Michelle Graymore

Significance of environment in the assessment of sustainable development: the case for South West Victoria

Michelle Graymore, Anne Wallis and Anneke Richards
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Deakin University, Victoria

Abstract:
The assessment of sustainable development is often based on the three pillars of sustainability model using social, economic and environmental indicators. It is thought that by measuring the performance of each of these systems, information can be gained about the sustainability of the whole system. However, there has been little attempt to evaluate if such an assumption is true. During the development of a sustainability assessment framework for south west Victoria, Australia, it has become evident that this approach to sustainability assessment does not provide an accurate assessment of system sustainability. Throughout the project, from stakeholder prioritisation of indicators to the multiple criteria analysis of sustainability, environmental indicators were considered the most important for assessing regional sustainability. As a consequence, the sustainability assessment produced shows that in south west Victoria, sustainability is largely determined by the condition of the environment. This finding highlights the current disconnect between the theory and practice of sustainability. Here, we describe a framework for sustainability assessment that attempts to re-connect theory to practice.