Report on regional indicator threshold / risk assessment, concepts and Land use Functional approach. Delivrable 3.2.1. SENSOR project, 6me PCRD
Résumé
The central objective of this report is to review the concept and meaning of « threshold » in the context of SENSOR project, taking into consideration all three pillars of sustainability, namely the environmental, social and economic aspects. Notions such as equilibrium disturbance, breakpoint or area of change define some common ground of the threshold concept that is shared by all three pillars. However, due to the pillars differences in terms of their scientific orientation and history, there is no single commonly shared and unified view on thresholds. In environmental research especially in ecology thresholds are closely associated with certain system-inherent processes, and are linked to the principle of (eco-)system resilience. In social and economic approaches, on the other hand, thresholds are considered to be closely related to an optimum value (e.g. costs/benefits relation to society) linked to social preference, pressure, market context or even policy decision but also the idea of substitutability between human and natural capital.