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Highlights • The development of a sustainability index model applicable to the Mauritian manufacturing sector. • To identify the key dimensions for sustainability assessment for the Mauritian manufacturing industry. • To include sustainability indicators of Mauritian manufacturing companies into a single multi-dimensional model. Abstract It has been long recognized that environmental matters are important to the survival of manufacturing companies. Yet manufacturing companies continue to degrade the environment, over exploit natural resources and generate unmanageable amount of wastes. Manufacturing is not just about financial returns, but it should also be conscious of the long-term impacts on living standards of both present and future generations. The purpose of this paper is to develop a sustainability index to quantify the impact of Mauritian manufacturing activities on the environment. This research is an attempt to stimulate manufacturing companies in Mauritius to report their organization's sustainability via an index that shall aid in driving both profits and growth. It reviews the main social, economic and environmental issues affecting manufacturing companies and provides a Sustainability Index Model (SIM) that can be used as a sustainability performance measurement indicator, helping in the mitigation of perennial business challenges. The derived sustainability index, that combines the principal sustainable indicators quoted in the literature, has been used as a single decision-making tool for assisting manufacturing companies realize sustainable development goals. A sample of 30 large manufacturing companies in Mauritius were used to validate the sustainability index model. The study reveals an index with 9 environmental, 4 economic and 2 social indicators which were pertinent in sustainability measurement, with varying degree of importance, within the Mauritian manufacturing context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While environmental composite indexes are useful tools in ranking the relative performance of countries on characteristics of interest, critiques are being made about their lack of relevance and responsiveness pertaining to changes in the environment; this negatively affects their usefulness and relevance. In this paper, an alternative to the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is proposed by constructing a proof-of-concept index based on component variables whose changes reflect the actual state of the environment and the environmental sustainability on the particular dimensions measured. The proposed Environmental State and Sustainability Index (ESSI) also takes into account the relationships between variables in constructing the composite index by checking the relevance of the theoretical environmental dimensions against factor components, which explains the complex relationships between environmental variables and aims at achieving a relevant weighting of the component variables. Results indicate that ESSI scores are comparable with EPI and reflect better the actual situation of some countries with high-rank differences. Thus, ESSI can be used as a basis for constructing or revising environmental indicators that are closer to the objective of achieving a truly overarching measure of the state of the environment that is relevant in informing policy and reflect actual changes in the component dimensions as relevant data becomes available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation and the diffusion of environmental policy is a hotspot in European ecosystem management. Policy diffusion meets the need of the harmonization principle in which the EU countries must converge towards the same targets. In the light of this, the paper aims to explain the main determinants of the environmental diffusion policy, allowing countries to converge on a common base. We outline the achievements of the environmental policy objectives of the countries by using the Environmental Performance Index, a widely accepted index used at the international level. By using a dyadic dataset on 15 European countries, we highlight the economic and institutional determinants pointing out successes and failures of policies adopted. The findings reveal that the economic variables play most important role in the diffusion process of environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to improve ecosystem assessment practice by sharing the lessons learned from the Flanders Regional Ecosystem Assessment. The ‘ EU biodiversity strategy to 2020 ’, requests the EU member states ‘ to map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services by 2014 ’. However, a large number of member states have yet to start this assessment, and depend on assistance from the European Commission and on experiences from ongoing national assessments. In the region of Flanders (Belgium), several ecosystem service projects have since 2009 led the way to the ‘Flanders Regional Ecosystem Assessment’ (Flanders-REA), led by the governments’ leading research institute on biodiversity. To attain high regional requirements on scientific quality, acceptance and effective local policy impact, this assessment has tackled a number of challenges. The challenges discussed in this paper are obtaining conceptual clarity and consensus across disciplines and partners, the integration of multiple sources of information, critical handling of maps and the inclusion of experts and stakeholders. This paper also critically reflects on the definition of EU targets, their implementation, the current EU assistance to the member states, and the alignment with actual local and global policy needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until present, it has been challenging to turn the concept of ecosystem services into a practical tool in the formulation of day-to-day policies on a national or regional scale. This is largely due to the overarching nature of the concept of ecosystems services (ESs) and the lack of concrete ecosystem service typologies. In this paper, we describe the foundation process of a national ecosystem service indicator framework for Finland, beginning with the selection of nationally important ESs. We also evaluate how this set of national indicators could be scaled down to regional circumstances, or integrated in the international ecosystem assessment processes. Our aim was to develop a national framework that complies both with national circumstances and with international typologies such as the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) and the cascade model. We developed indicators for 28 ecosystem services (10 provisioning, 12 regulating and maintenance, and 6 cultural services), a set of four indicators for every stage of the cascade model; altogether 112 indicators. We hope that the indicator framework draws attention to questions of resilience by providing information on the different aspects of ecosystem functioning that are crucial to the provisioning of ecosystem services. Furthermore, we hope to highlight the societal dependence on ecosystem services by providing indicators of both benefits and values. Besides higher-level decision-making processes, our attempt was to provide novel ecosystem service information for regional environmental managers and decision-makers, as well as the wider public interested in local issues. Integrating both ecological and socio-economic data into one platform may help to bridge the gap between science and practical decision-making resulting in more sustainable environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the austere economic measures imposed to Greece after the commencement of the economic crisis in 2010, we calculate the Index for Sustainable Economic Development (ISEW) with the aim to inform policy and stakeholders about the sustainable Greek GDP. Throughout 2000–2012, annual GDP per capita appears many times higher than the ISEW per capita for the period, thus making the Greek debt payback a more difficult exercise to solve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding which factors mainly affect the environmental sustainability of a Region is a very crucial concern for many Chinese planners and policy-makers. In this study, the emergy accounting method is applied to the production and consumption activities of the city of Shanwei, a seaside urban area in Guangdong region, China. The emergy method provides a comprehensive assessment of a system, by generating a consistent set of indicators capable to capture the dynamics of the system as a whole and its efficiency in converting resources into an economic product and welfare. At the same time, the approach is capable to provide details about a system's performance over time, its use of renewable versus nonrenewables sources, local versus imported, concentrated versus dispersed and finally labor intensive versus fuel intensive processes. The main local renewable and nonrenewable emergy flows supporting the investigated area were included in the accounting, together with the flows of imported energy, goods, machinery, labor and services. Coal plays a crucial role for electricity generation, industrial uses, but also gasoline and diesel for transport affect the overall sustainability to a non-negligible extent. An Emergy Sustainability Indicator (ESI) of the local economic and social system is calculated and compared with the average value of the Chinese economy, based on the assumption that a process or system is unsustainable if it contributes to lower the overall sustainability of the region or country. This is quantified by the requirement that always must be ESI local ≧ ESI country . Results confirm that the most crucial factor for this region sustainability is the use of coal as a non-renewable and imported energy source. The calculated emergy indicators translate into a set-aside buffer land demand capable to mitigate, dilute, and uptake the environmental impact of human-dominated activities. Unfortunately, such buffer land demand is much higher than the land actually available. As a result, both the ESI-based sustainability equation as well as the lack of support land make the city's production and consumption patterns unsustainable and call for different lifestyles and environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Since the Rio Declaration in 1992, international institutions, governments and NGOs have promoted sustainability indicators as a tool for providing policy mechanisms that dictate development decision-making. The expert approach, also known as reductionist, has been the most used in the processes of sustainability evaluation; this approach has been criticized for its lack of holistic vision to evaluate a system. A participatory approach has been promoted in order to counteract this type of limitation. This paper presents a case study of a participatory assessment of sustainability in a local community inside a natural protected area; its objective is to attempt to answer if, from local knowledge, is it possible to generate a sustainability local assessment system. The process included the active participation of the inhabitants of Agua Blanca community, located within the Nevado de Toluca National Park (NTNP) in Mexico''s central highlands. A framework was used to identify and select sustainability indicators, which was divided into four phases: the description of the system, the identification of the sustainability objectives, the selection of indicators, and the measurement of the progress toward the sustainability objectives. As a result, 64 indicators were identified, which were classified into three pillars of sustainability and its interactions. The participatory approach aided in the evaluation of diverse elements within the system, without limiting itself to one element or dimension of sustainability in particular. Most of the indicators corresponded to the environmental dimension of sustainability, which reflects the level of interaction the community has with its environment. The indicators proposed by villagers, as a whole, were not considered technically appropriate; therefore the need for a selection indicator process was reaffirmed. The process described here is an opportunity to strengthen the self-organization of the communities, reinforce local management, and contribute to the generation of mechanisms of cooperation and processes of co-management of the natural protected areas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Evidence on the role of information and knowledge for policy making shows that policy actors seldom use information as a direct input to their decisions. Similar patterns of (non)use have been identified in the case of indicators in the environmental and sustainable development policy domains. The objective of the paper is to elucidate the patterns of environmental indicator use and to argue for the introduction of a ‘politics of policy indicators’. With a limited set of characteristics (e.g. legitimacy, credibility and salience) of indicators, which help to apprehend the usability of indicators, we argue that the usability profile of indicators can be analysed as a matter of construction and deliberation by indicator creators and policy actors. The performance of indicators as policy tools – as rendered with their usability profile – is co-dependent of the institutional embeddedness of the indicators. Our conclusion makes the case that if environmental improvements towards more sustainability are partly relying on the quality and uptake of information into policy processes in order to steer decisions, then the ‘usability profile’ of indicators itself should be subject to collective and conscious steering. This call to ‘steer the steering’ is supported by the wider calls to initiate patterns of ‘reflexive governance’ within the sustainability policy domain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The development of systemic environmental monitoring and indicators for sustainability requires one to tackle the complexity of human–environmental systems. To this end the ecosystem approach is proposed here as a framework and the ecological network analysis as a tool for investigation while an urban system, represented as a water flow network, is discussed as a case study. Flow distribution is used to calculate total system throughput, development capacity, average mutual information, ascendency and overhead. These indices condense the complexity of the flow structure (representing system''s metabolism) into a few measures that provide information on how systems grow and develop; because of this they are consistent with the sustainability context. Two alternative scenarios are presented to discuss the effects of management actions (policies) on sustainability as they change the flow structure and system level indices. While it is shown that increasing system activity (intensity of processes) augments potential for development but not realized development, actions that improve the organization of flows, thus increasing average mutual information, may reduce total system throughput and drive the system toward more sustainable conditions. System level indices are holistic measures that unveil the relation between internal processes and whole system performance. Understanding this relation is crucial because the former are the target of environmental policies but sustainability, the objective of such policies, is an overall system trait. Because of these features system level indices can be examples of a new quality of indicators for sustainability assessment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]