Sustainability Assessment

Sustainability assessment is an innovative tool designed to enable individuals and organisations engaged in sustainability projects to assess their performance in a consistent and holistic manner.

As an essentially integrative concept, sustainability has commonly been regarded as the prolong interplay between economic, social and environmental systems. Our assessment framework goes beyond the triple bottom line assessment and offers practical guidance to identify, assess and measure key impacts of a project or intervention. The assessment results generated can help key actors and stakeholders to understand and communicate the shared value created in the context of sustainability, thus improving the cooperation among all parties to attain satisfactory project sustainability performance.

The proposed assessment framework is being piloted on the Programme’s own initiatives and activities. The knowledge and skills gathered would be transferred to interested individuals and organisations who share the same sustainability vision.

 

Core Dimensions

Our multi-dimensional framework offers a model that evaluates the full spectrum of sustainability performance against 6 core dimensions.

 

Publication:

Policy for Sustainability Lab, Centre for Civil Society and Governance, The University of Hong Kong. (2023). Sustainability Impact Assessment: Framework and Report on HSBC Rural Sustainability.

The first part of the publication details a sustainability assessment framework and methodology that has been developed along the course of the Rural Sustainability Programme. This is followed by part two, which explains its application and reports the Programme’s sustainability attainment at different scales and levels to the environment, individuals, organisations and the wider society. The publication is available upon request by email (ruralsd@hku.hk).