Truly sustainable living : planetary boundaries concept applied at the neighbourhood level

“如果地球上的所有居民都像我所在社区的居民那样生活，那么一个星球就足够了吗？”*本研究项目的目的是使公民、建筑师、城市规划师和社区的所有其他利益相关者能够从生命周期的角度确定过渡到“绝对可持续发展”的最有效途径。根据定义，可持续发展应该允许我们在不超越地球边界的情况下满足我们的需要。行星边界概念旨在了解地球上哪些安全活动空间仍可供人类使用：它侧重于人类的全球足迹，并评估是否已超过导致严重和不可逆转后果的全球阈值。它并不是要提供有关个人生活方式的任何信息。生命周期分析(LCA)是一种系统的决策工具，它可以确定一种替代方案是否比另一种方案更可取，以说明潜在的负担转移。在其他可能性中，生命周期评价可以应用于个人的生活方式。LCA是一种相对可持续性的工具：如果LCA允许确定生活方式A比生活方式B更可持续，它不允许说A在多大程度上是绝对可持续的。最近，我参与了一些努力，将生命周期分析和行星边界概念结合起来，本计划建立在这些最新和有希望的进展的基础上。*本研究计划旨在促进绝对可持续的生活方式，并指导向允许这种生活方式的可持续社区过渡。这意味着创建和应用新的诊断工具，以便正确看待具有行星边界的社区居民基于生命周期评价的环境足迹，以指导向绝对可持续社区的过渡，这些社区被定义为“允许其公民拥有尊重其个人在地球边界所占份额的生活方式的社区”。

“If all the inhabitants of the planet were living the way the inhabitants of my neighbourhood do, would one planet be enough?” ***The aim of the present research program is to enable the citizen, the architect, the town planner and all the other stakeholders of a neighbourhood to identify the most efficient pathways in the transition toward “absolute sustainability” with a life cycle perspective. Sustainable development should, by definition, allow us to fulfill our needs without exceeding the planetary boundaries. The planetary boundaries concept is meant to understand what margin of the planet safe operating space remains available for humanity: it focuses on a global footprint of humanity, and assesses if global thresholds leading to serious and irreversible consequences have been exceeded. It is not meant to give any information on the lifestyle of individuals. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a systemic decision-making tool that allows determining if an alternative is preferable to another accounting for potential burden shifting. LCA can be applied, among other possibilities, to individual lifestyles. LCA is a tool for relative sustainability: If LCA allows determining that lifestyle A is more sustainable than lifestyle B, it does not allow to say to what extent A is sustainable in absolute. Some efforts, to which I participated, have recently been done to combine life cycle analysis and planetary boundaries concepts and the present program builds on those recent and promising progresses.***This research program aims at promoting absolutely sustainable lifestyles and at guiding the transition toward sustainable neighbourhoods allowing such lifestyles. This implies the creation and the application of new diagnostic tools allowing to put in perspective the LCA based environmental footprint of the neighbourhood inhabitants with the planetary boundaries in order to guide the transition toward absolutely sustainable neighbourhoods defined as “Neighbourhoods that allows their citizens to have a lifestyle respecting their individual share of the planetary boundaries”.