Environmental Accounting Method Research Articles

Review of Comprehensive Evaluation System of Vehicle Pollution and Carbon Synergistic Reduction

Vehicle emissions have become one of the most important air pollution sources in China. Promoting vehicle synergistic reduction of pollution and carbon is the key to improving regional environmental quality and achieving the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. Building a collaborative evaluation system and comprehensive quantitative method is an important prerequisite for scientific and effective implementation of vehicle pollution and carbon synergistic reduction. Therefore, it is significant to extensively review existing synergistic evaluation methods and comprehensive environmental benefit accounting methods of atmospheric pollution and carbon reduction. On this basis, we focused on vehicle emission characteristics, systematically organized the key indicators of vehicle collaborative reduction evaluation, and summarized quantitative methods of policy effects from three aspects (health exposure cost, climate change cost, and pollutant control cost), to provide theoretical support for policy formulation, schemes selection, and their effect evaluation. For the future, the assessment of vehicle coordinated emission reduction is proposed to accelerate unified index system establishment, deeply analyze the spatial distribution of environmental benefits, focus on the pollution transfer caused by vehicle electrification, and explore the quantitative methods of climate change cost due to extreme weather.

Externalities of Pesticides and Their Internalization in the Wheat–Maize Cropping System—A Case Study in China’s Northern Plains

When the production or use of a product imposes a cost or benefit on a third party, this is referred to as an externality. Externalities of pesticides are associated with social and environmental costs. However, there is still a lack of a systematic method for evaluating and internalizing the externalities of pesticides. This study utilizes the pesticide’s environmental impact quotient and environmental accounting methods to assess the external costs associated with pesticide usage in the winter-wheat–summer-maize cropping system in China’s northern plains, with a specific focus on the pesticide use in Botou City during the year 2020 as a case study. Additionally, we introduce the concept of the net external value of pesticides and propose a methodology for its internalization, aiming to quantify the external costs induced by pesticide usage and explore the possibility of integrating them into market transactions. The results showed that the total external costs of pesticide use are 423.9 USD ha−1, with a positive external value of 171.9 USD ha−1 and a net external value of −252.0 USD ha−1. The negative external costs associated with pesticide use outweigh the positive external values. External costs varied significantly according to environmental receptors, after retaining two significant figures: applicators accounted for 45% of the total external costs, followed by pickers (32%), consumers (11%), groundwater (4.5%), fish (3.9%), beneficial insects (1.7%), birds (1.3%), and bees (1.1%). The external costs of maize cultivation were 33% higher than those of wheat cultivation. The application of herbicides resulted in the highest external costs compared with fungicides and insecticides. Based on the internalization of the results, imposing an ecological tax on pesticide users is recommended, with rates of 3.29% for wheat and 6.76% for maize. This research contributes to sustainable agricultural development by providing valuable insights for farmers in selecting environmentally friendly pesticides and informing the implementation of ecological taxes on pesticide usage.

The OpenESEA Modeling Language and Tool for Ethical, Social, and Environmental Accounting

Assessing business operations’ ethical, social, and environmental impacts is a key practice for establishing sustainable development. There is a multitude of methods that describes how to perform such assessments. Often these methods are supported by an ICT tool. In most cases, the tools are developed to support a single method only and do not allow any tailoring. Therefore, they are rigid and inflexible. In this article, we present a novel model-driven approach for alleviating managerial issues that arise as a consequence of the complex landscape of ethical, social, and environmental accounting methods and tools. We have developed an open-source, model-driven tool, called openESEA. OpenESEA parses and interprets textual models, that are specified according to a domain-specific language (DSL). We have performed another iteration of the DSL engineering process, which is in line with the design science paradigm. We have validated the new DSL version by means of a user study. As a result, we present a new version of the openESEA modeling language and interpreter. The results of the user study with regards to performance, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use of modeling language are encouraging and provide us with a basis to continue developing new versions with more functionalities. The contributions of this work include a new version of the modeling language, a new version of the interpreter, knowledge surrounding the development of these artifacts, and a protocol for evaluating the quality of textual DSLs. The modeling language and interpreter are relevant for sustainability practitioners and consultants since our tool support has the potential to reduce redundancy in ethical, social, and environmental accounting. Our work is valuable to researchers that aim to assess and reduce the complexity of their modeling languages.

External pressures and financial performance of Indonesian MSMEs: role of material flow cost accounting

This study aims to investigate the mediating effect of material flow cost accounting (MFCA) on the external pressure (regulatory pressure and market pressure) - financial performance relationship. The topic of MFCA is rarely researched. The data was collected using questionnaires directed to the owners/managers of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the East Java Province, Indonesia. As many as 156 respondents participated in this research. The finding reveals that MFCA partially mediates the external pressure-financial performance relationship proving that MFCA as one of the environmental management accounting methods is beneficial and needed to enhance financial performance. Employing institutional theory, this study provides additional support to the scarcity of empirical evidence focusing on MFCA in the MSME research setting.

Valuing regulating services of urban ecosystems towards more comprehensive house pricing

The appreciation of ecosystem service value has achieved remarkable results in recent years, but the existing economic methods are not comprehensive enough to account for the complexity of regulating services so that environmental accounting methods are needed to integrate monetary evaluations. Here, we propose a method combining the advantages of econometric model with the emergy accounting approach to provide a new way for the evaluation of so-called ecosystem regulating services. This new framework not only ensures the accuracy of value accounting but also realizes the monetization of ecosystem service value. The suggested method takes the housing prices in 284 cities in China from 2010 to 2018 as the research object and establishes the relationship between housing price and the value of urban ecosystem services by means of the “difference-in-difference” model. Results show that from 2015 to 2018, about 23.67% of the increase in housing prices derives from an assumed improvement of urban ecosystem services, and the average price of this part is 424.41 yuan. The average economic value of regulating services was estimated as 1.76 yuan per 1010 sej nationwide. An increase in the value of ecosystem services per unit results in a 0.0135% housing premium. It is a progress to realize market pricing rather than value measurement by separating the ecosystem service value from the already market-oriented real estate price. Results help design direction for future environmental urban planning and provide a basis for the implementation of relevant policies in the future, in so moving beyond the traditional pricing methods.

Uncovering the hidden costs by evaluating ecological costs

This study aims to calculate the environmental costs of a sugar cane producer. Worsening environmental problems have required the company to implement environmental management practices. Nevertheless, the results of these environmental management practices need to be evaluated by comparing its ecological costs (eco-costs) as the external costs with costs allocated by the company to manage the environment. Accordingly, this study employs the case study at a cane sugar producing company located in Yogyakarta Specific Region Province. Furthermore, we combine two environmental cost calculation methods, namely the Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods. The EMA approach seeks to identify prevention and compensation costs. Meanwhile, the LCA approach is used to calculate eco-costs. We convert the eco-cost values based on the values from the table of ecological cost values at www.ecocostsvalue.com. The results of this study show that the company incur environmental impact costs much greater than its prevention and compensation costs. These findings indicate that the company has not incorporated hidden environmental costs in its environmental management.

Capitalizing the blue world: What can we learn from an Eastern Mediterranean case study?

Abstract Emergy analysis is an environmental accounting method used to comprehensively measure the sustainability of human and natural systems. This procedure is able to evaluate system’s relationship with its surroundings by considering all contributions from similar units. According to these objectives, Emergy analysis shape as a procedure able to provide integrated information about natural and human-driven resources supporting ecological functions and economic activities. In particular, Environmental Accounting Emergy-based provides a measure of Natural Capital (biophysical value of stocked biomass) in terms of natural resources consumption required to support generation of goods and fruition of services. The purpose of this work is to illustrate the procedural and methodological approaches, with field-testing of materials and methods, necessary to carry out an environmental accounting analysis in a Marine Protected Area (MPA). The investigation has been performed in a Mediterranean coastal MPA (“Isole Ciclopi”, SE Sicily, Italy) in order to provide a scenery of performance, impact and environmental sustainability of the activities carried on the MPA in relation to the renewable natural resources present. We show the extent to which a cost-benefit approach can assess the productivity of investing in environmental management and conservation. This integrated methodology may in fact help scientists, policy-makers and local managers to implement ecosystem administration according to the principles of sustainable development.

A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR MEASURING AND INTERPRETING THE ROLE OF EFFECTIVE APPLICATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING IN SUPPORTING THE INDUSTRY OF PLASTIC RECYCLING - A STANDARD STUDY

The study aims to develop a proposed framework for measuring and interpreting the role of effective application of environmental accounting in supporting the plastic recycling industry, in order to identify the reality of the use of environmental accounting methods in industrial facilities to face one of the important challenges facing economic systems and international and regional organizations. It is noticed that the high volume of economic activity as much as contributes increasing the rates of development, which contributes directly to solving the problem of environmental pollution and the different components of the environmental system necessary for protecting the environment. The study also aims to focus on importance of the disclosure of environmental information for the protection of the environment. The study exposes the use of environmental accounting in industrial establishments as a modern management approach, showing also the extent of these facilities’ concern in the mechanisms of using environmental accounting to support many industries, including plastic recycling industry. Moreover, the research conducts a field study to identify the suitability and possibilities and requirements to be applied to the industrial establishments in the tenth of Ramadan city (the study sample). In order to achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire form has been collected through interviews. In this study, the researcher relies on combination between the inductive and deductive method. The study sample consists of (83) items, which is the number of correct forms that have been retrieved and applied to the studied entity. Results indicate a significant effect of environmental accounting on raising environmental awareness of plastic recycling. There is also a significant impact of environmental accounting on the disclosure of environmental information concerning the plastic recycling, and a significant impact of environmental accounting on improving the environmental and social performance of the process of plastic recycling The researchers recommend paying attention to increasing environmental awareness to protect the environment and pay special attention towards increasing the disclosure of environmental information by the application of the environmental accounting system.

Tightening ecological management facilitates green development in the Qilian Mountains

The Qilian Mountains Scientific Expedition was launched under the framework of the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition Program after tightening eco-environmental management in the Qilian Mountains. The expedition focused on three key areas: (1) Ecosystem diversity and security, (2) dynamic changes in glaciers and permafrost, and (3) changes in human activities and their corresponding eco-livelihood impacts. In this scientific expedition, a comprehensive investigation was conducted according to an integrated space–drone–ground-based field survey and a socioeconomic survey. More than 200 researchers participated in this expedition that lasted for 260 d and spanned 47500 km. First, investigations were performed for changes in human activities before and after tightening eco-environmental management in the Qilian Mountains. The local eco-environmental benefits and economic losses after the tightening eco-environmental management were analyzed by adopting the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model and the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting method. Additionally, the telecoupling values of the overall ecosystem services of the Qilian Mountains were estimated using an innovative method. Second, investigations were performed for several glaciers located in the Qilian Mountains to evaluate the characteristics of glacier distribution and variations in glacier changes. The glacier ice storage and annual degradation rate were further estimated using data derived from a glacier inventory and Landsat images. Moreover, the characteristics of permafrost distribution in the Qilian Mountains were comprehensively analyzed. Furthermore, an innovative method was developed to estimate ground ice storage and the annual water discharge rate from permafrost in the six river basins of the Qilian Mountains. Lastly, investigations were performed on changes in the forest line in a coupled forest and shrub ecosystem using a drone and field surveys. Further, the spatial and temporal grassland patterns and the associated productivity were analyzed. Moreover, dynamic changes in the five main lakes in the Qilian Mountains were assessed at different spatial and temporal scales, and the activities of the key rare species such as the snow leopard were monitored regularly using infrared cameras. The key findings of the Qilian Mountains Scientific Expedition were as follows: (1) The ecological service functions of the Qilian Mountains are promoted by tightening eco-environmental management; (2) the ecosystem of the Qilian Mountains is recovering under a warm and wet climate, and the population of rare species is expanding; however, localized overgrazing is causing grassland degradation in some areas; (3) the glacier loss rate is accelerating, and the contribution of glacial melt to river runoff is expected to exceed the critical point; (4) over the past 10 years, the meltwater from permafrost has been as high as 1.18 km3/a, which is equivalent to 10% of the annual runoff into the Qilian Mountain rivers; (5) the value of the overall ecosystem services in the Qilian Mountains has been estimated to be as high as 1067.6 (±160.1) billion Yuan, which is much higher than the regional economic loss observed in 2017. It is suggested that the government should markedly increase ecological compensation to achieve a win-win situation for green development regarding ecological livelihood in the Qilian Mountains. The findings from this scientific expedition provide comprehensive datasets and decision-making support for the establishment and management of the Qilian Mountain National Park and the protection of the ecosystems of the Qilian Mountains. Such expeditions can provide scientific support for watershed management in states or regions located along the Silk Road Economic Belt.

Food security and sustainable agriculture in Lebanon: An environmental accounting framework

World population is expected to approach 9.7 billion by 2050. This scenario will lead to an increase in food demand, worsening environmental problems due to intensive agricultural productions. For this reason, one of the major challenges is to attain both food security and sustainable agriculture worldwide. While food security is aimed at ensuring a constant and healthy food supply over time, sustainable agriculture plays a key role for the maintenance of resilient agroecosystems. In this study, we implemented a multicriteria accounting framework to explore the environmental performance and sustainability of agricultural production in Lebanon at both farm and national level. An extensive field study was conducted to collect data on natural and human-driven flows supporting nine main agricultural production systems in different Lebanese regions. The investigated cropping systems were assessed in terms of environmental costs and impacts by jointly applying the following environmental accounting methods: gross energy requirement (GER), material flow accounting (MFA), emergy accounting, and emissions accounting and contribution to impact categories. At national level, the total emergy demand resulted 5.46⋅1021 sej yr−1, while the total GER was 1.81⋅1010 MJ yr−1. The total water and abiotic demand resulted 6.27⋅108 t yr −1 and 2.64⋅106 t yr−1, respectively. Finally, the total contribution to global warming potential (GWP) resulted 1.45⋅1012 g CO2 eq yr−1, while the acidification potential (AP) and the human toxicity (HT) resulted 5.79⋅109 g SO2 eq yr−1 and 6.88⋅109 g 1,4-DCB eq yr−1. At farm level, orange production showed the lowest environmental performance due to a high use of water, diesel, and fertilizers. Instead, olive production showed the best environmental performance thanks to a low requirement of mass and energy inputs, and human labour, confirming the advantages of environmental friendly practices. The results of this study can help both farmers and policy makers in charge for ensuring a sustainable management of agricultural production while providing access to safe, healthy, and nutritious food for a growing population. Finally, a set of biophysical and socio-economic indicators is proposed for integrating the environmental accounting with a socio-economic perspective on food security and sustainable agriculture.

How a region benefits from regionally labelled cheese products in Austria: a model-based empirical assessment along different value chains

The major aim of the study is to analyse six Austrian value chains of regionally labelled cheese along the whole food value chain concerning their potential socio-economic benefit for the labelled region. Twenty-eight quantitative as well as qualitative indicators, with a potentially positive impact on the region, were used to assess these value chains. An assessment model was developed, which is based on indicators focusing on socio-economic issues concerning regional and corporate resilience, which should be understood as a complementary method to environmental accounting methods such as life cycle assessments. The analysed value chains reach 37 to 79% of the maximum possible benefit for the region. Variation is highly dependent on whether the value chain was conventional and retailed nationally or organic with direct marketing. Whereas the results of all the analysed organic value chains with retailing via supermarket are rather similar to each other (their results reach around 58% of the maximum). Interestingly, milk products, organic as well as conventional, which are sold directly, induce the highest socio-economic benefit for their production region, whereas organic value chains receive slightly more points than conventional when sold via supermarkets. The results of the value chains analysed with the method are consistent and comprehensible if the complex system of food production, processing and retailing is examined in detail. As a result, this study shows the importance of developing methods for assessing the socio-economic impact on value chains in food production. This is of increasing relevance as regionally labelled food is a globally expanding trend.

Is there more in common than we think? Convergence of ecological footprinting, emergy analysis, life cycle assessment and other methods of environmental accounting

Over the last four decades, Environmental Accounting tools have been developed to conceptualise and quantify the direct and indirect effects of human activity on the environment, to enable decision-makers to track and measure progress towards sustainability outcomes and goals. These environmental accounting methods range from ecological footprinting, carbon footprinting, energy analysis, emergy analysis, ecological pricing and life cycle assessment to environmental input-output analysis. Regrettably, the contemporaneous development of these tools has frequently occurred in isolation from each other, even though they often seek to serve common analytical and evaluative purposes, as well as serving similar communities of interest. It is the central argument of this paper that, in spite of this isolation, the environmental accounting methods have a number of common features − that is, they can be mathematically reduced to similar analytics, and they often confront the same methodological issues − e.g., joint production (co-products) problem, weighting, commensuration, double counting and boundary setting. In this regard the paper reviews how the various environmental accounting tools can ‘learn’ from each other − e.g., how the mathematics of ecological pricing can address the joint production problem in a number of the other environmental accounting methods; and how the insights from input-output analysis can be used in system boundary setting. The paper concludes by agreeing with previous authors, that a better understanding of any given environmental issue is likely to be achieved by using a mix of these environmental accounting tools, rather than relying on just one tool, one perspective or one criterion.

Halting natural resource depletion: Engaging with economic and political power

AbstractGlobally, fisheries and forestry have been characterised by substantial ecological and economic problems. Both sectors have become notorious for depleting the stocks on which they depend, eroding the value of harvested natural resources over time and having significant negative ‘by-catch’ impacts on non-target natural resources. Problems of resource overuse and potential ecosystem collapse inherently derive from poor decisions influenced by those with undue or excessive economic, political and labour market power. Solutions to problems of unsustainability of resource management will need to engage with these economic drivers and beneficiaries, and require strategies including better and more independent assessments of the status and condition of resources. Deep-seated problems caused by resource over-commitment need more robust approaches to resource assessment that (1) better account for uncertainty (including uncertainty resulting from stock losses due to disturbance), (2) avoid ratchet effects and (3) provide appropriate ecological parameters for resource harvest. The United Nations framework for environmental and economic accounting methods can help assess the economic and other contributions of different resource-based industries and inform decisions about trade-offs between competing interests. Finally, there is value in examining successful and unsuccessful industry restructuring, in which decisions to transition away from demonstrably unsustainable resource industries have been made.

An emergy and decomposition assessment of China-Japan trade: Driving forces and environmental imbalance

With the robust development of economic globalization, international trade should be fairly conducted in order to strengthen the relations among different nations. Currently, due to different resource endowments and trade policies, different nations face different resources and environmental challenges. Previous studies suggested that even when trade seems balanced in monetary terms, it may be unequal in terms of resources exchanges due to different purchasing power of national currencies. As such, imbalance also exist in terms of environmental quality of traded resources and related environmental costs and emissions, such as embodied energy, water, land, carbon, ecosystem services. Under such circumstances, it is necessary and urgent to identify environmental imbalance of international trade and seek appropriate tools so that more balanced and fairer trade among nations can be implemented. This study investigates the quality of resource flows exchanged between China and Japan during the period 2000–2012. Emergy accounting, a well-established environmental accounting method, is used in this study to quantify the environmental work (past and present ecosystem services) embodied in traded resources. Within a broader emergy-based bio-physical perspective, a Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition approach is applied to identify the driving forces that affect the evolution of import-export resources balance in the investigated period. LMDI decomposes the driving forces into three factors: (a) scale factor, which depends on the total export volume; (b) technology factor, which depends on the emergy intensity of trade (emergy of traded resources); and (c) structural factor, which depends on the trade structure (mix of exchanged commodities). Results show that China was a net emergy exporter in the years 2000 and 2005, with figures of 7.46E+22 sej/yr and 5.76E+21 sej/yr, respectively, but was a net importer in the years 2008 and 2012, with imported emergy figures of 8.82E+22 sej/yr and 2.43E+23 sej/yr, respectively. Scale and technology factors are the most significant drivers to promote China-Japan trade from an emergy point of view (i.e. from the point of view of environmental quality assessment), while the influence of structural factor was relatively marginal. Trade imbalance and lack of focus on environmental value of resources cannot be the basis for stable economic relations with partner countries, which calls for compensation measures in money or resource terms. This study, by investigating the sustainability of China-Japan international trade, also suggests a methodological approach to increase worldwide trade stability and fairness.

Impacts of regional productivity growth, decoupling and pollution leakage

ABSTRACTImpacts of regional productivity growth, decoupling and pollution leakage. Regional Studies. This paper examines the issues of decoupling regional economic growth and pollution and the extent to which pollution effects spillover regional/national borders. Specifically, a UK, regionally disaggregated, computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is used to investigate the relationship between economic growth and the level of CO2 emissions posited by the ‘environmental Kuznets curve’ (EKC) conjecture using production accounting principle (PAP) and consumption accounting principle (CAP) environmental accounting methods. The simulation results suggest that at the regional level the existence of an EKC relationship depends on the source of regional growth and the how this relationship is specified.

The Effects of Climate Change Policy on the Business Community: A Corporate Environmental Accounting Perspective

AbstractThis paper proposes a normative framework to explain the influence of climate change policy on corporate environmental strategies, and at the same time describes how these strategies could be translated into an integrated environmental accounting model based on formal accounting statements. In particular, it aims to demonstrate a new approach of climate change accounting in order to overcome some important weaknesses of previous environmental accounting methods, such as accuracy and reliability. Currently, the majority of existing accounting methods record information on climate change on a voluntary basis. Even though they may assist businesses in designing essential environmental strategies and help public policy entities improve their knowledge on the results of such strategies, the informal nature of the accounting standards and the variable type of financial and non‐financial information make the use of such models untrustworthy and complicated. Finally, an empirical example of this framework is also presented. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Environmental Accounting Practices by Corporate Firms in Emerging Economies: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

The issue of environmental accounting is an emerging issue in developing economies like Nigeria. Though, the Federal government has enacted various environmental laws and established agencies and regulatory bodies; the problem has been that of enforcement and compliance with the various regulations. On the part of the corporate firms which claim to have policies and operating standards on environmental issue, the severity of the impact of their operations have not been abated; and hostilities and tensions with host communities have increased. This paper assessed the impact of government legislations on environmental accounting practice and compared current practices across firms in different sectors of the economy. A survey of 25 quoted firms from different sectors of the economy revealed that much attention has not be given to the cost of natural resources damages in project evaluation. The hypotheses were tested using Chisquare and Kendall Coefficient of Concordance at 5% level of significance. The results of the hypotheses testing showed that environmental accounting practice is significant in benchmarking standard for corporate reporting and that compliance with Nigerian environmental protection laws has not had significant influence on environmental accounting practice because the issues of Original Research Article Daferighe and Money; AIR, 3(2): 209-220, 2015; Article no.AIR.2015.017 210 enlightenment, enforcement and compliance have been overlooked. It was revealed that in developing an appropriate Environmental Management System (EMS), the contribution of plant environmental staff is important; they should work in cooperation with accountants. This paper recommended that accounting professionals need to be trained in environmental accounting methods and the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) should develop an accounting standard that will incorporate full consideration of financial and physical impacts of business activity on the environment.

Comparing the European Commission product environmental footprint method with other environmental accounting methods

This paper presents a structured comparison of the European Commission (EC) Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method with a number of existing European environmental accounting methods and standards that were taken into account during its development. In addition to the ISO 14040 and 14044 which represent the main reference, also the ISO/TS 14067, ILCD Handbook, PAS 2050, Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Ecological Footprint and BPX 30-323-0 were considered. This comparison aims at evaluating the extent to which the EC PEF method contributes to filling the identified methodological gaps and, ultimately, the extent to which it meets a number of key principles for PEF studies: relevance, completeness, consistency, accuracy and transparency. The EC PEF method has been developed by the Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) in close cooperation with the Directorate General for Environment (DG ENV). It aims at providing a European, common methodology for evaluating the environmental performance of products. Its use for undertaking product environmental footprint studies is supported by the 2013 Recommendation to the EC Communication “Building the single market for green products – Facilitating better information on the environmental performance of products and organisations.” In this paper, the selected environmental accounting methods are compared against a set of nine identified core criteria for EF studies. These criteria include, e.g. applicability of results, boundary of the evaluation, requirements on data type and quality, requirements on uncertainty evaluation, requirements on reporting and review. Results from this comparison have been used to evaluate the extent to which the methods considered meet a number of key identified principles for EF studies: relevance, completeness, consistency, accuracy and transparency. Overall, results of the analysis demonstrate that the EC PEF method resolves most shortcomings identified in the other methods with respect to the core comparison criteria. This, in turn, allows the EC PEF method to largely satisfy all of the key identified principles for PEF studies, and in particular the consistency principle, which is often not fulfilled by the other environmental accounting methods. The EC PEF method provides for a greater degree of methodological consistency and establishes unambiguous requirements, hence facilitating increased consistency, comparability and reproducibility of results. It fills most of the shortcomings of the other methods, meeting virtually all of the key principles for PEF studies.

Models and methods as support for sustainable decision-making with focus on legal operationalisation

Since the 1960s the urgency to steer mankind towards a more sound environment has grown. Currently humanity is in a transition period between today’s old paradigm – business as usual – and the new one, aiming at operationalise sustainable development goals. There is a growing understanding, that to move towards sustainable development, ecological sustainability is necessary but not sufficient. Steering society in this direction necessitates making decisions that at least do not counteract sustainability.Such decisions have to rest firmly on a natural scientific basis. Natural laws, such as thermodynamics, and conditions set by ecosystems can therefore not been ignored, when (a) searching for technical solutions to environmental problems and to fully understand the consequences of such solutions, and (b) improving steering instruments to guide human actions.Over the years a number of models/methods/systems have been developed to underpin sustainable decision-making, such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Ecological Footprints, and Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). Ecological modelling contributes or complements such methods. Emergy analysis, an environmental accounting and assessment method takes a wider grip embracing both ecology and economy. Less known is environmental legal modelling.This paper puts ecological models in the context of societal steering systems for sustainable development, and focuses on a legal model for implementing environmental policy goals.

Emergy and Carbon Footprint Analysis of the Construction of Passive and Active Treatment Systems for Net Alkaline Mine Drainage

Multi-criteria sustainability assessments were completed for the construction of a net-alkaline mine drainage passive treatment system (PTS) in northeastern Oklahoma to compare resource use and greenhouse gas emissions with a hypothetical active treatment system (ATS) alternative. Emergy analysis, an environmental accounting method assessing resource use, and carbon footprint analysis, a tool to evaluate greenhouse gas emissions, were completed for the construction of both systems. Assessing sustainability using multiple criteria is important in evaluating systems on the basis of resource use and environmental impact. Construction of the hypothetical ATS required seven times more emergy purchased from the economy and emitted three times more carbon dioxide equivalents than construction of the PTS. Concrete was the largest factor in both the emergy analysis (ATS and PTS) and carbon footprint (ATS only). Diesel fuel was the largest factor in the carbon footprint of PTS construction. This multi-criteria sustainability assessment shows that a hypothetical ATS alternative to the PTS would have used more resources and emitted more greenhouse gases during construction.