Sustainability Assessment Circle

AbstractSince the nineteen seventies, science and society have been discussing the worldwide ecological, economic, and social problems caused by industrialization and globalization. Sustainable development is perceived as a strategy for coping with these problems. The Rio +20 conference in 2012 confirmed the sustainability concept and introduced the green economy and the life cycle sustainable assessment as its implementation and operationalization strategy and tool.In the following, we will demonstrate our model of how sustainability can be measured from both top-down with sustainability indicator systems and bottom-up with life cycle indicators in a reflexive governing process, and we will show which requirements are necessary for such a process.In our top-down measurement approach, we aggregate the indicators into one index, the sustainable development index (SD-I), and our sustainable development bottom-up measurement concept (I-LCA) enables us to analyse the sustainability of a specific product chain. In our two-perspective approach, the bottom-up life cycle sustainable assessment enables us to take a deeper look at the effects of top-down measures on the production and consumption patterns along the single product chain. Our assessment circle shows the methodological connection between the top-down and bottom-up sustainability measurement method in a reflexive governing process. These results deliver the data for the monitoring process and enable the government to readjust its decision-making process and reset its measures [1] in a reflexive governance process