Consensus as the measure of sustainability

Abstract

Sustainable development is the new water resources paradigm of the1990s. Yet its practical implications seem to be elusive. Metrics formeasuring the level of sustainability are eagerly sought. It is verydifficult to capture the important features, and maintain many of thevalued details, of environmental and social systems when complete orappropriate economic accounting is attempted. A much more transcendentand flexible metric may be consensus. Consensus as a sustainabilitymetric describes the level in which stakeholders are satisfied with asolution to a question. Consensus assumes that an appropriate group ofstakeholders is able to collaborate in assessing proposed solutions toenvironmental problems or development initiatives. It also assumes thatthe collective best which a group of stakeholders has to offerimplicitly provides insight to the needs of future generations. Thispaper describes an approach for assessing a level of consensus. Thebenefits are: estimation of areas of common understanding; andclarification of conflicting values.