Description
Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment (AESA) offers a science-based framework to evaluate whether human activities remain within the planetary boundaries (PBs).This is done by downscaling the Safe Operating Space (SOS) -the space human activities can operate within to keep the environment similar to the Holocene conditions, which have allowed humankind to thrive- to a country/sector level by using predefined allocation principles. Yet, most AESA studies adopt a single, uniform sharing principle, typically population, to downscale global boundaries, neglecting both the heterogeneous nature of environmental mechanisms and the uncertainty embedded in sharing assumptions.
Here we developed a multi-dimensional (Multi-D) allocation model tailored to the biophysical and socioeconomic relevance of specific impact categories from the "EFv3.1" impact assessment method (PB-EF). The developed approach aims at a more robust, transparent, and context-sensitive allocation approach for mitigating the limitations inherent in applying a single, uniform sharing principle across all categories, which can lead to biased outcomes (favoring some entities while negatively disadvantaging others).
We demonstrate this by applying this novel framework to the EU-27 automotive sector, focusing on passenger light-duty mobility to analyze how varying sharing principles and uncertainties influence absolute sustainability outcomes.
This work represents a crucial first step toward a unified methodology designed for the equitable distribution of global carrying capacities among countries, sectors, and companies.
| Period | 21 May 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | SETAC Europe 36th Annual Meeting: Embrace the outlier: In Science, Regulations and Networks |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Maastricht, NetherlandsShow on map |
Keywords
- Sustainability Assessment
- Electric Vehicles
- Absolute Sustainability
- Sharing Principles
- Battery Packs