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Circles of Sustainability is a method for understanding and assessing sustainability, and for managing projects directed towards socially sustainable outcomes. It is intended to handle 'seemingly intractable problems' such as outlined in sustainable development debates. The method is mostly used for cities and urban settlements. Circles of Sustainability, and its treatment of the social domains of ecology, economics, politics and culture, provides the empirical dimension of an approach called 'engaged theory'. Developing Circles of Sustainability is part of larger project called 'Circles of Social Life', using the same four-domain model to analyze questions of resilience, adaptation, security, reconciliation. It is also being used in relation to thematics such as 'Circles of Child Wellbeing' (with World Vision). The rationale for this new method is clear. As evidenced by Rio+20 and the UN Habitat World Urban Forum in Napoli (2012) and Medellin (2014), sustainability assessment is on the global agenda. However, the more complex the problems, the less useful current sustainability assessment tools seem to be for assessing across different domains: economics, ecology, politics and culture.〔Liam Magee, Paul James, Andy Scerri, ‘Measuring Social Sustainability: A Community-Centred Approach’, Applied Research in the Quality of Life, vol. 7, no. 3., 2012, pp. 239–61.〕 For example, the Triple Bottom Line approach tends to take the economy as its primary point of focus with the domain of the environmental as the key externality. Secondly, the one-dimensional quantitative basis of many such methods means that they have limited purchase on complex qualitative issues. Thirdly, the size, scope and sheer number of indicators included within many such methods means that they are often unwieldy and resist effective implementation. Fourthly, the restricted focus of current indicator sets means that they do not work across different organizational and social settings—corporations and other institutions, cities, and communities.〔Liam Magee, Andy Scerri, Paul James, Lin Padgham, James Thom, Hepu Deng, Sarah Hickmott, and Felicity Cahill, ‘Reframing Sustainability Reporting: Towards an Engaged Approach’, Environment, Development and Sustainability, vol. 15, no. 1, 2013, pp. 225–43.〕 Most indicator approaches, such as the Global Reporting Initiative or ISO14031, have been limited to large corporate organizations with easily definable legal and economic boundaries. Circles of Sustainability was developed to respond to those limitations. ==History== The method began with a fundamental dissatisfaction with current approaches to sustainability and sustainable development, which tended to treat economics as the core domain and ecology as an externality. Two concurrent developments provided impetus: a major project in Porto Alegre, and a United Nations’ paper called ''Accounting for Sustainability'', Briefing Paper, No. 1, 2008. The researchers developed a method and an integrated set of tools for assessing and monitoring issues of sustainability while providing guidance for project development.〔Stephanie McCarthy, Paul James and Carolines Bayliss, eds, ''Sustainable Cities, Vol. 1'', United Nations Global Compact, Cities Programme, New York and Melbourne, 2010, 134pp.〕 The method was then further refined through projects in Melbourne and Milwaukee, and through an ARC-funded cross-disciplinary project〔‘Semantic Technologies to Help Machines Understand Us: Fuji Xerox leads RMIT to $1.4m Grant for Real-Time Green Reports’, ''IT Business'', 30 October 2009. Mary-Lou Considine, ‘UN-RMIT Relationship Tackles Problems in the Pacific’, ''Ecos Magazine'', August–September 2009, p. 150.〕 that partnered with various organizations including Microsoft Australia, Fuji Xerox Australia, the City of Melbourne, World Vision, UN-Habitat and most crucially Metropolis.〔Andy Scerri and Paul James, ‘Communities of Citizens and “Indicators” of Sustainability’, ''Community Development Journal'', vol. 45, no. 2, 2010, pp. 219–36. Andy Scerri and Paul James, ‘Accounting for Sustainability: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Research in Developing ‘Indicators’ of Sustainability’, ''International Journal of Social Research Methodology'', vol. 13, no. 1, 2010, pp. 41–53. Paul James and Andy Scerri, ‘Auditing Cities through Circles of Sustainability’, Mark Amen, Noah J. Toly, Patricia L. Carney and Klaus Segbers, eds, ''Cities and Global Governance'', Ashgate, Farnham, 2011, pp. 111–36. Andy Scerri, ‘Ends in View: The capabilities approach in ecological/sustainability economics’, Ecological Economics 77, 2012, pp. 7-10.〕 A further refining of the ecological index quadrant is underway in Canada. The Canadian project is significant because it is developing an ongoing index that measures and scores the ecological footprints cities have on their surrounding ecosystems. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Circles of Sustainability」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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