Overview of Sustainability, Sustainable Development and Sustainability Assessment: Concepts and Methods

Abstract

Sustainability and sustainable development have gradually caused wide public attention during recent years due to the increasing concerns on resources and environment. The United Nations formulated and adopted a plan of action to promote the process of sustainable development, which covered 17 sustainable development goals and 169 specific targets to integrate and balance the three pillars of sustainable development. In order to provide a better understanding of the related concepts of sustainability, this paper provides an overview to introduce the relevant background knowledge and concepts on sustainability, sustainable development, and sustainability evaluation methods. Sustainability assessment methods are roughly classified into six major categories in this context, including individual or set of indicators, composite indicators, socially responsible investment indicators, energy and material flow analysis, life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), and environmental accounting. Basic information on the method categories and related methods are summarized and presented according to the literature review. A qualitative analysis and comparison for the six sustainability evaluation method categories are carried out to assess the ability and potential for sustainability evaluation of these methods. Results showed that LCSA combined with MCDM can work as a reliable sustainability evaluation tool to provide a relatively complete assessment. Environmental accounting and individual or set of indicators are inferior to the other categories under the considered criteria system. Three suggestions are proposed based on the analysis to guide future research on sustainability evaluation from the perspective of comprehensiveness, involvement of stakeholders, and follow-up investigation.