Sustainable Development Metrics: Quantifying Sustainability

The phrase 'sustainability metrics' gets tossed around quite a bit in sustainable development, and yet not everyone - including many of those involved in sustainability - have a clear idea of what sustainability metrics are. Part of the problem lies, in the fact that there are, well, there are a lot of them. Why are there so many?

First, because well sustainable development is a burgeoning field, and much like Beta and VHS had to duke it out before VHS (despite inferior format) achieved consumer confidence and thus total market domination (till the rise of DVDs), we're still working out the best methods of environmental calculations. This leads, naturally, into the second reason we're awash in a sea of sustainability metrics. Namely, what are you quantifying? Are you looking to quantify carbon emissions or the total holistic environmental impact? Are you seeking to quantify results or effort? Are you seeking to quantify the environmental impact of an individual or an organization, an event or a production process? In other words, what you're looking for matters. What you're looking to quantify and how you're looking to quantify it will ultimately shape what metric you (the individual) or you (the organization) choose to use.

Here's a run down on some of the most notable.

The Daly Rules are less a metric and more a general set of guidelines for metrics named after former World Bank Senior Economist, University of Maryland College Park Professor, promoter of the Steady State economics, and general all around ecological economics rock star Herman Daly. The three point guidelines are good to keep in mind when evaluating how well metrics fare in their goal towards pushing us towards sustainability. His metrics are:

1. Renewable resources such as fish, soil, and groundwater must be used no faster than the rate at which they regenerate.


2. Nonrenewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels must be used no faster than renewable substitutes for them can be put into place.


3. Pollution and wastes must be emitted no faster than natural systems can absorb them, recycle them, or render them harmless.

Often tossed around in business/consulting circles ISO 14001 is an environment management system developed and administered by the International Organization for Standardization. It is essentially a source of guidance for introducing and adopting environmental management systems based on the best universal practices. In short it helps a business or organization regardless of size create its own internal sustainability management plan. What it does not do, however, is help an organization determine how good that plan is based on science. That is to say, a business can implement a plan according to ISO 14001 and still be horrifically unsustainable.

Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) or cradle-to-grave analysis is a way of analyzing the inputs and outputs of materials, energy, and the environmental impact that is directly attributable to a product or service. The goal, of LCA is to empower us to choose products and services that are the most environmentally benign. It was Life Cycle Analysis that determined that Extruded polystyrene and closed-cell spray polyurethane foam (SPF) insulation were environmentally pretty frightful stuff that despite their insulating properties were not worth of the sustainable mantle. By taking in the full cycle of a product it forces us to look holistically at our consumption and ask deeper questions. For example, considering the fact that plastic never biodegrades, it raises the question if standard plastic can ever be considered sustainable?

Ecological Footprint Analysis is the overall measurement of humanity's demand on nature's system. It works by measuring how much land and water area a human population - there are footprints for nations, cities, business, and individuals as well as for the world - requires to produce the resource it consumes and to absorb its wastes using existing, dominant technologies. Driven by the Global Reporting Initiative and the Global Footprint Network, the latter, in addition to helping us calculate our footprints, also serves to remind us just how much we're consuming with Earth Overshoot Day. Earth Overshoot day is the day when humanity begins living beyond its ecological limit. Globally, we now require the equivalent of 1.4 planets to support our lifestyles; stated differently in a bit less than 10 months we consume the ecological services it takes the Earth a full year to regenerate. The number 1.4 planets might seem small for those of us in the Global North and who consume so much that if everyone on planet earth consumed the way we did we would require 5,6,7 or more planets, but it also serves as a stark reminder that though some of us consume way too much, there are far too many people on this planet who aren't even consuming enough to meet their most basic needs.

And finally, for understanding, quantifying, and managing greenhouse gas emissions no tool is as relied upon as The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol). Formed out of decade's long partnership between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development it provides the accounting framework for most of the Green House Gas standard used globally. Companies and organizations such as Ford, Coke, computer manufacturer Lenovo, and the Climate Registry all rely on the GHG Protocol for their calculations.

So what do you say? Do you have any insight into these metrics? Do you feel I missed some key ones, or failed to address some nuances of the ones listed above? If you could design your own metric what would it look like?