Use of a participatory approach to develop a regional assessment tool for bioenergy production

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in certification schemes and sustainability assessment tools for bioenergy, however these mechanisms are often too generic, numerous and too broad for regional or local level implementation. Furthermore, these assessments are often weighted toward economic and environmental sustainability with less focus on social, cultural and institutional factors. This study was intended to overcome these limitations. We developed a community-driven regional assessment tool for forest-based bioenergy production in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (USA). Stakeholders representing local landowners, farmers, township supervisors, timberland management companies, venture capitalists, government organizations and local interest groups generated a preliminary list of criteria and indicators (C&I) in a series of focus groups and interviews, and narrowed the list using multiple criteria analysis (MCA) in a workshop. Participants ranked environmental protection as the most important and relevant sustainability criteria, although policy and governance, and institutional capacity were also weighted highly. The final set of C&I consisted of 17 criteria and 31 indicators (in parentheses): Economic (6), Environmental (7), Social (8), Policy and regulations (4) and Institutional capacity (6). This set reflected the general balance across sustainability principles valued by the stakeholders. While expert-developed sustainability assessments are routinely biased toward easily quantifiable indicators, the indicators that were considered important and relevant by our participants included both quantitative as well as qualitative indicators, in almost equal proportions. This participatory MCA method identified criteria and indicators that reflect the regional context and the concerns of local stakeholders, and data for many of these indicators are readily available.

A Sustainable Power Supply System, Iran's Opportunities via Bioenergy

“…Many researches reviewed the political, financial, institutional, economic, environmental, social, and technical issues for bioenergy systems [37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. Some other researches assess sustainability indicators in three pillar environmental, social and economic issues for biomass-to-bioenergy systems [44][45][46][47][48].…”

Application of Agent-Based Modeling to Complex Systems

“…Previous work within the WUP region has identified a robust set of sustainability criteria and indicators of interest to local residents [141,142]. These criteria and indicators compare favorably with criteria that are generally selected for bioenergy systems [143] and form the basis of the life cycle impact methods selected.…”

“…Ultimately a tool intended for use by decision makers must evaluate biofuels as part of a complex system, including as much of the product life cycle as possible to ensure that an accurate determination of long and short-term consequences for sustainability can be made. [141,142,176]). This participatory approach also has the potential to mitigate environmental and social justice concerns.…”

“…The assessment indicators selected for this case study were drawn from the predecessor LCA [186] as well as regional concerns identified by the local community [141,142].…”

“…Local residents also indicate that they value forest aesthetics [141,142], but qualifications of the subjective impacts of clear-cutting can be quite variable (see [195][196][197]).…”