Final Report Summary - SMILE (Synergies in multiscale interlinkages of ecosocial systems)
Executive summary:
The project SMILE belonged to the European Commission (EC)'s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), in particular to the theme 8?'Socioeconomic sciences and humanities' (SSH). Its main objective was to apply and further develop tools, which analyse different dimensions of sustainability. These tools had already been examined in the FP6 project 'Development and comparison of sustainability indicators' (DECOIN), in which many members of the consortium were in common with SMILE.
Several case studies were used to assess the use of the toolkit developed in DECOIN within different socio-economic, environmental and cultural contexts and at different levels of detail. The project also utilises the different indicators developed within the European sustainable development indicator (SDI) working group, as well as new types of indicators developed in the tools of the consortium partners in previous projects. In the last part of the project the scientific results were interfaced with societal and policy processes through stakeholders participation, in order to formulate policy recommendations.
Documentation is available on the SMILE website concerning the case studies developed, which dealt with the following countries and regions: Catalonian region of Spain, Romania, Lao, Finland, the Cairngorms National Park of United Kingdom and Italy. Another case study dealt with all the EU-27 countries and was not analysed using the toolkit, but instead with the aid of hierarchical cluster analysis. During the project SMILE also one final report about the case studies and their results was produced.
Synergies and trade-offs that exist between the different dimensions of sustainable development were analysed and scenarios of future development paths relating to these synergies and trade-offs were constructed. This was carried out using the indicators and methods developed in the beginning of the project.
In the last part of the project the results of the main work packages and the information acquired from the various stakeholders (governmental agencies, industrial organisations, citizens participation groups) were used in order to form the basis for policy recommendations on improvement of sustainability conditions at various geographical scales. An attempt was made to formulate a conceptual and operational model that encapsulated the highlights of scientific sustainability research and that identified the critical success factors for a proper stakeholder involvement (from both a societal and policy perspective).
For more information about the SMILE project and further details concerning the main results, please see the documents available at: http://www.smile-fp7.eu/
Project context and objectives:
SMILE project responded to the EC's FP7, theme 8 SSH. The objective of the SMILE project was to apply and further develop tools, which analyse different dimensions of sustainability. The consortium developed tools for analysing the different dimensions of sustainability in a FP6 project called DECOIN. The objective of the SMILE project was, thus, to apply and further develop these tools to analyse the trade-offs and synergies between different aspects of sustainable development.
In SMILE the trade-offs and synergies that exist between the different objectives related to sustainable development were studied by utilising the different indicators developed within the European SDI working group, as well as new types of indicators provided by the tools developed by the consortium partners in previous projects.
Through several case studies the use of the toolkit in different socio-economic, environmental and cultural contexts and at different levels was assessed. The project also utilised the different indicators developed within the European SDI working group, as well as new types of indicators developed in the tools of the consortium partners in previous projects.
During the first reporting period the analytical toolkit was created and six different case studies were analysed. The second reporting period focused on assessing these case studies from different viewpoints and the analysis was carried out on inter-linkages between the economic and social aspects, between economic and environmental aspects, between social and environmental aspects and between economic, social and environmental objectives. Another major focus of the second reporting period was interfacing the scientific results with the policy process: this was achieved through stakeholder participation, and with the formulation of a conceptual and operational model that encapsulates the highlights of scientific sustainability research and that identifies the critical success factors for a proper stakeholder involvement (from both a societal and policy perspective). In the third and last reporting period the main focus was the dissemination of the results obtained from this process and the production of policy briefs in relation to the contents of SMILE.
Project results:
The main results of the SMILE project was the development and subsequent testing of the toolkit described in deliverable D6. The toolkit features a common database, which hosts data for each of the analysis methods used. More detailed instructions on how to use the database can be found in the instructions sheet of the database itself available in D6 and descriptions of the roles of each approach in the integrated toolkit are also available in D6. The integration of the three approaches both in the FP6 DECOIN project and in the SMILE project is first of all conceptual and theoretical in nature, not technical because each approach can be used separately.
The three frameworks, which will be described later on, play different roles within the integrated DECOIN Tool, so that their combined use does not generate costly redundancy and they express a synergetic effect. In fact, the generation of sustainability indicators entails two distinct challenges: (i) how to perform a wise choice of semantic categories (criteria/attributes to be included in the analysis) for issue definition and problem structuring; and (ii) how to perform a pertinent choice of formal categories and production rules (protocols).
This distinction makes possible to classify the three analytical frameworks of DECOIN as follows:
1. The Sustainability multicriteria multiscale assessment (SUMMA) approach uses as specified analytical setting a mix of accounting methods: (i) Energy accounting (developed by the pioneer of theoretical ecology H.T. Odum) can track the contribution of natural provided inputs such as sunlight, wind and rain and embodied energy in the ecological processes required for sustainability; (ii) exergy analysis (on local scale systems) to account for actual potential of the system performance in terms of available energy within well-defined technical processes; (iii) lifecycle assessment to be used for material and energy flow accounting. This last tool is particularly useful to account for the effect of terms of trade ? the possibility of using materials, labour and environmental services embodied in traded products. The SUMMA framework makes possible to assess resource use efficiency and environmental performance (names) according to the provided input data (tokens).
2. The Multiscale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MUSIASEM) approach establishes a linkage between different scale (ecosystem level, societal level, household level) of representations of data and descriptive domains (economic, social dimensions). The main advantage of this tool is that this approach integrates biophysical, ecological, economic, social, demographic and land use analyses that allow a multi-scale and domain analysis (as the name implies) simultaneously. Hence, it can be interpreted as a multi-meta grammar. The theoretical concept of impredicative loop analysis implies that the set of meta relations among categories defined across levels and scales can be used to perform quality checks in both direction. One can enter some characteristics as tokens and calculate the correspondent names (what happens if ...) or vice versa, one can start from an important value for a name (a target, a benchmark, a critical threshold), which this time is used as a token-input and then calculate what value would be the required for the variable previously considered as a token, when this variable becomes a name. That is, one can check how the characteristics of the parts are determining the characteristics of the whole (in one direction) and also the reverse (when inverting the definition of names and tokens).
3. The Advanced sustainability analysis (ASA) is an overall framework that has been developed to evaluate the different dimensions of sustainability within three main scales of analysis of economic production, social welfare and environmental stress. Several factors such as population and affluence (measured e.g. by economic output in different units) intensities or/and efficiencies of sectoral processes can be studied in relation to the economic impacts and human activities at different levels of society.
The toolkit described here was also tested on a selection of case studies indicated in the WP3 of the SMILE project, namely:
- Task 3.1: Catalonian case study analysis at the regional level of a developed economy.
- Task 3.2: Romanian case study analysis at the national level of a transition economy.
- Task 3.3: Lao case study analysis at the farming system level and national level of a developing economy.
- Task 3.4: Finnish case study analysis at the sectoral level (forest industry) of a developed economy.
- Task 3.5: Italian case study analysis of local scale (province), regional scale (Campania region) and national scale (Italy) agricultural and agro-industrial sectors.
- Task 3.6: UK Case study analysis of trade-offs between the objectives of a regional sustainable development strategic plan (the Cairngorm national park plan).
Details concerning the results of the case studies can be found in the dedicated deliverables.
From the application to these case studies the following conclusions were drawn:
Benefits include:
1. The basic idea of integration of MUSIASEM, SUMMA and ASA models provides valuable development direction as the environmental statistics need more statistical computing and analysing in the future.
2. The toolkit can quite easily produce information about unsustainable trends. These findings can be produced also by other methods or deep expertise, but the toolkit eases the analysis greatly and provides new indicators of sustainability.
The development needs include:
1. The integration of the models is still unfinished and there is need to use more time and resources for its finalisation.
2. One challenge is to reconcile the spatial and cross-section perspectives of SUMMA and MUSIASEM models with the time-series and dynamic perspective of ASA model. In WP4 the case studies were assessed from different viewpoints. The analyses were carried out on interlinkages between the economic and social aspects, between economic and environmental aspects, between social and environmental aspects and between economic, social and environmental objectives. The possible synergies and trade-offs that exist between the different objectives of sustainable development were analysed. In addition, scenarios of future development paths relating to the synergies and trade-offs were constructed.
The synergies and trade-offs were analysed utilising intensity variables derived from different sustainability indicators describing the different dimensions of sustainability. The main findings for the analysis of trade-offs associated with demographic changes were the following.
On the methodological side:
1. The interaction between demographic changes and the performance of socioeconomic systems in relation to sustainability are complex, since they refer to different dimensions and different hierarchical levels and scale of analysis. Therefore they require the use of more sophisticated analytical tools no longer based on reductionist simplifications (belief in the myth that one scale fits all).
2. The MUSIASEM grammar, especially if used within the complementing set of analyses obtained with the DECOIN tool-kit, can address the existence of key trade-offs associated with demographic changes. The examples presented in this deliverables suggest that we should quickly improve the quality of our indicators of sustainability looking for more sophisticated analysis able to catch the complex set of relations of the chosen indicators across scales and dimensions.
3. It is possible to carry out a quantitative analysis across levels and dimensions: (i) data are available; and (ii) grammars and protocols are available.
On the practical side about demographic changes:
1. The concept of demographic transition is used by many to dismiss the preoccupation over the population bomb. However, our analysis indicates that the completion of the demographic transition in Europe will not solve our problems of sustainability in relation to the issue of population growth.
Whenever, a zero population growth is achieved because of low fertility and low mortality rates, then the price to pay is an aging society which can no longer stabilise its metabolic pattern using the classic pattern of economic development.
2. Gradients in level of development e.g. the differences in the quantitative value taken by BEP in the MUSIASEM grammar are unavoidable. These gradients in level of development will make irrelevant the result of a stabilisation of population growth obtained by low fertility and low mortality. In fact, in presence of socio-economic systems operating at a different value of their dynamic budget (BEP = SEH) it becomes convenient to produce hours of human activity in those societies when they have a lower overhead (a lower cost of entry so to speak), in societies operating at a low value of BEP. Then, when the new born hours of human activity become hours of adults, these hours will tend to move to society where they have a much higher productivity (in societies operating at a high value of SEH). This movement will become unavoidable since rich aged societies are in need of these labour hours. The existence of large gradients of BEP over short geographic distances (USA/Mexico; Spain and Italy / Africa; Thailand / Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh) is a recipe for large migratory flows.
3. There are unavoidable and predictable lag times in the changes of demographic variables. This fact would require a careful evaluation in relation to the usefulness of static indicators. At the moment Chinese economy has an enormous comparative advantage over the other economies (because of 60 % of adults entailing the lowest dependency ratio of the planet). According to some standard economic indicators China is very competitive for this reason. However, this peculiarity of China will be an Achilles heel in the near future, when all these adults will become too old to work and will require financial and medical assistance. In the same way, the remedy of immigration policy to boost the work supply to ageing societies temporarily works, but only: (i) in the short terms; and (ii) if the economy is in a period of economic expansion or steady state. On the contrary it can become a source of serious troubles when (i) all these adults immigrant will become old after making a lot of children; and (ii) in periods of economic recession - as illustrated in the last years by the widespread problems in those suburbs of European cities where immigrants are the majority of residents.
In WP5 interfacing the scientific results with societal / policy processes (stakeholder participation, sustainable consumption and production patterns) was assessed and policy recommendations were formulated.
WP5 addressed the interfaces between scientific achievements in ASA and the various user categories and interest groups (stakeholders) involved with these results. A conceptual and operational model that encapsulated the highlights of scientific sustainability research and that identified the critical success factors for a proper stakeholder involvement (from both a societal and policy perspective) was developed.
In the search for sustainable development at the interface of economic, environmental and energy factors the PENTAGON model plays an important role as a systematic framework for identifying critical success conditions. This approach has demonstrated its operational validity in various European policy studies (e.g. transportation, energy, environment, land use). The basic idea is formed by the following PENTAGON prism of necessary though not yet sufficient conditions for successful policies.
On the basis of the results briefly explained above, the policy recommendations emerging from the SMILE study were the following:
- Policies must be focused on the three prominent aspects of sustainability in a more balanced way; thus, social aspects should not be ignored in strategic policy development.
- Especially for the Finland case-study area, the social aspect is highlighted by the stakeholders, even though it is not included in sustainability-related policies.
- For the Italian case study which addresses historical heritage and physical sustainability, besides the main aspects of sustainability, physical systems - especially the built-environment - must also be included in the sustainability policies.
- The Romanian case study is the most distinctive one, as it is related to a country in transition. Romania needs a comprehensive policy which has sustainability as the main goal dealing with the three main dimensions of sustainability. Besides, while overcoming the transition period, Romania needs to strengthen the governance structure in a more efficient way.
- Scotland is the case-study where the sustainability objective is fully covered and most detailed in the policies pursued. However, additional policies (or improvement of current policies) must be carefully constructed and their focus needs to be more on the human capital and participation of stakeholders.
- For the Spanish case study, it is difficult - and even not really possible - to recommend policies or to retrieve policy lessons. But, besides the three main aspects, the physical system is quite important according to the stakeholders, and thus policies need to be designed by giving due importance to the physical system.
Potential impact:
The most important impact of SMILE so far has been the involvement of the stakeholders in the development of new sustainability policies: this has enabled new synergies between the scientific community and the societal processes, both at the local and national level. Even if the toolkit itself has not been used directly by policy makers, during the testing phase it was also possible to verify the validity of some of the Eurostat indicators, in particular those belonging to the SDI set.
The main dissemination event of SMILE was its final conference, which took place in Tampere, Finland on June 8th-9th 2011. The participants were almost 200 and all the partners of the SMILE consortium had the possibility to present the main results of the project in the different sessions. Other important dissemination activities included the publication of two books and several scientific articles, moreover the presentation of results took place also in other international conferences: a comprehensive list of all these activities is included in a specific section of this report.
Future dissemination activities will include the publication of other scientific articles.
Project website: http://www.smile-fp7.eu/
The project SMILE belonged to the European Commission (EC)'s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), in particular to the theme 8?'Socioeconomic sciences and humanities' (SSH). Its main objective was to apply and further develop tools, which analyse different dimensions of sustainability. These tools had already been examined in the FP6 project 'Development and comparison of sustainability indicators' (DECOIN), in which many members of the consortium were in common with SMILE.
Several case studies were used to assess the use of the toolkit developed in DECOIN within different socio-economic, environmental and cultural contexts and at different levels of detail. The project also utilises the different indicators developed within the European sustainable development indicator (SDI) working group, as well as new types of indicators developed in the tools of the consortium partners in previous projects. In the last part of the project the scientific results were interfaced with societal and policy processes through stakeholders participation, in order to formulate policy recommendations.
Documentation is available on the SMILE website concerning the case studies developed, which dealt with the following countries and regions: Catalonian region of Spain, Romania, Lao, Finland, the Cairngorms National Park of United Kingdom and Italy. Another case study dealt with all the EU-27 countries and was not analysed using the toolkit, but instead with the aid of hierarchical cluster analysis. During the project SMILE also one final report about the case studies and their results was produced.
Synergies and trade-offs that exist between the different dimensions of sustainable development were analysed and scenarios of future development paths relating to these synergies and trade-offs were constructed. This was carried out using the indicators and methods developed in the beginning of the project.
In the last part of the project the results of the main work packages and the information acquired from the various stakeholders (governmental agencies, industrial organisations, citizens participation groups) were used in order to form the basis for policy recommendations on improvement of sustainability conditions at various geographical scales. An attempt was made to formulate a conceptual and operational model that encapsulated the highlights of scientific sustainability research and that identified the critical success factors for a proper stakeholder involvement (from both a societal and policy perspective).
For more information about the SMILE project and further details concerning the main results, please see the documents available at: http://www.smile-fp7.eu/
Project context and objectives:
SMILE project responded to the EC's FP7, theme 8 SSH. The objective of the SMILE project was to apply and further develop tools, which analyse different dimensions of sustainability. The consortium developed tools for analysing the different dimensions of sustainability in a FP6 project called DECOIN. The objective of the SMILE project was, thus, to apply and further develop these tools to analyse the trade-offs and synergies between different aspects of sustainable development.
In SMILE the trade-offs and synergies that exist between the different objectives related to sustainable development were studied by utilising the different indicators developed within the European SDI working group, as well as new types of indicators provided by the tools developed by the consortium partners in previous projects.
Through several case studies the use of the toolkit in different socio-economic, environmental and cultural contexts and at different levels was assessed. The project also utilised the different indicators developed within the European SDI working group, as well as new types of indicators developed in the tools of the consortium partners in previous projects.
During the first reporting period the analytical toolkit was created and six different case studies were analysed. The second reporting period focused on assessing these case studies from different viewpoints and the analysis was carried out on inter-linkages between the economic and social aspects, between economic and environmental aspects, between social and environmental aspects and between economic, social and environmental objectives. Another major focus of the second reporting period was interfacing the scientific results with the policy process: this was achieved through stakeholder participation, and with the formulation of a conceptual and operational model that encapsulates the highlights of scientific sustainability research and that identifies the critical success factors for a proper stakeholder involvement (from both a societal and policy perspective). In the third and last reporting period the main focus was the dissemination of the results obtained from this process and the production of policy briefs in relation to the contents of SMILE.
Project results:
The main results of the SMILE project was the development and subsequent testing of the toolkit described in deliverable D6. The toolkit features a common database, which hosts data for each of the analysis methods used. More detailed instructions on how to use the database can be found in the instructions sheet of the database itself available in D6 and descriptions of the roles of each approach in the integrated toolkit are also available in D6. The integration of the three approaches both in the FP6 DECOIN project and in the SMILE project is first of all conceptual and theoretical in nature, not technical because each approach can be used separately.
The three frameworks, which will be described later on, play different roles within the integrated DECOIN Tool, so that their combined use does not generate costly redundancy and they express a synergetic effect. In fact, the generation of sustainability indicators entails two distinct challenges: (i) how to perform a wise choice of semantic categories (criteria/attributes to be included in the analysis) for issue definition and problem structuring; and (ii) how to perform a pertinent choice of formal categories and production rules (protocols).
This distinction makes possible to classify the three analytical frameworks of DECOIN as follows:
1. The Sustainability multicriteria multiscale assessment (SUMMA) approach uses as specified analytical setting a mix of accounting methods: (i) Energy accounting (developed by the pioneer of theoretical ecology H.T. Odum) can track the contribution of natural provided inputs such as sunlight, wind and rain and embodied energy in the ecological processes required for sustainability; (ii) exergy analysis (on local scale systems) to account for actual potential of the system performance in terms of available energy within well-defined technical processes; (iii) lifecycle assessment to be used for material and energy flow accounting. This last tool is particularly useful to account for the effect of terms of trade ? the possibility of using materials, labour and environmental services embodied in traded products. The SUMMA framework makes possible to assess resource use efficiency and environmental performance (names) according to the provided input data (tokens).
2. The Multiscale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MUSIASEM) approach establishes a linkage between different scale (ecosystem level, societal level, household level) of representations of data and descriptive domains (economic, social dimensions). The main advantage of this tool is that this approach integrates biophysical, ecological, economic, social, demographic and land use analyses that allow a multi-scale and domain analysis (as the name implies) simultaneously. Hence, it can be interpreted as a multi-meta grammar. The theoretical concept of impredicative loop analysis implies that the set of meta relations among categories defined across levels and scales can be used to perform quality checks in both direction. One can enter some characteristics as tokens and calculate the correspondent names (what happens if ...) or vice versa, one can start from an important value for a name (a target, a benchmark, a critical threshold), which this time is used as a token-input and then calculate what value would be the required for the variable previously considered as a token, when this variable becomes a name. That is, one can check how the characteristics of the parts are determining the characteristics of the whole (in one direction) and also the reverse (when inverting the definition of names and tokens).
3. The Advanced sustainability analysis (ASA) is an overall framework that has been developed to evaluate the different dimensions of sustainability within three main scales of analysis of economic production, social welfare and environmental stress. Several factors such as population and affluence (measured e.g. by economic output in different units) intensities or/and efficiencies of sectoral processes can be studied in relation to the economic impacts and human activities at different levels of society.
The toolkit described here was also tested on a selection of case studies indicated in the WP3 of the SMILE project, namely:
- Task 3.1: Catalonian case study analysis at the regional level of a developed economy.
- Task 3.2: Romanian case study analysis at the national level of a transition economy.
- Task 3.3: Lao case study analysis at the farming system level and national level of a developing economy.
- Task 3.4: Finnish case study analysis at the sectoral level (forest industry) of a developed economy.
- Task 3.5: Italian case study analysis of local scale (province), regional scale (Campania region) and national scale (Italy) agricultural and agro-industrial sectors.
- Task 3.6: UK Case study analysis of trade-offs between the objectives of a regional sustainable development strategic plan (the Cairngorm national park plan).
Details concerning the results of the case studies can be found in the dedicated deliverables.
From the application to these case studies the following conclusions were drawn:
Benefits include:
1. The basic idea of integration of MUSIASEM, SUMMA and ASA models provides valuable development direction as the environmental statistics need more statistical computing and analysing in the future.
2. The toolkit can quite easily produce information about unsustainable trends. These findings can be produced also by other methods or deep expertise, but the toolkit eases the analysis greatly and provides new indicators of sustainability.
The development needs include:
1. The integration of the models is still unfinished and there is need to use more time and resources for its finalisation.
2. One challenge is to reconcile the spatial and cross-section perspectives of SUMMA and MUSIASEM models with the time-series and dynamic perspective of ASA model. In WP4 the case studies were assessed from different viewpoints. The analyses were carried out on interlinkages between the economic and social aspects, between economic and environmental aspects, between social and environmental aspects and between economic, social and environmental objectives. The possible synergies and trade-offs that exist between the different objectives of sustainable development were analysed. In addition, scenarios of future development paths relating to the synergies and trade-offs were constructed.
The synergies and trade-offs were analysed utilising intensity variables derived from different sustainability indicators describing the different dimensions of sustainability. The main findings for the analysis of trade-offs associated with demographic changes were the following.
On the methodological side:
1. The interaction between demographic changes and the performance of socioeconomic systems in relation to sustainability are complex, since they refer to different dimensions and different hierarchical levels and scale of analysis. Therefore they require the use of more sophisticated analytical tools no longer based on reductionist simplifications (belief in the myth that one scale fits all).
2. The MUSIASEM grammar, especially if used within the complementing set of analyses obtained with the DECOIN tool-kit, can address the existence of key trade-offs associated with demographic changes. The examples presented in this deliverables suggest that we should quickly improve the quality of our indicators of sustainability looking for more sophisticated analysis able to catch the complex set of relations of the chosen indicators across scales and dimensions.
3. It is possible to carry out a quantitative analysis across levels and dimensions: (i) data are available; and (ii) grammars and protocols are available.
On the practical side about demographic changes:
1. The concept of demographic transition is used by many to dismiss the preoccupation over the population bomb. However, our analysis indicates that the completion of the demographic transition in Europe will not solve our problems of sustainability in relation to the issue of population growth.
Whenever, a zero population growth is achieved because of low fertility and low mortality rates, then the price to pay is an aging society which can no longer stabilise its metabolic pattern using the classic pattern of economic development.
2. Gradients in level of development e.g. the differences in the quantitative value taken by BEP in the MUSIASEM grammar are unavoidable. These gradients in level of development will make irrelevant the result of a stabilisation of population growth obtained by low fertility and low mortality. In fact, in presence of socio-economic systems operating at a different value of their dynamic budget (BEP = SEH) it becomes convenient to produce hours of human activity in those societies when they have a lower overhead (a lower cost of entry so to speak), in societies operating at a low value of BEP. Then, when the new born hours of human activity become hours of adults, these hours will tend to move to society where they have a much higher productivity (in societies operating at a high value of SEH). This movement will become unavoidable since rich aged societies are in need of these labour hours. The existence of large gradients of BEP over short geographic distances (USA/Mexico; Spain and Italy / Africa; Thailand / Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh) is a recipe for large migratory flows.
3. There are unavoidable and predictable lag times in the changes of demographic variables. This fact would require a careful evaluation in relation to the usefulness of static indicators. At the moment Chinese economy has an enormous comparative advantage over the other economies (because of 60 % of adults entailing the lowest dependency ratio of the planet). According to some standard economic indicators China is very competitive for this reason. However, this peculiarity of China will be an Achilles heel in the near future, when all these adults will become too old to work and will require financial and medical assistance. In the same way, the remedy of immigration policy to boost the work supply to ageing societies temporarily works, but only: (i) in the short terms; and (ii) if the economy is in a period of economic expansion or steady state. On the contrary it can become a source of serious troubles when (i) all these adults immigrant will become old after making a lot of children; and (ii) in periods of economic recession - as illustrated in the last years by the widespread problems in those suburbs of European cities where immigrants are the majority of residents.
In WP5 interfacing the scientific results with societal / policy processes (stakeholder participation, sustainable consumption and production patterns) was assessed and policy recommendations were formulated.
WP5 addressed the interfaces between scientific achievements in ASA and the various user categories and interest groups (stakeholders) involved with these results. A conceptual and operational model that encapsulated the highlights of scientific sustainability research and that identified the critical success factors for a proper stakeholder involvement (from both a societal and policy perspective) was developed.
In the search for sustainable development at the interface of economic, environmental and energy factors the PENTAGON model plays an important role as a systematic framework for identifying critical success conditions. This approach has demonstrated its operational validity in various European policy studies (e.g. transportation, energy, environment, land use). The basic idea is formed by the following PENTAGON prism of necessary though not yet sufficient conditions for successful policies.
On the basis of the results briefly explained above, the policy recommendations emerging from the SMILE study were the following:
- Policies must be focused on the three prominent aspects of sustainability in a more balanced way; thus, social aspects should not be ignored in strategic policy development.
- Especially for the Finland case-study area, the social aspect is highlighted by the stakeholders, even though it is not included in sustainability-related policies.
- For the Italian case study which addresses historical heritage and physical sustainability, besides the main aspects of sustainability, physical systems - especially the built-environment - must also be included in the sustainability policies.
- The Romanian case study is the most distinctive one, as it is related to a country in transition. Romania needs a comprehensive policy which has sustainability as the main goal dealing with the three main dimensions of sustainability. Besides, while overcoming the transition period, Romania needs to strengthen the governance structure in a more efficient way.
- Scotland is the case-study where the sustainability objective is fully covered and most detailed in the policies pursued. However, additional policies (or improvement of current policies) must be carefully constructed and their focus needs to be more on the human capital and participation of stakeholders.
- For the Spanish case study, it is difficult - and even not really possible - to recommend policies or to retrieve policy lessons. But, besides the three main aspects, the physical system is quite important according to the stakeholders, and thus policies need to be designed by giving due importance to the physical system.
Potential impact:
The most important impact of SMILE so far has been the involvement of the stakeholders in the development of new sustainability policies: this has enabled new synergies between the scientific community and the societal processes, both at the local and national level. Even if the toolkit itself has not been used directly by policy makers, during the testing phase it was also possible to verify the validity of some of the Eurostat indicators, in particular those belonging to the SDI set.
The main dissemination event of SMILE was its final conference, which took place in Tampere, Finland on June 8th-9th 2011. The participants were almost 200 and all the partners of the SMILE consortium had the possibility to present the main results of the project in the different sessions. Other important dissemination activities included the publication of two books and several scientific articles, moreover the presentation of results took place also in other international conferences: a comprehensive list of all these activities is included in a specific section of this report.
Future dissemination activities will include the publication of other scientific articles.
Project website: http://www.smile-fp7.eu/