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Assessing Spillover Impacts in EU Supply Chains
Associate Professor Arunima Malik led collaborations with the Vice President of United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN) Guillaume Lafortune to assess spillover impacts embodied in European Union’s supply chains, resulting in three key reports: One: Research into fatal and non-fatal accidents embodied in international supply chains linked to EU consumption of textile products (2020):…
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IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change Grubb, M., C. Okereke, J. Arima, V. Bosetti, Y. Chen, J. Edmonds, S. Gupta, A. Köberle, S. Kverndokk, A. Malik, L. Sulistiawati, 2022: Introduction and Framing. In IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental…
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Lancet Covid-19 Commission Task Force on Green Recovery
Professor Manfred Lenzen and Associate Professor Arunima Malik were invited as lead authors for the LANCET COVID-19 COMMISSION TASK FORCE ON GREEN RECOVERY. They contributed to the development of a report on global recovery from COVID-19.
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Balancing Act: A triple bottom line analysis of the Australian economy
A triple-bottom-line assessment of the Australian economy using input-output analysis. This technical report was co-authored in 2005 by Barney Foran (CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems), Manfred Lenzen and Christopher Dey (Integrated Sustainability Analysis, the University of Sydney). The Balancing Act report is divided into four volumes available for download as separate Adobe Acrobat pdf files. Each volume…
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The Carbon Footprint of Desalination
This study examines greenhouse gas emissions for 2005-2015 from seawater desalination in Australia, using conventional energies. We developed a tailor-made multi-regional input-output-model. We complemented macroeconomic top-down data with plant-specific desalination data of the largest 20 desalination plants in Australia. The analysed capacity cumulates to 95% of Australia’s overall seawater desalination capacity. We considered the construction…
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Forest carbon – own-able financial product or global common good?
With the debate linking greenhouse gases and climate change increasingly shifting from the science arena into policy and finance, a number of issues are emerging around carbon trading. Carbon sequestered in forests until recently was un-ownable. But who owns the carbon and who trades in what some are calling a new financial product, or a…
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Life-cycle energy and greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear energy in Australia
The increased urgency of dealing with the mitigation of looming climate change has sparked renewed interest in the nuclear energy option. There exists a substantial stream of research on the amount of embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear-generated electricity. While conventional fossil-fuelled power plants cause emissions almost exclusively from the plant site,…
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Embedded carbon in the consumption of the UK – the UK’s carbon footprint
This report is the result of collaborative work between the Stockholm Environment Institute and ISA, commissioned by Defra UK. It describes the development of a time series of input-output tables for the UK by using an automated data optimisation procedure that allows the construction of national input-output and environmental databases in greatest possible sector disaggregation,…
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The Virtual Water Cycle of Victoria
This report defines and quantifies the virtual water Cycle for Victoria. Virtual water is the water embodied in all products and services consumed in Victoria, rather than merely the direct water used. An understanding of our virtual water use has the potential to provide significant water savings, and to affect water use beyond the boundaries…
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The Wider Social Benefits of Education
Business and Industry are recognising that the social outcomes of doing business underpin their social licence to operate. The ISO 26000, to be introduced in 2008, will provide guidance on Social Responsibility (SR) for all types of organisations in both public and private sectors. The Global Reporting Initiative includes numerous social indicators in its reporting…
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The Ecological Footprint – Issues and Trends
The ecological footprint was originally conceived as a simple and elegant method for comparing the sustainability of resource use among different populations, and has since considerably enriched the sustainability debate. Since the formulation of the ecological footprint, a number of researchers have mentioned the oversimplification in ecological footprints of the complex task of measuring sustainability…
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Shared Producer and Consumer Responsibility – Theory and Practice
Over the past decade, an increasing number of authors have been examining producer versus consumer responsibility. Recently, a problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the Ecological Footprint: While the method traditionally assumes a full life-cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility, a large number of producers have started to calculate their own footprints. Adding…
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Carbon neutral – sense and sensibility
Businesses offering to make you or your company carbon neutral are proliferating on the internet. The term carbon neutral is being defined by common usage. There are no standard ways of measuring your carbon emissions and so no standards for becoming carbon neutral. This paper examines eleven websites offering carbon neutrality. It compares online calculators,…
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A definition of ‘carbon footprint’
The term ‘carbon footprint’ has become very popular over the last few years and is now in widespread public use. With climate change high up on the political and corporate agenda, carbon footprint assessments are in strong demand. Despite its ubiquitous public use however, the scientific literature is surprisingly void of clarifications, let alone definitions…
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Global warming effect of leakage from CO2 storage
Most assessments of carbon capture and storage (CCS) characterise technologies in terms of annual or cumulative avoided emissions. However, the ultimate purpose of CCS is not the abatement of emissions, but the avoidance of damages to be expected from climate change. Two CO2 storage and monitoring projects have injected so far more than 5 Mt CO2 into…
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Assessing the impacts of a loaf of bread
This paper provides detailed information about on-site and supply chain costs of producing a loaf of bread, in terms of indicators across the social, economic and environmental bottom lines. Both on-site and supply-chain viewpoints help to tell a story. Both are necessary components of the true cost of a loaf of bread. But the real…
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Historical and potential future contributions of power technologies to global warming
Using the mathematical formalism of the Brazilian Proposal to the IPCC, we analyse eight power technologies with regard to their past and potential future contributions to global warming. Taking into account detailed bottom-up technology characteristics we define the mitigation potential of each technology in terms of avoided temperature increase by comparing a coal-only reference scenario…
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Sustainable island businesses: a case study of Norfolk Island
Conventional measures aimed at tackling the energy and waste issues of island communities focus on technological solutions, such as the introduction of renewable energy sources. There exists a history of technology implementations on small islands that have failed because of a lack of continuing skills and financial resources needed for ongoing operation and maintenance. Despite…
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A vision of ecotourism in the Comoros Islands
Despite their significant potential for ecotourism, the Comoros islands are thoroughly ignored in the international literature on the topic. In this paper we offer the first comprehensive assessment of the Comoros in terms of their socio-economic, demographic, geographic and political setting, and how this setting translates into opportunities and barriers for ecotourism. We present four…
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Forecasting the Ecological Footprint of Nations – a blueprint for a dynamic approach
This report provides the theoretical base and an example for expanding the static Ecological Footprint accounting method into a dynamic forecasting framework which is forward looking to 2050, incorporating biodiversity amongst other factors, into a causal network of driving forces, and taking into account globalised trade with its complex supply chains. This world-first Dynamic Ecological…
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Systems for Social Sustainability: Global Connectedness and the Tuvalu Test
We discuss the social dimension of the TBL as the social impact of (an organisation) doing business. Acknowledging the interconnectivity of social, environmental, and economic impacts on a local scale we recognise that everything we do together on this planet is connected through time and space in a seamless web of interactions. Moreover through this…
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Companies on the Scale: Ecological Footprint of Businesses
Calculating the Ecological Footprint of a company ought to fulfil certain requirements. It has to take into account the direct Footprint impacts such as direct land appropriation and emissions from vehicles and premises. And it also must take account of indirect impacts that are embodied in all the purchases the company makes. As companies and…
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Accounting for Environmental Flows – Comparing the principles of UNFCCC and the SEEA
The System of Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) views CO2 sequestration as an ecosystem service, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) allocates CO2 removals to forestry sectors. In effect, UNFCCC accounting provides the foundation for sequestered carbon to be owned and traded. Such ownership is not explicit in the SEEA. Moreover, interpretations of human…
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On the bioproductivity and land disturbance metrics of the Ecological Footprint
Since the Ecological Footprint was invented, research groups around the world have adapted the concept to their particular circumstances. In particular, researchers have used different metrics that pertain to different research questions. For example, while the metric used by the organisers of the Global Footprint Network expresses bioproductivity requirements in global hectares, an Australian approach examines land disturbance in local hectares.…
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The Ecological Footprint of Victoria Assessing Victoria’s Demand on Nature
EPA Victoria commissioned Global Footprint Network and the University of Sydney to jointly produce a robust assessment of the State of Victoria’s Ecological Footprint. The purpose of this study was two-fold:
More reports:
Lenzen M, Individual responsibility and climate change.
Foran B, Lenzen M, Dey C and Bilek M, A Novel TBL Initiative, ISA Research Paper 01-02.
Lenzen M and Dey C, The Ecological Footprint of Canberra, commissioned by the Australian Capital Territory’s Office of Sustainability, 2004 [archived]. Read ISA’s 2011 report, Canberra’s Ecological Footprint: what does it mean?
Davies O, and Murray J, Literacy Learning On Line: An evaluation of the 2001 Log on to Literacy Program, report to the NSW Department of Education and Training, Training and Development Directorate, Sydney, 2002.
Lenzen M, The influence of lifestyles on environmental pressure, commissioned by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for its 2002 Year Book Australia.
Green B, Bigum C, Durrant C, Honan E, Lankshear C, Morgan W, Murray J, Snyder I, and Wilde M, Digital Rhetorics. Literacies and Technologies in Education – Current Practices and Future Directions, commissioned by Department of Employment Education Training and Youth Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia, 1997.
Lenzen M & Murray, J, Pain-free scope 3: Input into Greenhouse Gas Protocol Technical Working Group discussion on sectoral value chain mapping of emissions by purchased categories, prepared for WRI/WBCSD “What” Group, 2009.