Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Using the Capital Framework to Assess Community
Sustainability
Once sustainability indicators are organized into four tiers following the
Daly Triangle, one can monitor progress toward community sustainability by
posing the following three questions; the questions focus on the sufficiency of
ultimate ends, channeling from ultimate means to ultimate ends, and the
sustainability of ultimate means (Meadows, 1998).
Are ultimate ends sufficiently realized?
How efficiently are ultimate means translated into ultimate ends?
Is natural capital (ultimate means) sustainably used?
The first question regards what ―fundamental human needs‖ are in the face
of an unsustainable pattern of consumption and production and whether there
are any barriers to fulfilling human potential (e.g., social injustice, human
rights issues) in contemporary society. The second question is concerned with
how institutions function to induce the private sector or civil society to use
natural resources efficiently and minimize human impacts. For example, do
institutions enact policy frameworks that internalize (or account for)
environmental costs to correct potential market failure? Examples include
pollution taxes, congestion charges, and energy efficiency standards that meet
community needs and enable adaptation to climate change. The third question
can be posed to determine whether the rate of natural resource usage exceeds
the rate of regeneration of stocks, and whether the rate of waste emissions
exceeds the rate of recovering the absorptive capacities of sinks.
While the capital framework has some theoretical utility, it encounters
problems when put into practice in policy-setting and community
development. The integrative nature of the framework may render the tasks of
developing indicators overwhelming. There is an ongoing debate over the
relationship between economy and environment and what constitutes critical
natural capital, which does not encourage practitioners to utilize this
framework. Finally, the framework is not explicit about intra-generational
equity. GIS can help address some of these problems to be discussed later.
We are still in the process of building a consensus on best practices for
measuring and assessing sustainability and we do not understand the emergent
and complex properties of the dynamic human-environmental interaction yet
(Clark & Dickinson, 2003). As we make this journey, geospatial technology
