Which countries and regions are the biggest net importers and exporters of CO2 emissions embodied in trade? How much CO2 has been shifted between different regions through international trade? What are the implications of considering consumer responsibility for global climate and trade policies? Martin Bruckner, Christine Polzin and Stefan Giljum have addressed these questions in a new paper entitled “Counting CO2 emissions in a globalised world: Producer versus consumer-oriented methods for CO2 accounting”.
The paper, which is the final outcome of the project Global responsibility for CO2 emissions, commissioned by the German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn, can be downloaded here.
Bockermann, A., Meyer, B., Omann, I., Spangenberg, J.H. (2000)
Sustainable Development is probably the key new paradigm on which to base policies for the future. However, so far the concept remains vague at best in many aspects, and in particular as regards the interaction environmental, economic and social politics. Based on some theoretical considerations this paper defines minimum conditions for sustainable development. They provide criteria for assessing the suitability of different economic models for sustainability questions, as well as means to prove the sustainability of the scenarios presented in the remainder of the paper.
This paper presents two models suitable for simulating sustainability strategies. One (PANTA RHEI) is a highly sophisticated econometric model for the German economy (Meyer, Bockermann, Ewerhart, Lutz 1999). The other one (SuE) is a less disaggregated system dynamics model for the EU 15 economy (Spangenberg, Scharnagl 1998). Both include the measuring of energy and material consumption and are thus well suited to indicate the linkage of economic development and environmental impact. Similarly, both calculate the employment effects of a given policy, permitting to include one key social concern in the evaluation of sustainability policies as well. Both models introduced are shown to meet the sustainability requirements as defined earlier.
When identifying similarities in the outcome of comparable strategy simulations runs on both models, their inherent structural difference rules out any methodological bias or system artefact. All the more relevant are those outcomes that point into a similar direction for policy development, having a base in two structurally independent policy impact assessments. Key results include:
• There is a trade off between growth and employment on the one and environmental concerns on the other hand, however sustainable compromises are possible.
• No single policy instrument (neither legal measures nor economic incentives) is able to deliver a sustainable economy. What is needed is an intelligent mix of economic, social, environmental and labour policy measures.
• If such a combined strategy is applied, it is possible to reduce the currently unsustainable high unemployment levels to significantly below five percent of the labour force, while at the same time reducing resource consumption and safeguarding or increasing the standard of living without running into significant public debt.
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Rauschmayer, F., Berghöfer, A., Omann, I., Zikos, D. (2008)
UFZ Discussion Papers, GoverNat5
Evaluating environmental governance processes is a precondition for their improvement in contexts of change. In order to do so, one can (1) examine the outcome of a governance process, which consists of outputs and their consequences, or (2) look at the governance process itself. Outcome-oriented and process-oriented approaches have different strengths and weaknesses. This paper discusses the challenges associated with both options when applied to European biodiversity and water governance – namely the implementation of the Habitats and Water Framework Directives
Current evaluation practice focuses mainly on outcomes. Can the process-oriented approach reduce or compensate for the weaknesses of outcome-oriented evaluation? We argue that there are three reasons why it makes sense to combine both approaches: a normative reason, relating to good governance; a substantive reason, relating to the complexity of governance; and a third, instrumental reason concerning the governance cycle. A combined approach makes it possible to evaluate governance processes convincingly with regard to all criteria associated with ‘good governance’. This paper also describes some of the challenges posed by such a combination; these require particular attention, given that existing concepts are not yet sufficiently sensitive to the distinctions between process and outcome orientation.
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Burger, E., Hinterberger, F., Giljum, S., Manstein, C. (2009)
Paper presented at R’09 Twin World Congress in Davos.
Consumers increasingly demand more transparent information about the sustainability performance of products and services. Thus companies aim at measuring and communicating the environmental performance of products. But which indicators enable a consistent measurement of the environmental sustainability of a product? Some major European initiatives have been launched, focusing in most cases on the indicator Carbon Footprint. But the Carbon Footprint does not take into account resource scarcity and trade-offs between different environmental categories, including the use of raw materials, water and land. In this paper, we present a pilot study assessing a more comprehensive set of indicators, which was conducted in 2008 with a number of Austrian companies. In contrast to the single indicator approach, a set of five indicators was selected and tested for the assessment of the environmental sustainability performance of products: Abiotic Material Rucksack, Biotic Material Rucksack, Water Rucksack, Actual Land Use and Carbon Footprint. In an ongoing Austrian research project, we currently explore, whether this indicator set can be further developed into an integrated and Web-based Business Resource Intensity Index (BRIX).
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Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.
Pirgmaier, E., Hinterberger, F., Giljum, S. (2009)
Presentation held at the 2nd European Congress of Conservation Biology on 3 September in Prague.
The presentation contains
1. Why Growth may not continue forever
2. Possible next steps
3. Current initiatives
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