Sustainability Assessment and Indicators: Tools in a Decision-Making Strategy for Sustainable Development

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 6; no. 9; pp. 5512 - 5534
• Main Authors: Waas, Tom, Huge, Jean, Block, Thomas, Wright, Tarah, Benitez-Capistros, Francisco, Verbruggen, Aviel
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 2014
• Subjects: Assessments; Decision making; Frames; Indicators; Strategy; Sustainable development
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su6095512

Recognizing the urgent need for sustainability, we argue that to move beyond the rhetoric and to actually realize sustainable development, it must be considered as a decision-making strategy. We demonstrate that sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators can be powerful decision-supporting tools that foster sustainable development by addressing three sustainability decision-making challenges: interpretation, information-structuring, and influence. Particularly, since the 1990s many substantial and often promising sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators efforts are made. However, better practices and a broader shared understanding are still required. We aim to contribute to that objective by adopting a theoretical perspective that frames SA and SI in the context of sustainable development as a decision-making strategy and that introduces both fields along several essential aspects in a structured and comparable manner.