Focusing on sustaining human well-being: a rationale for an anthropocentric sustainability concept

In sustainability assessment, the damage or benefit to certain final aspects one wants to protect/sustain is assessed. For example in life cycle assessment (LCA) these aspects are the predefined areas of protection (AoPs): human health, natural ecosystems, the human/industrial system and natural resources. Hence an LCA outcome minimally exists out of four indicators that express damage or benefit to these AoPs. However, no sound approach is possible to aggregate these indicators (how much loss in species is equivalent to damage to human health?); conventional normalization is just a comparison with a standard reference system and does not interlink the indicators. An associated issue are the differences in viewpoints of sustainability assessment methodologies, e.g. ecosystem service assessment only focuses by definition on human well-being, leading to different outcomes. To resolve those related issues, there is a need to revise the theoretical/ethical backbone for sustainability assessment.\n Bourdeau (2004, J. Environ. Radioactiv.) reviews different environmental ethical visions/codes, with other priorities, on the ethics of mankind and nature: from absolute anthropocentrism moral rights for mankind) to the most radical ecocentrism (moral rights for all living and non-living entities). Likewise to these different levels, different types of sustainability may thus exist regarding what to primarily sustain. Because of the following reasons, an anthropocentric focus on human well-being seems appropriate: (1) the original definition of sustainable development describes the needs of mankind (WCED, 1987; Moldan et al., 2012, Ecol. Indic.), (2) in Article 1 of the Rio Declaration is stated (UNCED, 1992): U+201CHuman beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.U+201D, (3) as human it is impossible to look beyond a human viewpoint and desire for sustainability. An anthropocentric sustainability does not mean there is no attention towards other entities such as ecosystems. In anthropocentrism one protects the environment to sustain humans since nature provides vital services to us, though mankindU+2019s survival has priority over natureU+2019s maintenance. The development of a methodological framework is a next important goal. A clear linkage between damage to ecosystem and human well-being is for example possible through ecosystem service assessment. Future research should further develop a full-fledged framework based on this concept.