Systemic sustainability assessment: Analyzing environmental and social impacts of actions on sustainable development

Abstract

An improved sustainability performance of one system does not automatically lead to an improved sustainability performance of larger systems (society and nature). A reliable sustainability assessment must be carried out to improve environmental and social sustainability performance for whole systems. It is necessary to show how a system of interest at any scale should (and can) improve sustainability performance. An examination of the literature on sustainability assessment highlights a lack of a systems perspective in most sustainability assessment frameworks. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to provide a framework that enables an assessment of environmental and social sustainability performance, taking systemic aspects into account. This assessment framework is based on a definition of first- and second-order sustainability performance. The former focuses on narrow efficiency issues, while second-order sustainability performance focuses on systemic effectiveness and covers sustainability impacts on society and nature. Improving the first-order level (narrow perspective) will not automatically lead to an improved second-order sustainability performance (systemic perspective). Thus, systemic effectiveness is not automatically increased in the case of first-order sustainability performance. Therefore, three essential dimensions have been identified and combined in an assessment framework, i.e., the dimension of scale, the decision horizon, and sustainability principles. The conceptualized assessment framework allows to analyze whether an action of a system of interest (e.g., corporate action, any process, project, or policy) contributes to global sustainable development.