A. Bosshard Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 77 2000 29–41 37
example, Section 5, or by the unexpected behaviour of nature caused by focusing on economic viewpoint
Bätzing and Wanner, 1994. The holistic approach can be illustrated with the metaphor of a house. To
serve as a house, a building needs a minimal stock of essential elements like cooking possibilities, heat-
ing installations, a waterproof roof, and so on. In the same sense, the concept of sustainable land-use has to
include a minimal fitting furnishing of viewpoints, or principal criteria, to be respected, if the construc-
tion is to function. Therefore, the election of criteria and the respective steps c–i are not completely free.
According to the concept of Bosshard et al. 1997, the minimal stock of principal criteria that have to
be respected for the assessment of land-use sustain- ability are: abiotic environment, biotic environment,
cultural values defined as emotional and mental well being of men and creativity of society, sociology and
economy Fig. 2. The authors demand that, in order to prohibit a sectional approach, from each of these
principal criteria main criteria groups, see Fig. 2 a balanced set of sub-criteria has to be included in the
assessment system. Thus, the necessary selection does not concern the highest hierarchical level of criteria
main criteria group because this level has general validity, but it concerns ‘main criteria’ and subsequent
levels. According to Fig. 2, a main criterion group de- duced from the leitbild of sustainable land-use is the
‘biotic environment’. In the following hierarchy level, a main criterion is ‘organisms’, followed by, e.g., the
criterion ‘diversity’. With Daly 1991, this balanced concept of sustainability is called here a ‘strong’
one, unlike several ‘weak’, reductionistic concepts of sustainability, that try to identify a key problem or a
principal reason for the inefficiency of a system, and then deduce the measures deemed necessary from this
main reason alone e.g., Ruh, 1997.
Summarising, the assessment tool, with the cen- tral element of a criteria checklist, fulfils three func-
tions: i it serves as a toolbox providing suitable cri- teria and referring to available knowledge in terms of
the project-adapted concretisation of the criteria steps c–h, resulting in an assessment system; ii it provides
an instrument to structure and facilitate the communi- cation among experts and between experts and people
concerned while constructing as well as implementing the assessment system leading to ‘social sustainabil-
ity’; and iii it shall assure that the important sets of aspects are taken into account to warrant holism and
efficiency of the assessment system.
4. Application of the assessment system: an example
It is shown here how the described assessment methodology can be used and in what respect it could
support a successful advance in the field of rural planning. As an example, a land consolidation project
on community level in the pre-Alps of the canton of Zürich, Switzerland, is taken GKF-Project; details in
Bosshard et al., 1996; Bosshard et al., 1997. It was running from 1993 to 1996.
4.1. The assessment system used in the project The project was based on a holistic, recently de-
veloped, completely new leitbild guiding image for sustainable land consolidation KAM, 1993. The par-
ticular aims were • the stimulation of labour in the region,
• the sustainable use of the landscape resources by agriculture and forestry, and
• the protection and promotion of the high natural values in the region.
The principal criteria of sustainability used in the project are summarised and weighed in Table 1. The
listed aspects were treated separately for agriculturally used and wooded areas; accordingly, the team of plan-
ners consisted of an agronomist, a forest engineer and an ecologist. For each of these three fields, the sus-
tainability goals have been worked out separately in a one-year discussion between the representatives of the
involved governmental departments, representatives of interested NGOs, and the farmers, the district council
and the engaged planning consultants. The deduction of the assessment criteria and the respective following
steps see Section 3.1. in each field were elaborated by the consultants themselves, and were not part of
these discussions.
Transposed to the terminology proposed in this arti- cle, the assessment system that resulted is given in
Table 2 for the two examples of the main criteria groups ‘abiotic environment’ and ‘biotic environ-
ment’. The table includes, for each criterion, also the important project phases of implementation and
evaluation.
38 A. Bosshard Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 77 2000 29–41
Table 1 Criteria of sustainability used in the GKF-Project First and second level of hierarchy, according to Fig. 2.
Main criteria groups
a
Main criteria
a
I Abiotic environment: Soil
b
II Biotic environment: Organisms
b
Biotops
b
Emotional well-being of animals
c
III Cultural values: Physical and emotional well-being of men
d
Art, science and religion
d
IV Sociology: Reproduction and life conditions
d
Social participation
c
V Economy: Productivity
c
Agriculture as regional economic base
b a
First and second level of criteria.
b
Criteria with high relative importance in the project.
c
Rather important.
d
Only marginally included in the project.
4.2. Evaluation of the success Despite an explicitly holistic approach, ambitious
sustainability goals, and a comprehensive involvement of organisations concerned and local interest groups,
the project was not successful in many parts Weiss, 1996. The sustainability assessment tool, in that time
not yet existing, according to Section 3, could have provided an essential aid, especially in the following
fields:
• Weiss 1996 identified the missing clear distinc- tion between leitbild, goals, criteria, measures and
instruments, and the inaccurate use of these concep- tually fundamental terms as the main reason for the
lack of success. This lack could have been avoided easily with the help of the concept proposed above.
• Weiss 1996 pointed out that the project structure splitting up agriculture, forest, nature protection and
socio-economy was not suitable. The main criteria groups Fig. 2 of the checklist could have been used
as guideline for a more suitable, integrated project concept.
• The third main problem of the project was identified in communication, both within the leading group
and between the leading group and the local popula- tion. As a member of the planning team, I guess that
a basic understanding — even among the strongly represented nature protection experts and represen-
tatives — took more than a year, and particularly crucial thoughts and concepts never reached clar-
ification, as would be indispensable for a fruitful, discursive planning process. The assessing method-
ology, as described here, would have forced all par- ticipants to make clear phrasings of their individual
visions — if necessary including the steps from step c onwards.
• The local population regarded the project as a ve- hicle for the implementation of nature protection
goals, and, accordingly, the general acceptance was low. A comparison of the criteria used in the project
Table 1 with the criteria checklist Fig. 2 re- veals that many more than half of the criteria and
goals used in the project were part of the main criteria I, II and V. Thus, aspects of human wel-
fare, culture, sociology, but also economy had been comparatively or totally neglected. The one-sided
approach damaged the above-mentioned Section 3.2 principle of a balanced selection of the criteria
and, therefore, was, in this case sociologically not sustainable.
The analysis of subsequent projects, where the de-
scribed assessment methodology was tested, revealed two other benefits:
• The criteria checklist helped to find unconventional solutions and new project perspectives. In many
cases, interdisciplinary, synergetic solutions are not realised because the experts involved are used to
think in the regular terms of their own subject. So, they do not realise the existence nor the feasibility
of possibilities of combining different viewpoints and instruments, and, thereby creating unusual com-
plementary strategies. The checklist provides for a
A. Bosshard Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 77 2000 29–41 39
Table 2 Assessment, implementation and evaluation of sustainability by an assessment system in the agricultural planning project GKF: examples
of the Main Criteria Groups I and II of Fig. 2. Since the terminology and systematology proposed here did not yet exist during the time period of the project 1993–1996, the grouping and expressions of the table have not been used in the project
40 A. Bosshard Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 77 2000 29–41
multidimensional mental playfield, for evolving and testing ideas, which induces creative processes.
• The use of a systematic assessment procedure guar- anteed an efficient and goal-oriented approach: the
use of a matrix, like Table 2, forces an explicit elab- oration of each step in the assessment procedure
and reveals, e.g., weak or missing points. The assessment system is able to support the
project procedure not only regarding the assessment and planning of sustainability aspects, but also during
the subsequent implementation and evaluation phase. An example is given in Table 2: each criterion is to
be related to a particular implementation and evalua- tionmonitoring strategy. The used methodology, i.e.,
the systematology and terminology of implementa- tion and evaluation, is not within the focus of this
paper see, e.g., Frey and Blöchlinger, 1991; Marti and Stutz, 1993; Blab et al., 1994; Bosshard et al.,
1997; Frede and Bach, 1998.
5. Conclusions
