Social Sustainability
In addition to human well-being, including, among others, working conditions, health and social relationships, social sustainability encompasses animal welfare and landscape aesthetics. The indicators require further adjustments in order to be applicable within the context of a life cycle analysis.
In contrast to the indicators for the environment and the economy, those for determining social sustainability are still not sufficiently developed for use in a comprehensive sustainability assessment. In particular, the methods must be expanded in order to adequately depict the upstream chains so that these can be used in a life cycle analysis. The use of existing methods as part of a comprehensive life cycle analysis requires various adjustments. Thus, a standardisation and aggregation for human well-being indicators is being developed and the inclusion of upstream processes is also taken into account via a social sustainability analysis (SLCA, social life cycle assessment).
The quantitative determination of workload on the basis of the ‘Labour Scope’ tools developed at Agroscope requires the definition of various standard production processes and the harmonisation of the machinery fleet, in order to achieve compatibility with the newly developed ‘SALCAfuture’ IT tool. Furthermore, an LCA-compatible method is to be developed to assess animal health (animal well-being and animal welfare) for common livestock species which will include the entire value chain and establish the product reference.