Vol. 9, No. 3 (2021): Regular Issue

The main objective of this paper was to analyze the Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) method, discussing its applicability based on papers that presented case studies or discussed the concept. Scientific productions from researchers and organizations were used to discuss advances in the O-LCA scientific approach. The systematic literature review method was performed, using the STARR-LCA (Zumsteg et al, 2012) and PRISMA (Moher et al, 2009) models, in 14 scientific papers indexed in two scientific databases, Scopus and Web of Science, from 2012 to 2020. It was given priority to the case studies that applied the OEF or UNEP / SETAC guides, but some authors approach other methods and practices as well, and some followed the steps of the OEF guidelines, ISO 14072 and O-LCA before the establishment of the methodologies themselves. As the O-LCA method is still recent, there are several understandings about its development. The data from this analysis helps organizations and researchers in understanding the divergences and issues that still need discussion to broaden the methodologies and emphasize their roles in the context of Life Cycle Assessment.

Environmental sustainability is aimed to improve human welfare and well-being by maintaining the integrity of the life supporting systems of the Earth. The aim of this study is to propose a framework to quantify and analyze the environmental impacts generated by local events and festivals. The proposed framework was tested in a local food festival in Italy and structured in two steps: collection of primary data; processing them based on the principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The results show that the 5,210 visitors that attended the three days of the food festival produced a total of 0.043 kg of waste per capita and 16 kg CO$_{\rm 2eq.}$ per capita. The total environmental impacts caused by all the participants in the three days were: climate change (83,270 kg CO$_{\rm 2eq.})$, particulate matter formation (162 kg PM10$_{\rm eq.})$, photochemical oxidant formation (530 kg NMVOC), terrestrial acidification (439 kg SO$_{\rm 2eq.})$, and freshwater eutrophication (9.17 kg P$_{\rm eq.})$. The results show that the highest environmental impacts are due to the transport of exhibitor members and materials, while visitor transport has a low impact considering that 80% are local visitors who went to the event on foot or by bike. This study provides indications to the organizers to reduce the environmental impacts in future editions and data to policy makers for defining hectares of reforestation needed to compensate the CO$_{\rm 2eq.}$ emissions of the event.

In this study we analyse two Environmental Disclosure Indices (EDI), one obtained from the mandatory reporting (annual report) and the other from the voluntary reporting (sustainability report). More specifically, we construct these indices and compare their evolution. In addition, we examine if they are affected by industry, environmental certification, firm's operating performance and corporate governance attributes, namely the number and independence of board members. The legitamicy, signalling and voluntary disclosure theories are used to underpin the theoretical relationship between company's characteristics, corporate governance and environmental disclosure. Based on portuguese listed companies from 2015 to 2017, the results show an increase of 14.6% in the EDI obtained from the annual reports and 25.8% in EDI obtained from the sustainability reporting. In addition, the industry, environmental certification, lucratively, number of members of the board of directors and the ratio of independent members tend to affect the annual report EDI. Regarding the sustainability reporting EDI, the results are identical except for industry and number of board members. While this study brings some insights to such topical issue in Accounting, there is a scarcity of studies for Portuguese firms.

Of concern the present study deals with an updated food chain model comprising one prey and two predator species in a natural environment with the inclusion of fear effect in both the prey and the median predator population through Holling type IV functional response. The present model is affluent with intra-specific competition among the hunter species having specific mortality. The model system emphasizes its characteristics in the proximity of the probable equilibrium position in the realm of biological dynamics. The response of the system is explored further for its stability analysis based on prerequisites and Hopf-bifurcation phenomena as well with respect to some significant model parameters. A quantitative analysis based on numerical simulation is also carried out in order to validate the analytical results and thereby the applicability of the model is established.

In Valle del Cauca, a wide range of agroecological production systems havebeen preserved, withstanding the expansionist onslaught of sugar cane monoculture. The study performed the emergy assessment to three agroecological farms in the municipalities of Andalucia, Sevilla and Buga, incorporating a novel flow of emergy called Sociocultural Heritage (H), which is determinant for the functioning of the agroecological farms in the Colombian context, which includes the contribution of internal family labor given by their permanent residence in the agroecosystem, the family's activity to promote agroecological culture with external actors to the farm, the memory of information, and the appropriation of knowledge. The identity architecture and management of the agrosystem were expressed by the total emergy (U), computing the emergy flows of: renewable natural resources (R), nonrenewable (N), Sociocultural Heritage (H), purchased materials (M), and contrated services (S). The efficiency of agroecological farms, involved inclusive emergetic indices that contain the Sociocultural Heritage (H): Percentage of Sociocultural Heritage (%H), Inclusive Renewability (%RH) and Inclusive Environmental Burden Index (ELRH). The H flow gave results between 6,95 and 42,19 E + 17 sej / year, representing 45,47% and 55,07% of total emergy as %H. The %RH index gave values higher than 91%, indicating that the farms have a high renewability. The ELRH index presented values between 0,05 and 0,09, indicating a low environmental load of agroecological systems and low pressure of agroecological farms on local ecosystems. The results of inclusive emergetic indixes from this study show that agroecological systems are more sustainable in the long term. This would not be so evident with results obtained through an emergy assessment without the inclusion of the H.

Pakistan is a resource-constrained country, poor in municipal and healthcare facilities. Existing healthcare structures in the country are often over-crowded, and an effective monitoring and assessment of their sustainability is therefore crucial. In this study, a systemic approach is outlined to evaluate the environmental sustainability of the largest and sole public hospital in the major city of Gujranwala, in the Punjab region of Pakistan. The Emergy (spelled with ``m'') Accounting (EMA) method is applied. Its operationalization allows to keep track of the amount of energy that was consumed in direct and indirect transformations to make a product or service. Relevant data include the hospital requirements in terms of energy, water, products, labor, and services. The EMA results offer a supply-side geobiosphere-oriented perspective. Emergy indicators show that the hospital is indirectly responsible for a significant stress on the environment, that might be decreased by an increased efficiency in the resource use. On the other hand, a hospital is a complex system, depending on skilled laborforce as well as on several fine imported medical products and related services, making it dependent on external socio-economic systems. The presented results address the geography dependent characteristics of the hospital, and can be used for benchmarking and future evaluation of similar hospitals within and across the region.

The pressure imposed by human-dominated systems on the natural environment and the search for more balanced social systems are current concerns worldwide. Among scales of attention and shared responsibilities, companies are also in the radar of and interested in to be more sustainable. An efficient way in disclosing information on companies' sustainability is through sustainability reports, such as the global reporting initiative (GRI) framework. Although recognized as an important alternative, the GRI is receiving criticisms about its ability in accurately express the meaning of sustainability. This work applies the paraconsistent annotated evidential logic (PAEL) on opinions of experts in the sustainability theme to verify whether the GRI indicators are aligned to the concept of `strong' sustainability. A survey applied to twenty-two experts from different field areas, backgrounds and work experiences on sustainability-related issues provided their beliefs and disbeliefs, in a quantitative way, about the ability of each of the 91 GRI indicators in expressing sustainability. Results show high dispersion (coefficient of variation $>$30%) among the experts opinions for 77 of the GRI indicators, in which the social category appears with the worst performance with its total 48 indicators with high dispersion. This is an indicative of different understandings by experts about the meaning of sustainability concept and/or the meaning and reach of GRI indicators in achieving sustainability. The PAEL reports that all three categories (economic, environmental and social) fall into the `paracomplete' region of the Cartesian unitary square's graph, indicating an inconclusive result about whether these three categories are able to capture and/or express the concept of strong sustainability. The overall performance (barycenter with beliefs of $\mu =0.26$ and disbeliefs of $\lambda =0.17$) also fall into the paracomplete region, rejecting the initial hypothesis that GRI may show strong sustainability. Recognizing the increasing importance of sustainability reports, this work contributes in identifying and suggesting improvements to the GRI developers on indicators that may better represent the strong sustainability and achieve its main goals. GRI's framework should be based on a clear sustainability model and provide through a simple, fast and understandable way, information about the purposes of each indicator. Focus for improvements should be especially directed to: EC4-6; EN18, 20, 21 and 34; LA2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14; SO3-8, 11; PR1-5, 7-9; HR3, 8-10.