An approach for comparing agricultural development to societal visions

There is broad agreement that agriculture has to become more sustainable in order to provide enough affordable, healthy food at minimal environmental and social costs. But what is “more sustainable”? More often than not, different stakeholders have opposing opinions on what a more sustainable future should look like. This normative dimension is rarely explicitly addressed in sustainability assessments. In this study, we present an approach to assess the sustainability of agricultural development that explicitly accounts for the normative dimension by comparing observed development with various societal visions. We illustrate the approach by analyzing farm- and landscape-scale development as well as sustainability outcomes in a Swiss case study landscape. Observed changes were juxtaposed with desired changes by Avenir Suisse, a liberal think tank representing free-market interests; the Swiss Farmers Association, representing a conservative force; and Landwirtschaft mit Zukunft, an exponent of the Swiss agroecological movement. Overall, the observed developments aligned most closely with desired developments of the liberal think-tank (72%). Farmer interviews revealed that in the case study area farms increased in size (+ 57%) and became more specialized and more productive (+ 223%) over the past 20 years. In addition, interpretation of aerial photographs indicated that farming became more rationalized at the landscape level, with increasing field sizes (+ 34%) and removal of solitary field trees (− 18%). The case study example highlights the varying degrees to which current developments in agriculture align with societal visions. By using societal visions as benchmarks to track the progress of agricultural development, while explicitly addressing their narratives and respective systems of values and norms, this approach offers opportunities to inform also the wider public on the extent to which current developments are consistent with different visions. This could help identify mismatches between desired and actual development and pave the way for designing new policies.

Sustainability and Resilience Assessment in the Pandemic Emergency

The coronavirus pandemic has affected all production and service sectors. The crisis has led to the increased awareness of the fragility and vulnerability of our societies and our lifestyles. The speed at which it spreads has led first to a change of our behavior and our way of life but at the same time, it has also changed the way we consider our buildings and how we live in them. Considering the new visions aimed at sharing spaces, such as those of work with the coworking spaces or frontal lessons in the classroom, they must now be rethought. In tourism and catering, relations with customers are reviewed and public transport is radically rethought. In this context, the concept of resilience plays a key role. How resistant are we and our environment to crises like COVID-19? What is the significance of resilience in sustainability? Is there a link between the assessment of resilience and life cycle assessment? In this paper is represented a general framework to connect resilience and sustainability assessments.

Exergy-Based Life Cycle Assessment of Buildings: Case Studies

The relevance of exergy to the life cycle assessment (LCA) of buildings has been studied regarding its potential to solve certain challenges in LCA, such as the characterization and valuation, accuracy of resource use, and interpretation and comparison of results. However, this potential has not been properly investigated using case studies. This study develops an exergy-based LCA method and applies it to three case-study buildings to explore its benefits. The results provide evidence that the theoretical benefits of exergy-based LCA as against a conventional LCA can be achieved. These include characterization and valuation benefits, accuracy, and enabling the comparison of environmental impacts. With the results of the exergy-based LCA method in standard metrics, there is now a mechanism for the competitive benchmarking of building sustainability assessments. It is concluded that the exergy-based life cycle assessment method has the potential to solve the characterization and valuation problems in the conventional life-cycle assessment of buildings, with local and global significance.

A framework for implementing holistic and integrated life cycle sustainability assessment of regional bioeconomy

Purpose Currently, social, environmental, and economic risks and chances of bioeconomy are becoming increasingly a subject of applied sustainability assessments. Based on life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) aims to combine or integrate social, environmental, and economic assessments. In order to contribute to the current early stage of LCSA development, this study seeks to identify a practical framework for integrated LCSA implementation. Methods We select possible indicators from existing suitable LCA and LCSA approaches as well as from the literature, and allocate them to a sustainability concept for holistic and integrated LCSA (HILCSA), based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to conduct a practical implementation of HILCSA, we choose openLCA, because it offers the best current state and most future potential for application of LCSA. Therefore, not only the capabilities of the software and databases, but also the supported methods of life cycle impact assessments (LCIA) are evaluated regarding the requirements of the indicator set and goal and scope of future case studies. Results and discussion This study presents an overview of available indicators and LCIAs for bioeconomy sustainability assessments as well as their link to the SDGs. We provide a practical framework for HILCSA of regional bioeconomy, which includes an indicator set for regional (product and territorial) bioeconomy assessment, applicable with current software and databases, LCIA methods and methods of normalization, weighting, and aggregation. The implementation of HILCSA in openLCA allows an integrative LCSA by conducting all steps in a single framework with harmonized, aggregated, and coherent results. HILCSA is capable of a sustainability assessment in terms of planetary boundaries, provisioning system and societal needs, as well as communication of results to different stakeholders. Conclusions Our framework is capable of compensating some deficits of S-LCA, E-LCA, and economic assessments by integration, and shows main advantages compared to additive LCSA. HILCSA is capable of addressing 15 out of 17 SDGs. It addresses open questions and significant problems of LCSAs in terms of goal and scope, LCI, LCIA, and interpretation. Furthermore, HILCSA is the first of its kind actually applicable in an existing software environment. Regional bioeconomy sustainability assessment is bridging scales of global and regional effects and can inform stakeholders comprehensively on various impacts, hotspots, trade-offs, and synergies of regional bioeconomy. However, significant research needs in LCIAs, software, and indicator development remain.

Sustainability of Diversified Organic Cropping Systems—Challenges Identified by Farmer Interviews and Multi-Criteria Assessments

Diversification of cropping and farming systems is a central agroecological principle, which may improve resource use efficiency, reduce pests and diseases, diversify income sources, and enhance the resilience of the production. The main objective of this study was to identify challenges related to the sustainability of organic cropping systems that were diversified according to one or several of the following practices: diverse crop rotation, integration of cover crops, and intercropping. The sustainability assessments were made using a multi-criteria decision aid method (MCDA) and a framework based on the FAO Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agricultural Systems (SAFA) guidelines. Social, economic and environmental aspects were integrated in the sustainability assessments and combined with semi-structured interviews to identify and discuss farmer's perceptions of barriers to crop diversification and sustainability transition. The results showed that diversified organic cropping systems could achieve high overall sustainability, especially in the environmental dimension thanks to non-inputs of pesticides or mineral fertilizers and efficient use of resources. On the other hand, social and economic dimensions were more variable, with challenges of lower sustainability in profitability and management complexity for several of the diversified cropping systems. Limited access to knowledge, technology and markets for minor crops, and concerns about the consistency of policies were highlighted by farmers as barriers for crop diversification. We discuss how the identified challenges can be overcome and argue that fostering collaboration among stakeholders may increase investment capacity and improve access to new or alternative markets, thereby stimulating transitions toward more diversified and sustainable cropping systems.

Learning for Sustainability in Horticultural Production in Arctic Norway

Sustainability learning is gaining popularity as an important field within sustainability research, where farm sustainability can be understood as a learning process. In this study, we seek to reveal the sustainability learning process of farmers, utilizing a framework distinguishing contextual factors (where? and when?), knowledge (what?), motivation (why?), and process (how?). The article presents a participatory inquiry mixed-methods approach, utilizing results from sustainability assessments on five farms with the SMART-farm tool as a unifying starting point for further discussions on sustainability learning in farmers' interviews and stakeholder workshops. Empirically the study is set in the horticultural production in Arctic Norway, where few studies on sustainability have been undertaken. The study shows how both the complexity of the concept of farm sustainability and contextual factors influence the sustainability learning process, for instance by giving rise to a vast number of conflicting issues while working toward farm sustainability. The sustainability learning process is found to be predominantly a social learning process. The theoretic contribution of the study lies in its novel framework that can be used to reveal important aspects of the sustainability learning process, as well as to contribute to the literature on how to proceed from sustainability assessments to implementation. A key finding from the study is that farmers will require continuous assistance in their processes toward farm sustainability, but for this to be possible, knowledge, sources of knowledge, and learning platforms for holistic sustainability need to be established.

Old Wine in New Bottles: Exploiting Data from the EU’s Farm Accountancy Data Network for Pan-EU Sustainability Assessments of Agricultural Production Systems

The paper presents insights from carrying out a pan-EU sustainability assessment using Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data (the old wine) with societal metabolism accounting (SMA) processes (the new bottles). The SMA was deployed as part of a transdisciplinary study with EU policy stakeholders of how EU policy may need to change to deliver sustainability commitments, particularly to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The paper outlines the concepts underlying SMA and its specific implementation using the FADN data. A key focus was on the interactions between crop and livestock systems and how this determines imported feedstuffs requirements, with environmental and other footprints beyond the EU. Examples of agricultural production systems performance are presented in terms of financial/efficiency, resource use (particularly the water footprint) and quantifies potential pressures on the environment. Benefits and limitations of the FADN dataset and the SMA outputs are discussed, highlighting the challenges of linking quantified pressures with environmental impacts. The paper concludes that the complexity of agriculture’s interactions with economy and society means there is great need for conceptual frameworks, such as SMA, that can take multiple, non-equivalent, perspectives and that can be deployed with policy stakeholders despite generating uncomfortable knowledge.

On the Sustainability Performance of the European Union’s Economic Recovery Strategy – A Case Study with Lessons for Policymakers

The European Union pursues an economic recovery strategy with explicit environmental considerations but less clear alignment with broader sustainable development objectives. Using as a case study one national Recovery and Resilience Plan of an EU country that was published in May 2021, we perform a rapid but detailed sustainability assessment of its measures. This method is embedded in a broader framework that combines ex-post sustainability assessments of international organisations with ex-ante assessments of multi-year public budget plans. At times when policymakers need immediate advice, this framework helps identify weaknesses and guide the inclusion of sustainability-oriented policies in national budgets.