Authors
Xavier Sauvenier, Jan Valckx, Nora Van Cauwenbergh, Erwin Wauters, Hrabrin Bachev, K Biala, Charles Bielders, Veronique Brouckaert, V Garcia-Cidad, S Goyens, Martin Hermy, Erik Mathijs, Bart Muys, M Vanclooster, Alain Peeters
Publication date
2005
Volume
1
Pages
1-125
Description
Sustainability is now regarded as a crucial property of agricultural systems and its evaluation has become a main challenge for scientists, policy makers and farmers. In the last decade, different sets of indicators have been designed both at national and international levels. Meanwhile, more practical environmental impact assessment (EIA) tools have been developed at the farm level . However, none of these indicator sets can be used at both levels. Further, most of these initiatives focus only on environmental aspects of sustainability and do not take socio-economic aspects into consideration. Indicator selection does not always fit in a consistent and comprehensive framework, although there is a strong need to integrate sustainability indicators in order to facilitate comparison and assessment. Finally, few of these works relate to Belgian agriculture, which up til now lacked a tool for assessing the sustainability of its farms. This project aims at providing a framework for assessing sustainability levels in Belgian agricultural systems (SAFE) that overcomes the deficiencies mentioned above. This is achieved by: 1. Considering the concept of agricultural sustainability in a holistic manner – SAFE accounts for all three pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic & social). 2. Developing (a) a consistent approach for defining sustainability principles and criteria and (b) a core list of sustainability indicators identified through a standardized selection procedure. The ‘SAFE selection procedure’ is a flexible scientific process that builts on knowledge and experience of numerous experts. 3. Ensuring that the tool remains as easy as possible to interpret and …
Total citations
200520062007200820092010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022202320241323211746172324191714371