Oldřich Trenz

Sustainability Indicators: Development and Application for the Agriculture Sector

Current trends of indicators-based sustainability evaluation (i.e., measurement of environmental, social, economic and governance performance) and corporate sustainability reporting are discussed in the chapter focusing on the agriculture sector. From the perspective of agricultural policy, there are two broad decisions to be made: which indicators to recommend and promote to farmers, and which indicators to collect to assist in agriculture policy-making. We introduce several general approaches for indicators to be collected which will assist in policy-making (European Union, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) in the first part of our chapter and, given the differences in decision-making problems faced by these sets of decision makers. We continue in the second part of chapter with indicators to recommend and promote to farmers in the European Union. Those sets of indicators are likely to differ substantially, potentially with little or no overlap between indicators for regional, national or international decision-makers or for assistance in policy-making. The relationship between environmental and sustainability indicators and corporate sustainability reporting is an important issue; and the possibility of the utilization of information and communication technology and XBRL taxonomy is discussed here.

Information System for Global Sustainability Reporting

In the article we describe various methodologies considered for company performance assessment – such as Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other standardized reporting frameworks. We analyse and consider common characteristics of the used performance indicators. We further examine different properties of the defined key performance indicators and additional performance indicators in order to propose a data model for a generic information system. The proposed data model aims to be reusable for different performance assessment methodologies. We introduce several abstractions of the assessment methodologies on the level of performance indicators and report outputs. It is important to allow the organization to use the same data in several different reports and simplify and speed-up the reporting process. The resulting core data model of the information system is described in the article, along with a brief description of the implemented prototype system.

Benchmarking Systems and Methods for Environmental Performance Models

Many business activities and procedures influence the environment. This environmental impact has to be assessed. We consider companies where the procedure of measuring environmental performance is applied through an environmental management system. The benchmark methodology has been developed precisely for these companies. This benchmark methodology can be used in the initial assessment as a screening method in sectors of different economic activities. The paper surveys the methodology that is designated for the environmental performance assessment of companies in the food-processing sector and introduces the architecture of the Web environmental benchmarking and reporting system that has been also developed.