Sustainability of the Swedish Sugar Sector

The book contributes to the development of tools and
methods for assessing sustainability and applies
them to an assessment of the Swedish sugar
production system. The aims are to compile an
overview of assessment approaches, to suggest a
method(s) for structuring and analyzing
sustainability issues and to appraise sustainability
impacts from Swedish sugar production. The analyses
uncovered a number of regional to global
sustainability challenges stemming from the
production system. An analysis using an assessment
model calculated the impacts for social and
ecological indicators for Sweden. A GIS-based
proximity analysis tool was used to calculate beet
transport distances and then estimated diesel fuel
consumption and air emissions for five pollutants
during the movement of beets from field to
processing facility. The assessment tool survey and
categorization showed that many available approaches
for assessing sustainability are incomplete when
more holistic interpretations of sustainability are
considered. A new approach to structure complex
issues of unsustainability is also presented.

Autorentext

The author holds a Ph.D. in Sustainability Science from Lund University, Sweden. His research focuses broadly on interactions between human and nature systems with specific a emphasis on sustainability assessments of food and bioenergy production systems. Research also centers on methods to conceptualize complex sustainability challenges.

Klappentext

The book contributes to the development of tools and methods for assessing sustainability and applies them to an assessment of the Swedish sugar production system. The aims are to compile an overview of assessment approaches, to suggest a method(s) for structuring and analyzing sustainability issues and to appraise sustainability impacts from Swedish sugar production. The analyses uncovered a number of regional to global sustainability challenges stemming from the production system. An analysis using an assessment model calculated the impacts for social and ecological indicators for Sweden. A GIS-based proximity analysis tool was used to calculate beet transport distances and then estimated diesel fuel consumption and air emissions for five pollutants during the movement of beets from field to processing facility. The assessment tool survey and categorization showed that many available approaches for assessing sustainability are incomplete when more holistic interpretations of sustainability are considered. A new approach to structure complex issues of unsustainability is also presented.