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Clean Techn Environ Policy (2014) 16:691702
DOI 10.1007/s10098-013-0696-1
ORIGINAL PAPER
The triple value model: a systems approach to sustainable solutions
Joseph Fiksel Randy Bruins Annette Gatchett
Alice Gilliland Marilyn ten Brink
Received: 8 June 2013 / Accepted: 17 November 2013 / Published online: 30 November 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg (outside the USA) 2013
Abstract The unintended environmental impacts of economic development threaten the continued availability of ecosystem services that are critical to human well-being. An integrated systems approach is needed to characterize sustainability problems and evaluate potential solutions. The Triple Value Model is an innovative framework that depicts the dynamic linkages and resource ows among industrial, societal, and environmental systems. The U.S. EPA has begun using this model to support transdisciplinary research projects that focus upon water resources, communities, and other broad sustainability themes. One recent application addresses opportunities for mitigation of nutrient impairment in the Narragansett Bay watershed, and has produced a policy simulation tool that enables evaluation of alternative sustainable solutions.
Keywords Sustainability Systems thinking
Triple value model Integrated assessment
Introduction: sustainability and value creation
The inexorable growth of the global economy presents a challenge to continued human well-being and protection of the environment. In particular, the unintended environmental impacts of economic and human development
threaten the continued availability of critical ecosystem services. Many scientists believe that human societies have already overshot the Earths safe operating space in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, nitrogen ows, and other key metrics of planetary health (Rock-strom et al. 2009). Elimination of poverty and rising afuence in developing nations will only exacerbate these threats. It is becoming clear that a signicant, worldwide transformation of production and consumption patterns is needed to enable continued improvement in human well being while protecting critical environmental resources this is the essence of the sustainability challenge. The implied behavioral changes will require a combination of technological innovation, global cooperation, and political will.
The origins of the sustainability concept can be traced to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, which predated the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and formally established as a national goal the creation and maintenance of conditions under which [humans] and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulll the social, economic and other requirements...