| dc.description.abstract | The development of new technologies has always been a key factor for human progress. Technologies allow humans to provide greater levels of social and economic welfare while using natural resources more efficiently, but they also increase our capacity to inflict greater impacts on the environment. Therefore, technologies play a central role not only for social and economic development, but also for environmental sustainability. For this reason, the availability of methodologies and tools to perform integrated assessments of the sustainability of technologies – including environmental, economic and social indicators – is of the utmost importance in order to steer society along a sustainable pathway.
The aim of this research is to analyze the possible underlying rationales – as well as the available methodologies – for the integration of environmental, economic, and social indicators into sustainability assessments of technologies.
The first step of this research discusses the pros and cons of two existing initiatives of integrated sustainability assessments (PROSA and CALCAS). Secondly, a conceptual framework is proposed. This conceptual framework shows the main systems involved in the ideal of sustainable development, as well as the enabling role that technologies play in the interaction between those systems. The third research step discusses different concepts of sustainability, with the purpose of analyzing the extent to which a sustainability assessment can be supported in objective scientific facts, i.e. to distinguish the normative and descriptive parts in the ideal of sustainable development. Special attention is given to the debate between the weak and strong sustainability paradigms, concluding that there is a sound scientific case for the strong sustainability paradigm to support the assessments. Furthermore, it is also concluded that it is possible in principle to put this paradigm into practice by defining environmental thresholds supported on the concept of critical natural capital. The fourth research step analyzes different methodologies for the integration of indicators, including valuation methods and multi-criteria approaches. Besides, the implications of an integrative process are analyzed. The conclusions of the fourth research step are: firstly, that an integrative assessment of sustainability does not require an aggregation of the assessments on each of the dimensions into a single-score index of sustainability. Secondly, that in order to put the strong sustainability paradigm into practice by considering environmental thresholds, non-compensatory multi-criteria approaches will have to be used at some point of the process.
Finally, considering the previous conclusions, a proposal for an integration framework is put forward in the last section of this report. | |
