Last March 23rd the members of the ARIES4 project organized an online workshop to reflect on the definition of sustainability and the challenges of measuring it, as well as to exchange information and ideas on the work to be done in the project and its development. The day opened at 9 am (CET) with a series of presentations given by Profs. Avit Bhowmik from Karlstad University, Nuria Osés from UPNA and Martin Hannibal from SDU, who dealt with the definition of sustainability, its dimensions, how sustainability is measured and how the different work packages of the project are trying to answer the different questions. The day continued with an open discussion among the team members.
The main conclusion of the workshop was that, in spite of the many definitions and discussion of what sustainability is, the project needs a common framework to understand and analyze sustainability. This common framework considers three dimensions: social, environmental and economic. All three pillars are relevant. Furthermore, the project will be aligned with views that seek strong sustainability (i.e. progress in global sustainability cannot be achieved at the expense of one of the three pillars).
