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50 Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

2 State of the art in sustainability assessment

Over the years, the world has gained a deeper understanding of the inter-
connected challenges we face and has recognized that sustainable develop-
ment has to embrace several sustainability pillars: from the three fundamental
pillars of the environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity
to pillars concerning, for example, institutional (O’Connor, 2006), cultural
(Nurse, 2006), and technological (Vos, 2007) aspects. The concept of the
environmental sustainability is central in the sustainability discourse and it
is rooted in the ecology domain, in relation to the carrying capacity of
the earth system.
However, the definition of sustainability and “what should be sustained”
(e.g., what might constitute critical natural capital) is by no means agreed
within the scientific community. The definition is subject to value judg-
ments (Bell and Morse, 2008; Bond et al., 2011), and it could be interpreted
as a shared ethical belief (Seager et al., 2004). Patterson et al. (2017) identi-
fied four main interpretations of the concept of sustainability: (i) ecological,
(ii) economic, (iii) thermodynamic and ecological-economic, (iv) public
policy and planning theory. The ecological interpretation focuses on a vision
of the socioeconomic system embedded in the global biophysical system; the
economic emphasizes the idea of social welfare; the thermodynamic inter-
pretation poses ecological sustainability in the context of the entropic nature
of economic-environmental interactions; the public policy and planning
interpretation seeks to achieve a balance of the different aforementioned
factors.
Giving the theoretical underpinning complexity of the sustainability
concept, sustainability assessment (SA) is one of the most complex types
of appraisal. Not only SA does entail multidisciplinary aspects (environmen-
tal, economic, and social), but also cultural and value-based dimensions.
Besides, SA is usually conducted for supporting decision-making and policy
development in a broad context. Indeed, assessing sustainability is increas-
ingly becoming common practice in product, policy, and institutional
appraisals. Concepts such as “Integrated Assessment” and “Sustainability
1
Assessment” are introduced to offer “new” perspectives to impact assess-
ment geared toward planning and decision-making on sustainable develop-
ment (SD) (Hacking and Guthrie, 2008). However, sustainability assessment

1
Other synonyms adopted are “triple bottom line assessment,” “3E impact assessment”
(environmental, economic, equity), “extended impact assessment,” and “sustainability
appraisal.”