Kokossis, Antonis; Georgiadis, Michael C.; Pistikopoulos, Efstratios N.
(Ed.)
Global goals like “Net-zero”, “Nature-positive”, and “Socially Just” require human activities to reduce emissions, restore nature, and be socially equitable. This work proposes an approach that includes ecological capacity and social justice requirements to guide engineering decisions and designs. We utilize the supply and demand of ecosystem services to identify the safe and just operating space1,2. The ecologically safe space is determined by the multiscale framework of Techno-Ecological Synergy (TES). The degree of overshoot quantifies the absolute environmental sustainability (AES) at the relevant spatial scale3,4. For the socially just space, we calculate a minimum threshold of necessary goods and services to meet basic food, energy, and water5 needs. We demonstrate this approach by a multiobjective supply chain design of Li-battery which minimizes the ecological and social overshoot simultaneously.
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