Integrated Sustainability Assessment of Climate Impact, Land, Energy and Water Use in Germany against the Background of the UN Green Economy Model and Germany's Sustainability Strategy

At the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, the United Nations declared that a "green economy in the context of sustainable development" is a chance for economic development in the institutional framework of sustainable development [1]. The German Government supports the UN approach for a green economy [2]. We intend to analyse German society and its CLEW systems (climate, land, energy and water) because the UN defined the latter as key issues in the green economy [1]. Against this background, we developed an integrated sustainability assessment framework to monitor and measure the development of the green economy in Germany based on the EU Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive framework [3, 4]. Whether sustainable development has been achieved in Germany and its CLEW systems will be determined by an analysis of all quantifiable indicators of the enlarged German sustainability strategy [5]. Our measuring approach aggregates the indicators of the German sustainability strategy into one index [6]. Our sustainability gap index reveals the heterogeneity of the development of the sustainability indicators of the German sustainability strategy. The index calculates the degree to which sustainability is achieved and our integrated assessment approach enables us to identify contradictions and similarities between the CLEW systems and the overall German socio-economic system. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.