Sustainability assessment: Testing and validating a hierarchical framework in the Portuguese wine sector context

Abstract

Wine-grape growing is extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts for deeply relying on weather conditions. Considering the notable shortage of multidimensional instruments designed specifically to assess sustainability of winegrowing systems, a three-tier hierarchical framework has been developed. This work presents an initial testing of the theoretical framework's assessment approach, and its capacity to take the context in which the evaluation is taking place into account. For such, after the presentation of general assumptions of the framework, figurative cases of the Portuguese wine industry were evaluated regarding one of the 27 themes of the assessment tool. The theme here tested and presented (theme water use and wastewater) is composed by three sub-themes, with three indicators each. At the end, nine indicators covering from the water footprint, to the wastewater management or local water availability were measured and evaluated. Information gathered and used for this work was based on literature and official sources involved in collecting and elaborating water related data. Results of this initial validation were promising and showed that structured and hierarchical design approaches may be a functional way to holistically assess the sustainability performance of complex production sectors such as the wine industry.