Search

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]

Sustainable management of soils is needed to accomplish many of the United Nations⿿ Sustainable Development Goals, but it can be problematic in practice as soils are complex and to manage them sustainably requires the co-operation of multiple stakeholders on various level of society. We present the outcome of a transdisciplinary approach towards indicator development, where we created a set of soil indicators for sustainable development with stakeholder group participation from scientists, policymakers and soil practitioners. The groups evaluated 49 indicators, through a Delphi survey technique, and selected a set of 30 indicators. Of these 14 were common to all stakeholder groups and represented a final set of core soil indicators for sustainable development. The Delphi survey did suffer from high attrition rate and low response rate, especially among the policy makers, which limits somewhat its findings. Nevertheless, the survey illustrated the usefulness of relevant stakeholder involvement in an indicator development process and the role of survey based instruments in aiding the selection of common indicators, whilst showing the different views of stakeholders groups. Given that the stakeholder groups have to consider a multitude of variables and impacts on soil and may have different focus and management goals in mind, a process such as this can serve as a starting point for discussion between stakeholder groups on various levels of governance about how to manage soil sustainably and help to fulfil the UN⿿s Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the UN in New York the Open Working Group created by the UN General Assembly proposed a set of global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which comprises 17 goals and 169 targets. Further to that, a preliminary set of 330 indicators was introduced in March 2015. Some SDGs build on preceding Millennium Development Goals while others incorporate new ideas. A critical review has revealed that indicators of varied quality (in terms of the fulfilment certain criteria) have been proposed to assess sustainable development. Despite the fact that there is plenty of theoretical work on quality standards for indicators, in practice users cannot often be sure how adequately the indicators measure the monitored phenomena. Therefore we stress the need to operationalise the Sustainable Development Goals’ targets and evaluate the indicators’ relevance, the characteristic of utmost importance among the indicators’ quality traits. The current format of the proposed SDGs and their targets has laid a policy framework; however, without thorough expert and scientific follow up on their operationalisation the indicators may be ambiguous. Therefore we argue for the foundation of a conceptual framework for selecting appropriate indicators for targets from existing sets or formulating new ones. Experts should focus on the “indicator-indicated fact” relation to ensure the indicators’ relevance in order for clear, unambiguous messages to be conveyed to users (decision- and policy-makers and also the lay public). Finally we offer some recommendations for indicators providers in order to contribute to the tremendous amount of conceptual work needed to lay a strong foundation for the development of the final indicators framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some postulates about sustainable development indicators: the example of aquaculture. Firstly, the authors illustrate the abundance of references and initiatives enabling to implement sustainable development in aquaculture. They develop a chart to assess such initiatives with regards to the main features of sustainable development. Secondly, this paper outlines the co-construction approach of principles, criteria and indicators, selected in reference to the assumption that implementing sustainable development requires a stakeholder commitment and a collective learning process. The construction of indicators is based on criteria which refer to principles accounting for local issues and stakeholder representations of sustainable development. Finally, the third part of the paper provides a reflexive analysis of the protocol which is proposed so as to develop a more general inventory of conditions and procedures for the appropriation of sustainable development. Focusing on these conditions and procedures outlines the need for collective learning regarding the appropriation of a new value system. They also emphasize on the organizational and institutional conditions of this learning process; this implies defining a co-construction system and taking into account intermediate elements. Consequently, the proposed approach underlines the multiplicity of indicator functions. As a result, criteria and indicators are "facilitating" and "mediating" tools for stakeholders, employed in the deconstruction/construction process for implementing sustainable development. Thus the authors agree with the recent observations stemming from the evaluation of sustainable development indicators' construction approaches. These approaches demonstrate the significance of their supporting role in the consultation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]