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| 1 |
ID:
110432
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Cerrado, a savannah region, is Brazil's second largest ecosystem after the Amazon rainforest and is also threatened with imminent destruction. In the present study emergy synthesis was applied to assess the environmental performance of a coffee farm located in Coromandel, Minas Gerais, in the Brazilian Cerrado. The effects of land use on sustainability were evaluated by comparing the emergy indices along ten years in order to assess the energy flows driving the production process, and to determine the best production model combining productivity and environmental performance. The emergy indices are presented as a function of the annual crop. Results show that Santo Inácio farm should produce approximately 20 bags of green coffee per hectare to accomplish its best performance regarding both the production efficiency and the environment. The evaluation of coffee trade complements those obtained by contrasting productivity and environmental performance, and despite of the market prices variation, the optimum interval for Santo Inácio's farm is between 10 and 25 coffee bags/ha.
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| 2 |
ID:
096718
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The quality and the power of human activities affect the external environment in different ways that can be measured and evaluated by means of several approaches and indicators. While the scientific community has been publishing several proposals for sustainable development indicators, there is still no consensus regarding the best approach to the use of these indicators and their reliability to measure sustainability. It is important, therefore, to question the effectiveness of sustainable development indicators in an effort to continue in the search for sustainability. This paper compares the results obtained with emergy accounting with five global Sustainability Metrics (SMs) proposed in the literature to verify if metrics are communicating coherent and similar information to guide decision makers towards sustainable development. Results obtained using emergy indices are discussed with the aid of emergy ternary diagrams. Metrics are confronted with emergy results, and the degree of variability among them is analyzed using a correlation matrix created for the Mercosur nations. The contrast of results clearly shows that metrics arrive at different interpretations about the sustainability of the nations studied, but also that some metrics may be grouped and used more prudently. Mercosur is presented as a case study to highlight and explain the discrepancies and similarities among Sustainability Metrics, and to expose the extent of emergy accounting.
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