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Many businesses are pursuing sustainability for a variety of reasons, ranging from increased financial competitiveness to meeting upcoming regulatory initiatives. Choosing the appropriate indicators to measure environmental progress, however, is a critical challenge. Using data from the automotive industry, this paper illustrates how indicators can be incorrectly selected, misused, or misinterpreted, resulting in misleading conclusions. Such issues are especially critical when using indicators in emerging tools, such as life cycle analysis, to assess the impacts posed by alternative designs. Furthermore, incorporating the impacts represented by the indicators into the decision-making process can be problematic, since these indicators will be used to assess the success or failure of design changes. The automotive sector is an ideal example because it has implemented a variety of measures to meet its environmental challenges: numerous indicators and decision approaches have been developed for or adapted to the industry and it has had to address important issues, such as the use of normalized metrics and appropriate weighting schemes. Key words: indicators, automotive industry, sustainability, environment, life cycle assessment, decision making.Plusieurs compagnies visent la durabilité pour diverses raisons, allant de l'amélioration de la compétitivité financière à la rencontre de futures initiatives réglementaires. Le choix des indicateurs appropriés pour mesurer le progrès environnemental est cependant un défi important. En utilisant les données de l'industrie automobile, cet article illustre comment les indicateurs peuvent être mal choisis, mal utilisés ou mal interprétés, donnant lieu à des conclusions trompeuses. De telles questions sont particulièrement importantes lors de l'utilisation d'indicateurs dans les nouveaux outils, tels que l'analyse du cycle de vie, afin d'évaluer les impacts posés par d'autres conceptions. De plus, l'incorporation, dans le procédé de prise de décision, des impacts représentés par les indicateurs peut représenter un problème puisque ces indicateurs seront utilisés pour évaluer le succès ou l'échec des changements apportés à la conception. Le secteur automobile est un exemple idéal puisqu'il a implanté diverses mesures pour rencontrer ses défis environnementaux : de nombreux indicateurs et des approches décisionnelles ont été développés ou adaptés à l'industrie automobile et celle-ci a eu à régler des questions importantes, telles que l'utilisation de paramètres normalisés et des barèmes de pondérations appropriés. Mots clés : indicateurs, industrie automobile, durabilité, environnement, évaluation du cycle de vie, prise de décision.[Traduit par la Rédaction] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Evidence on the role of information and knowledge for policy making shows that policy actors seldom use information as a direct input to their decisions. Similar patterns of (non)use have been identified in the case of indicators in the environmental and sustainable development policy domains. The objective of the paper is to elucidate the patterns of environmental indicator use and to argue for the introduction of a ‘politics of policy indicators’. With a limited set of characteristics (e.g. legitimacy, credibility and salience) of indicators, which help to apprehend the usability of indicators, we argue that the usability profile of indicators can be analysed as a matter of construction and deliberation by indicator creators and policy actors. The performance of indicators as policy tools – as rendered with their usability profile – is co-dependent of the institutional embeddedness of the indicators. Our conclusion makes the case that if environmental improvements towards more sustainability are partly relying on the quality and uptake of information into policy processes in order to steer decisions, then the ‘usability profile’ of indicators itself should be subject to collective and conscious steering. This call to ‘steer the steering’ is supported by the wider calls to initiate patterns of ‘reflexive governance’ within the sustainability policy domain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In a recent paper, “A combined tool for environmental scientists and decision makers: ternary diagrams and emergy accounting.” [Giannetti BF, Barrella FA, Almeida CMVB. A combined tool for environmental scientists and decision makers: ternary diagrams and emergy accounting. J Clean Prod, in press] Ternary diagrams were proposed as a graphical tool to assist emergy analysis. The graphical representation of the emergy accounting data makes it possible to compare processes and systems with and without ecosystem services, to evaluate improvements and to follow the system performance over time. The graphic tool is versatile and adaptable to represent products, processes, systems, countries, and different periods of time. The use and the versatility of ternary diagrams for assisting in performing emergy analyses are illustrated by means of five examples taken from the literature, which are presented and discussed. It is shown that emergetic ternary diagram''s properties assist the assessment of the system efficiency, its dependence upon renewable and non-renewable inputs and the environmental support for dilution and abatement of process emissions. With the aid of ternary diagrams, details such as the interaction between systems and between systems and the environment are recognized and evaluated. Such a tool for graphical analysis allows a transparent presentation of the results and can serve as an interface between emergy scientists and decision makers, provided the meaning of each line in the diagram is carefully explained and understood. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]