The social perspectives of sustainability have been historically under-addressed in sustainability assessment methodologies of scenarios. A recent research project - "Scenarios and sustainability impacts of future ICT societies" - explored five society-wide scenarios with an ICT focus for Sweden in 2060. A methodology was developed within the research project to assess the scenarios in terms of impacts on the societal level, as well as consumption-related impacts on the global level. This paper develops and tests a methodology that could be employed in wider scenario-based assessments of future societies that include consumption-related impacts. At the core of the new methodology is the categorization of social aspects under five categories for the national assessment and four for the global assessment. A qualitative assessment is performed for each of the following categories on national level: Participation and Influence in Society, Health Conditions, Equity and Justice, Social Cohesion and Learning and Education. For the global assessment the level of trade and the commitment to sustainable development in the different scenarios was considered. The categories assessed globally are Poverty, Health, Employment and Justice for All. The assessments should be made based on expert knowledge. One result of the application of the methodology was among other, that the most environmentally adapted scenario - Valued Environment - was also the best performing scenario from a social sustainability perspective.  

Purpose: This paper seeks ways to address positive social impacts in social life cycle assessment (SLCA) and attempts to answer two questions: How can the SLCA methodology be improved in order to systematically identify all potential positive impacts in the supply chain? How can positive impacts be taken into consideration along with negative impacts in SLCA? In order for SLCA to be an attractive tool, it needs to provide users with the possibility to include positive impacts, not as variables stipulating lack of negative impacts but rather as fulfilment of positive potentials. Methods: By scrutinising the social impacts addressed in the SLCA UNEP/SETAC Guidelines today and reviewing approaches for positive impacts in other research fields, a developed approach to capture and aggregate positive social impacts in SLCA is proposed. To exemplify the application, the case of vehicle fuels is used to investigate the possibilities of addressing positive impacts in SLCA. This includes a literature review on potential positive social impacts linked to vehicle fuels. Results and discussion: The subcategories in the SLCA Guidelines are proposed to be divided into positive and negative impacts and complemented with some additional positive impacts. Related indicators are proposed. A draft approach for assessing positive impacts is developed where the proposed indicators are categorised in four different levels, from low to very high potential positive impact. The possibility to aggregate positive social impacts is discussed. Besides multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), few useful ideas for aggregating positive impacts in SLCA were found in the literature that mostly focused on surveys and monetarisation. Positive social impacts linked to vehicle fuels (fossil fuels and biofuels) are identified, and the proposed approach is schematically applied to vehicle fuels. Conclusions: The SLCA methodology may be refined in order to better identify and assess positive impacts, and approaches developed for capturing and aggregating such impacts are proposed. Challenges of aggregating positive and negative social impacts still remain. The knowledge on social impacts from vehicle fuels could be improved by applying the proposed approach. However, the approach needs more development to be practically applicable

The production and use of transportation fuels can lead to sustainability impacts. Assessing them simultaneously in a holistic way is a challenge. This paper examines methodology for assessing the sustainability performance of products in a more integrated way, including a broad range of social impacts. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) methodology is applied for this assessment. LSCA often constitutes of the integration of results from social LCA (S-LCA), environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). In this study, an S-LCA from an earlier project is extended with a positive social aspect, as well as refined and detailed. E-LCA and LCC results are built from LCA database and literature. Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodology is applied to integrate the results from the three different assessments into an LCSA. The weighting of key sustainability dimensions in the MCDA is performed in different ways, where the sustainability dimensions are prioritized differently priority based on the assumed values of different stakeholder profiles (Egalitarian, Hierarchist, and Individualist). The developed methodology is tested on selected biomass based and fossil transportation fuels - ethanol produced from Brazilian sugarcane and US corn/maize, and petrol produced from Russian and Nigerian crude oils, where it delineates differences in sustainability performance between products assessed. The outcome in terms of relative ranking of the transportation fuel chains based on sustainability performance differs when applying different decision-maker profiles. This result highlights and supports views that there is no one single answer regarding which of the alternatives that is most sustainable. Rather, it depends strongly upon the worldview and values held by the decision maker. A key conclusion is that sustainability assessments should pay more attention to potential differences in underlying values held by key stakeholders in relevant societal contexts. The LCSA methodology still faces challenges regarding results integration but MCDA in combination with stakeholder profiles appears to be a useful approach to build on further.

The production and use of vehicle fuels results in both environmental and socio-economic impacts.In the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) the European Union (EU) implemented mandatory sustainabilitycriteria for biofuels for transport and liquid biofuels. These include demand for reductionsin greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and restrictions related to land with high biodiversityvalue. This directive and the vast majority of the available studies enfolding vehicle fuels, focus onenvironmental impacts, and in many cases primarily on GHG emissions. To move towards sustainabledevelopment, a broader scope of sustainability issues needs to be taken into account in futureassessment efforts and policy.In order to address a broad range of sustainability aspects a method labelled Life Cycle SustainabilityAssessment (LCSA) can be employed. It combines three different lifecycle methods, correspondingto the three pillars of sustainable development; environmental-LCA (E-LCA), socialLCA(S-LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC).In recognition of these knowledge gaps, the overall aim of this project is to examine the use ofLCSA to assess the sustainability performance of transportation fuels. This is achieved by applyingit to four selected fossil and renewable vehicle fuel value chains. The principal aim of this work isto develop the methodology of LCSA with focus on a full integration step in the assessment. Theintegration of different sustainability perspectives is a challenge, as it is inevitably based on valuejudgements. In this analysis we apply the Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodologyusing different stakeholder profiles for the integration. This approach has the advantage that it increasestransparency on these value judgements. Further, as a part of this work, the policy relevanceof LCSA results is discussed briefly.The analysis considers four vehicle fuel value chains: Petrol based on crude oil from Nigeria ; petrolbased on crud from Russia; Ethanol based on sugarcane grown in Brazil, and ethanol based oncorn (maize) grown in the USA. Both biofuels represent first generation biofuels. These vehiclefuels were selected so as to build on an earlier study where an S-LCA was conducted for nine vehiclefuel chains.1 They were also attractive as they have relatively high data availability. These fourfuels were also found to have relatively high potential risks of negative social impacts in the previousstudy.The LCSA conducted in this study is done by integrating S-LCA results with results from E-LCAand LCC. In addition to the compilation of comparable E-LCA and LCC results we seek to detailthe S-LCA results in the previous study as well as complementing them with positive social impactsin order to provide a more detailed analysis.The main contribution of this project is related to the steps taken towards aggregating the differentsustainability perspectives into one holistic outcome for sustainability. This is done using three differentstakeholder profiles. These represent different worldviews and value judgments when prioritizingbetween the different sustainability perspectives. The result shows that the ranking order ofthe different vehicle fuels chains are quite different for the different stakeholder profiles. This shows that there is not always one single answer for the most sustainable choice between differentalternatives. Rather this is dependent on different priorities held by different stakeholders, or thepopulation they represent.All three underlying lifecycle methods– E-LCA, S-LCA and LCC - have different methodologicallimitations. Further, they are to various extents relatively new and still under development. One issueidentified for all three methods is the lack of robust and updated databases for data collection.This causes problems as the data requirements for assessments are considerable. Thus the importanceof data quality is emphasized. The MCDA method offers, however, a possibility to addressuncertainties based on variable data quality. In general, the MCDA methodology seems to offermany useful features to ameliorate the effects of a number of data-related complications. Assuch, it seems to offer a good tool for the aggregation step in LCSA. This stated, the lack of robustand updated databases imply that the actual LCSA-results for the included vehicle fuels may not berepresentative of the current situation regarding sustainability performance.In this project, positive social impacts were handled and integrated separately. By considering thepositive social impacts separately, the influence of the positive impacts on the end result of anS-LCA becomes visible. Although this was done in a limited way in this analysis, it is important toinclude positive impacts separately in future S-LCA efforts, to be able to distinguish the contributionfrom positive impacts to the total social impact. This may inform future action to enhancethese positive contributions. Yet, the lack of data makes this a difficult task, needing further work.Another important contribution, we believe, is the attempt to assess both fossil and renewable vehiclefuel chains with the same assessment tool. In the future, all vehicle fuels should be evaluated ontheir total sustainability performance at the same level of detail.Finally, we believe that the methodology approach examined in this work may be useful for effortsto leave the 'silo'-thinking that can be found in sustainability discourse behind. Instead of this, actorscan be motivated to focus on broad, comprehensive sustainability implications of various productlife cycles. Once the underlying data and methodology-related limitations have been improved,we believe that LCSA in combination with MCDA has true potential to provide a useful tool forsustainability assessment in a life cycle perspective.LCSA could be used as an information tool to guide the formulation of policy, and as an assessmenttool providing information to assess overall success (or failure) of policy interventions. Inconclusion however, we stress that it is important that communication with stakeholders and decisionmakers should be clear in terms of data quality and of the assumptions and complex assessmentsrequired for this assessment method. This is vital if it is to be useful in policy-making anddevelopment of specific policy instruments.

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) has an influence on all societal sectors and can have both positive and negative consequences. To support ICT for sustainability (ICT4S), we need to learn when and how ICT can enable sustainable development. It is important to take into account all types of potential impacts environmental and social, direct and indirect. Looking at future ICT societies and their potential environmental and social implications is of special interest, as this can provide valuable knowledge for planning and policy-making today to enable ICT4S. A methodological framework for environmental and social assessment of future ICT societies with a consumption perspective was developed as a part of a joint project with researchers at KTH, ICT industry, municipality and county. The overall goal of the project was to develop five different future scenarios for Swedish ICT societies and to assess the risks and opportunities for environmental and social consequences in those scenarios. This paper presents the framework for environmental and social assessment of future scenarios and discusses the challenges experienced and lessons learned in the process of the framework development. The framework is aimed to deal with a broad and complex object and scope of assessment, the inherent uncertainty and data restrictions of future scenarios, and is applying qualitative analysis.

Sverige har under flera år haft ett samarbete med Kina angående utveckling av ekostäder. Ett flertal myndigheter, företag och forskare har medverkat i planeringen av två stadsutvecklingsprojekt i Kina – Tangshan Bay Eco-City och Wuxi Sino-Swedish Eco-City. Denna förstudie syftar till att skapa en ram för en eventuell utvärdering av samarbetet mellan svenska och kinesiska aktörer. Förstudien omfattar en inventering av tidigare forskning och andra relevanta rapporter, identifiering av nyckelaktörer och aktiviteter inom det svensk-kinesiska samarbetet samt intervjuer med representanter från medverkande företag och kontor. Resultatet av inventeringen och intervjuerna analyseras med hänsyn till befintlig forskning angående effektiva institutioner för planering och finansiering, tillämpning av innovativ energi-och miljöteknik, och planering som beaktar stadens metaboliska funktioner samt faktorer som påverkar socialt hållbarhet. Förstudien har genomförts av forskare vid KTH från institutionerna för Energiteknik, Samhällsplanering och miljö samt hållbar utveckling, miljövetenskap och teknik under perioden oktober 2014-februari 2015.