Sustainability assessment and complementarity

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Sustainability assessments bring together different perspectives that pertain to sustainability to produce overall assessments, and a wealth of approaches and tools have been developed in the past decades. However, two major problems remain. The problem of integration concerns the surplus of possibilities for integration; different tools produce different assessments. The problem of implementation concerns the barrier between assessment and transformation; assessments do not lead to the expected changes in practice. We aim to analyze issues of complementarity in sustainability assessment and transformation as a key to better handling the problems of integration and implementation. Based on a generalization of Niels Bohr's complementarity from quantum mechanics, we have identified two forms of complementarity in sustainability assessment, observer stance complementarity and value complementarity. Unlike many other problems of sustainability assessment, complementarity is of a fundamental character connected to the very conditions for observation. Therefore, complementarity cannot be overcome methodologically, only handled better or worse. Science is essential to the societal goal of sustainability, but these issues of complementarity impede the constructive role of science in the transition to more sustainable structures and practices in food systems. The agencies of sustainability assessment and transformation need to be acutely aware of the importance of different perspectives and values and the complementarities that may be connected to these differences. An improved understanding of complementarity can help to better recognize and handle issues of complementarity. These deliberations have relevance not only for sustainability assessment, but more generally for transdisciplinary research on wicked problems.

Opportunities and challenges for multicriteria assessment of food system sustainability

“…The papers in this Special Feature differ in the weight they put on these two challenges, from papers that emphasize the role of assessments in enhancing the knowledge basis for making decisions toward sustainability transformation through better tools and tool choices , Peano et al 2014, Schader et al 2014, to papers that emphasize different approaches to exposing the value basis (Thorsøe et al 2014, Alrøe andNoe 2016) and working with the value basis for taking actions toward sustainability transformation in form of value http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss1/art38/ communication (Kastberg 2015), motivation (Laessøe et al 2014), and trust (Freyer et al 2014, Rittenhofer andPovlsen 2015). However, none of the papers explicate this difference between working with better knowledge or stronger values in the development of methods and tools for sustainability transformation.…”

“…Peano et al (2014) focuses on how to assess a food system, the Slow Food Presidia, as a whole, with a tool that monitors networking and communication, but does not as such facilitate communication. Two other papers in this Special Feature discuss a tool that focuses entirely on facilitating communication in the food system (Kastberg 2015, Alrøe andNoe 2016). This tool was proposed by the MultiTrust project as a cooperative communicational platform for developing more sustainable food chains.…”

“…Gasparatos 2010). Many of the papers in this Special Feature touch upon the essential role of values in multicriteria assessments and some of the authors go further by emphasizing the "locked in" nature of values from different disciplines and the need for normative consistency (Thorsøe et al 2014, Alrøe andNoe 2016).…”

“…Four courses of action will help form such a strategy: (i) elucidate and make explicit the values of each research assessment; (ii) openly discuss the decisive choice of perspective; (iii) formulate common goals that can be translated into the different perspectives; and (iv) consider assessment of food system sustainability as a learning process and design it as such. Alrøe and Noe (2016) further analyze the problems of integrating multiple incompatible perspectives into overall assessments. Based on a generalization of Niels Bohr's complementarity from quantum mechanics, they identify two forms of complementarity in sustainability assessment, observer stance complementarity (e.g., monitoring vs. development in assessment tools) and value complementarity (e.g., naturalness vs. care in animal welfare).…”

“…This theme involves fundamental considerations on the conception of values in different assessment perspectives (Thorsøe et al 2014), the role of complementarity in sustainability assessment (Alrøe and Noe 2016), and the role of motivation (Laessøe et al 2014), communication (Kastberg 2015), and trust (Freyer et al 2014, Rittenhofer andPovlsen 2015) in organic food systems. The benefits of bringing in different research perspectives, and the problems and methodological issues in doing so, characterize most of the papers in this theme.…”