Workshop 7: Should we combine LCSA and SDG to support decision making? – State of the art, examples and discussion based on the primary industry.
Workshop Chair: Suzana Ostojic
Co-Moderators: Jana Backes, Patrick Haun, Marzia Traverso
Workshop Description:
Integrating the economic, social, and environmental dimensions has become a critical factor in shaping a more sustainable future. Around the world, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) are receiving increasing attention. However, despite increasing awareness, it is clear from an LCSA expert survey that the combination of LCSA and SDGs is helpful but not yet intuitive.
The SDGs represent a publicly well-known and highly recognized policy framework of the United Nations, intending to ensure sustainable development at the economic, social, and environmental levels worldwide. Nonetheless, the SDGs themselves do not specify a scientific sustainability assessment option, indicating the need to strengthen the science-policy interface. LCSA is an assessment framework addressing the sustainability pillars. Besides the expert survey and their combining-request, the need for a LCSA-SDG-combination also gets evident in publications.
This workshop session provides an opportunity and invites to learn and discuss from/with each other’s experiences and views in the field of LCSA and SDGs – integrating science and industry. The result of this workshop will be an innovative and promising approach of how-to future-map the LCSA indicators to the SDGs – and in the longer term, strengthen the policy-science interface for decision-making processes.
Keywords: SDG, LCSA, decision making, industry, combination
