- Developing metrics of sustainable development for people and planet in a connected world

Check out a talk I gave on the project at the International Ecological Economic Conference in Washington DC, June 2016.

Check out a talk I gave on the project at the International Ecological Economic Conference in Washington DC, June 2016.

This project sets out to conduct a set of global analyses to evaluate nations’ progress toward “the safe-and-just operating space for humanity” (SJOSH, Raworth 2012).

With outset in the nine planetary boundaries, SJOSH identifies environmental limits beyond which the safe conditions of the Holocene cannot be guaranteed and socioeconomic targets that must be reached for every person to have the opportunity to reach just living standards.

The social and environmental dimensions of SJOSH are highly connected through natural resource use, but have previously been treated as isolated. By integrating methods from material flow accounting, a first assessment is provided of the interdependence of environmental and socio-economic development in SJOSH at the national scale. Integrating material flows provides an important advance in the application of SJOSH by accounting for the environmental pressures that countries exert abroad.

I investigate the dynamics of the integrated framework

(a) under different  consumption perspectives and

(b) for the complex biodiversity boundary.

I then apply the framework to

(c) to identify development syndromes and trade-offs between the SJOSH variables

(d) to assess support for sustainable development hypotheses, focusing on resource efficiency.

 

FURTHER INFORMATION: www.gedb.se