Four Sustainability Paradigms for Environmental Management: A Methodological Analysis and an Empirical Study Based on 30 Italian Industries

Fabio Zagonari
Additional contact information
Fabio Zagonari: Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Università di Bologna, via Angherà 22, Rimini 47900, Italy

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 6, 1-34

Abstract: This paper develops an empirical methodology to consistently compare alternative sustainability paradigms (weak sustainability (WS), strong sustainability (SS), a-growth (AG), and de-growth (DG)) and different assessment approaches (LCA, CBA, and MCA) within alternative relationship frameworks (economic general equilibrium (EGE) and ecosystem services (ESS)). The goal is to suggest different environmental interventions (e.g., projects vs. policies) for environmental management at national, regional, or local levels. The top-down methodology is then applied to 30 interdependent industries in Italy for three pollutants and four resources during two periods. The industries were prioritized in terms of interventions to be taken to diminish pollution damage and resource depletion, whereas sustainability paradigms were compared in terms of their likelihood ( i.e. , WS > AG = DG > SS), robustness ( i.e. , AG > SS > DG > WS), effectiveness ( i.e. , SS > AG > DG > WS), and feasibility ( i.e. , SS > DG > WS > AG). Proper assessment approaches for projects are finally identified for situations when policies are infeasible (e.g., LCA in WS and SS, MCA in DG and SS within ESS, CBA in WS, and AG within EGE), by suggesting MCA in WS within ESS once ecological services are linked to sustainability criteria.

Keywords: weak/strong sustainability; a-growth/de-growth; cost-benefit analysis; multi-criteria analysis; life-cycle assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/6/504/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/6/504/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:6:p:504-:d:71022

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().