Bringing the “Missing Pillar” into Sustainable Development Goals: Towards Intersubjective Values-Based Indicators

Abstract

This paper argues that the need for a core -fourth pillar‖ of sustainability/sustainable development, as demanded in multiple arenas, can no longer be ignored on the grounds of intangibility. Different approaches to this vital but missing pillar (cultural-aesthetic, religious-spiritual, and political-institutional) find common ground in the area of ethical values. While values and aspects based on them are widely assumed to be intangible and immeasurable, we illustrate that it is possible to operationalize them in terms of measurable indicators when they are intersubjectively conceptualized within clearly defined practical contexts. The processes require contextual localization of items, which can nonetheless fit into a generalizable framework. This allows useful measurements to be made, and removes OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2013, 5 3036 barriers to studying, tracking, comparing, evaluating and correlating values-related dimensions of sustainability. It is advocated that those involved in operationalizing sustainability (especially in the context of creating post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals), should explore the potential for developing indicators to capture some of its less tangible aspects, especially those concerned with ethical values.

Urban Food Systems Strategies: A Promising Tool for Implementing the SDGs in Practice †

“…As a whole, the successful implementation of the SDGs is deemed to be contingent upon science-based [13,[16][17][18] and time-sensitive [19] metrics and a social-ecological systems approach [20] to sustainability planning. While neither goal-setting nor technocratic measurement alone are a guaranty for success-and a deeper ethical foundation must be laid at the outset of sustainability governance and planning [21][22][23]. A shared dashboard of SDG indicators can go a long way in catalyzing action (and debate) within and across countries.…”

Sustainability of Off-Grid Photovoltaic Systems for Rural Electrification in Developing Countries: A Review

“…As explained below, the gathered information was allocated according to a set of indicators associated with the sustainability dimensions considered in this paper: institutional, economic, environmental and socio-cultural; see, e.g., [22][23][24]. PV systems may be used in different ways: technological solutions range from very small applications such as Solar Pico Systems (SPS) (i.e., one to 10 watts, e.g., used for lightning to replace kerosene lamps) to mid-scale solutions like Solar Home Systems (SHS); the latter usually have a capacity of a 10-130 watts peak (up to a 250 watts peak has been installed in some households) [7][8][9].…”

Global consciousness and pillars of sustainable development

“…A sustainability implementation guided by such a model is an approach which might yield no results. To address this problem, researchers (Burford et al, 2013;Filho et al, 2015;Velasco and Harder, 2014) propose to enhance the UN model with a "missing pillar" (Burford et al, 2013) that would "consciously and systematically incorporate a deeper, at once more internal and more contextual dimension, designated variously as culturalaesthetic, political-institutional, or religious-spiritual" (Velasco and Harder, 2014, p. 6554).…”

“…However, the benefits of sustainability implementations in academia through greening, sciences and curricula to its main beneficiaries -a young generation of students -are less certain. More to that, an "unrecognized tangible dimension" (Burford et al, 2013) of shaping sustainability consciousness of students within the walls of HE systems remains omitted from educational research and policy discourses (Filho et al, 2015). Could sustainability be engraved, or "ensouled"[2] (Savelyeva and Park, 2012) in the minds and hearts of university students?…”