Paula Ins Cosme Teixeira

Licenciada em Cincias de Engenharia do Ambiente

Assessing sustainability on a degrowth perspective

Dissertao para obteno do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente,

perfil de Gesto e Sistemas Ambientais

Orientador: Prof. Doutor Rui Ferreira dos Santos, Professor Associado, FCT/UNL

Jri:

Presidente: Prof. Doutora Maria Paula Baptista da Costa Antunes

Arguente: Prof. Doutor Nuno Miguel Ribeiro Videira Costa

Vogal: Prof. Doutor Rui Jorge Ferreira dos Santos

Maro de 2012

Assessing sustainability on a degrowth perspective

Copyright Paula Ins Cosme Teixeira

Faculdade de Cincias e Tecnologia

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

2012

A Faculdade de Cincias e Tecnologia e a Universidade Nova de Lisboa tm o direito,

perptuo e sem limites geogrficos, de arquivar e publicar esta dissertao atravs de

exemplares impressos reproduzidos em papel ou de forma digital, ou por qualquer outro

meio conhecido ou que venha a ser inventado, e de a divulgar atravs de repositrios

cientficos e de admitir a sua cpia e distribuio com objectivos educacionais ou de

investigao, no comerciais, desde que seja dado crdito ao autor e editor.

v

Acknowledgments

This dissertation represents an important step towards a transition phase in my life and there are

several people to whom I have to say thank you for all the help and support given.

On top of all, I want to thank my mother, Isabel. There are no words to describe how your love and

support was important to me through all my life and during this particularly hard period. You made

all of this possible, and I have to thank you for that. I also want to thank my sister Ana for always

being there for me and for being so supportive, and to my brother-in-law, Joo, for his help too. A

very special thank you to my grandparents, Maria Jos and Jos, who also made my education

possible and always strived to give me the best support they could.

A special word to all my close friends for your patience when I was more upset or simply without

time to pay you more attention, and also for all your help!

The last thank you in this section, however one of the most important ones, goes to Filipe. Thank

you for your endless support and for the strength you gave me, without you this would have been

much harder to accomplish.

Now in the academic field, I have to thank all my university teachers, you were the ones who

guided me through this path and all of you gave a special contribution to my knowledge. A very

special thank you to Rui Santos, the teacher who guided me through this dissertation and gave me

all the help that I could ask for, it was a pleasure to work with you.

I would like to thank Giorgio Kallis, since he was the one who, without knowing, inspired me to work

on this theme and afterwards also gave a little help on choosing the specific field for my

dissertation. I would also like to thank Gualter Baptista for the bibliography that he provided me

and, finally, a big thank you to my cousin, Lus Malcato, for taking the time to read and review my

work.

vii

Agradecimentos

Esta dissertao representa um passo importante para uma fase de transio na minha vida e h

vrias pessoas s quais tenho de dizer obrigada por todo a ajuda e apoio dado.

Acima de tudo, queria agradecer minha me, Isabel. No h palavras para descrever como o teu

amor e apoio foram importantes para mim durante toda a minha vida e durante este perodo

particularmente difcil. Fizeste com que tudo isto fosse possvel, e tenho que te agradecer por isso.

Quero tambm agradecer minha irm Ana por estar sempre presente para mim e me dar tanto

apoio, assim como ao meu cunhado, Joo, tambm pela sua ajuda. Um agradecimento muito

especial tambm para os meus avs, Maria Jos e Jos, que tambm possibilitaram a minha

educao e sempre lutaram para me dar o melhor apoio que puderam.

Uma palavra especial para todos os meus amigos mais prximos pela vossa pacincia quando

estava mais chateada ou simplesmente sem tempo para vos dar mais ateno, e tambm por toda

a vossa ajuda!

O ltimo agradecimento nesta seco, porm um dos mais importantes, vai para o Filipe. Obrigada

pelo teu apoio inesgotvel e por toda a fora que me deste, sem ti este trabalho teria sido muito

mais difcil de concretizar.

Agora no campo acadmico, tenho de agradecer a todos os meus professores universitrios,

foram vocs que me guiaram ao longo deste caminho e todos deram uma contribuio especial

para o meu conhecimento. Um agradecimento muito especial para Rui Santos, o professor que me

guiou na elaborao desta dissertao e deu-me toda a ajuda que eu poderia pedir, foi um prazer

trabalhar consigo.

Gostaria tambm de agradecer a Giorgio Kallis, visto que foi ele que, sem saber, me inspirou a

trabalhar neste tema e depois tambm deu uma pequena ajuda na escolha da rea especfica

para a dissertao. Tambm quero agradecer a Gualter Baptista pela bibliografia que me

dispensou e, finalmente, um grande obrigado para o meu primo, Lus Malcato, por se ter

disponibilizado para ler e rever o meu trabalho.

ix

Abstract

It is not new that humanity has limits to its economic expansion. However, what to do if we already

surpassed the ecological limits of the environmental systems? It is a great challenge to solve the

environmental problems without compromising the social dimension. Degrowth is a strive for down-

scaling societys throughput in a fair and sustainable way.

The essential questions answered in this work were: what is the sustainable degrowth perspective

and what does it entail? Are the existent sustainability assessment metrics able to capture the

degrowth-related concerns?

These questions were addressed first by doing a literature-based research and a posterior

treatment and comparison of the results. The origin of the degrowth movement was delineated and

afterwards the most updated publications gave the basis to understand in what way policy-making

can be crucial to achieve degrowth goals.

After knowing what were the policy goals, they were contrasted with existing sustainability

assessment indicators, being them aggregated measures and sets of indicators. The economic

aggregated metrics analysed were: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Index of Sustainable

Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), Adjusted Net Savings (ANS) and

Genuine Savings (GS), Ecological Domestic Product (EDP) and Environmentally Sustainable

National Income (eSNI). The biophysical and social aggregated measures analysed were:

Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Living Planet Index (LPI), Human Appropriation of Net

Primary Production (HANPP), Ecological Footprint (EF), Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI),

Well-being Assessment Index (WI), Happy Planet Index (HPI), Human Development Index (HDI),

Sustainable Society Index (SSI), Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI), and Canadian Index of

Well-being (CIW). The sets of indicators analysed were: Core Set of Indicators of the European

Environment Agency (CSI-EEA), European Union Set of Sustainable Development Indicators (EU-

SDIs), Japan For Sustainability Indicators (JFI), Millennium Development Goals Indicators (MDGI)

and System of Indicators of Sustainable Development for Portugal (SIDS-Portugal).

The main results achieved were that neither existing aggregated metrics nor sets of indicators were

able to capture all degrowth-related concerns. In spite of that fact, there are some metrics that can

be very useful to assess some policy goals. Also, the goals that are less addressed open doors to

new studies and new creation of metrics. It is discussed that the metrics that showed more

connection points to degrowth goals were the more complete sets of indicators, since they are able

to capture the different dimensions of sustainability assessment.

Keywords: Degrowth, Indicators, Sustainability Assessment, Policy goals, Policy instruments.

xi

Resumo

No novidade que a expanso econmica da humanidade tem limites. No entanto, o que fazer

se j tivermos ultrapassado os limites ecolgicos dos sistemas ambientais? um grande desafio

resolver os problemas ambientais sem comprometer a dimenso social. O decrescimento uma

iniciativa para diminuir a escala do fluxo de actividade da sociedade, de uma forma justa e

sustentvel.

As questes essenciais a que este trabalho deu uma resposta foram: qual a perspectiva do

decrescimento sustentvel e o que que envolve? Sero as mtricas de avaliao de

sustentabilidade capazes de apreender as preocupaes relativas ao decrescimento?

Estas questes foram abordadas primeiramente fazendo uma pesquisa de literatura e um posterior

tratamento e comparao de resultados. A origem do movimento do decrescimento foi traada e

depois, as publicaes mais actualizadas serviram de base para perceber de que forma a

construo de polticas pode ser crucial para atingir os objectivos do decrescimento.

Aps saber quais os objectivos do decrescimento, estes foram contrastados com os indicadores

de avaliao de sustentabilidade existentes, sendo estes medidas agregadas e grupos de

indicadores. As medidas econmicas agregadas analisadas foram: Produt