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Principal sustainability components: empirical
analysis of synergies between the three pillars of
sustainability
Ralph Hansmann
a
, Harald A. Mieg
b
& Peter Frischknecht
a
a
Department of Environmental Sciences , Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , ETH
Zurich, SOL F.7, Sonneggstrasse 33, Zurich , CH-8092 , Switzerland
b
Institute of Geography , Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin , Unter den Linden 6, Berlin ,
D-10099 , Germany
Published online: 25 Jun 2012.
To cite this article: Ralph Hansmann , Harald A. Mieg & Peter Frischknecht (2012) Principal sustainability components:
empirical analysis of synergies between the three pillars of sustainability, International Journal of Sustainable
Development & World Ecology, 19:5, 451-459, DOI: 10.1080/13504509.2012.696220
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2012.696220
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International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology
Vol. 19, No. 5, October 2012, 451459
Principal sustainability components: empirical analysis of synergies between the three
pillars of sustainability
Ralph Hansmann
a
*, Harald A. Mieg
b
and Peter Frischknecht
a
a
Department of Environmental Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETHZurich, SOL F.7, Sonneggstrasse 33, Zurich CH-8092,
Switzerland;
b
Institute of Geography, Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin D-10099, Germany
Starting from the concept of three fundamental sustainability dimensions (environmental, social, and economic), this study
investigated professional contributions to sustainability by means of principal component analysis (PCA). Graduates from
the Environmental Sciences program (N =542) at ETH Zurich described their best professional contributions to sustainable
development. Next, they evaluated whether their best practice example contributed to achieving any of the ve environmen-
tal, social, and economic objectives of the Swiss national sustainability strategy. These judgments served as the basis for a
PCA aiming to identify principal sustainability components (PSCs) covering typical synergies between sustainability objec-
tives within and transcending the three fundamental dimensions. Three PSCs capturing important synergies were identied.
PSC 1 Product and Process Development reects how ecological innovation and modernization can generate social and eco-
nomic benets and at the same time facilitate the reduction in use of as well as the responsible use of natural resources. PSC
2 Education and Social Economics reects how educational activities and sociocultural sustainability initiatives can simul-
taneously promote income and employment, social and human capital, and free personal development. PSC 3 Protection of
Nature and Humans covers the synergetic benets which protection of natural spaces and biodiversity and the reduction of
environmental risks have for the protection of health and safety of the population. The study also revealed that integration of
environmental, social, and economic aspects is often connected to conicts between these dimensions. However, contribu-
tions which consider the economic situation of future generations or enhance social and human capital achieved considerable
integration but showed no inclination toward such conicts.
Keywords: sustainability; pillars; dimensions; synergies; integration; economic; social; environmental
Sustainable development and its three pillars
Sustainable development has been adopted by the United
Nations as a guiding principle for economic, environ-
mental, and social development that aspires to meet the
needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs and an
equitable sharing of the environmental costs and benets
of economic development between and within countries
(United Nations 1987: 1). According to WCED (1987),
sustainability entails protection of the environment and nat-
ural resources as well as to provide social and economic
welfare to the present and to subsequent generations.
Sustainable development is also understood as one that
is socially just and ethically acceptable. Sustainability has
thus been acknowledged as a major normative regulation
principle for contemporary society which includes a long-
term ethical relationship of present generations with those
of the future (Laws et al. 2004; Scholz 2011). Sustainability
is an integrative concept which considers environmental,
social, and economic aspects as three fundamental dimen-
sions. These three dimensions have been denoted as pillars
of sustainability, which reect that responsible develop-
ment requires consideration of natural, human, and eco-
nomic capital or colloquially speaking the planet, people,
and prots (Elkington 1997; Kajikawa 2008; Schoolman
et al. 2012). However, approaches aiming to balance these
*Corresponding author. Email: hansmann@env.ethz.ch
three pillars have been criticized since they involve differ-
ent types of values (e.g., biodiversity, beauty of landscape
vs. costs, prots vs. equity, health and cultural values,
etc.) that are not directly commensurable relative to each
other (Hirsch Hadorn 1999; Mieg 2010). Furthermore,
controversial interests of different stakeholders frequently
conict within a single pillar of sustainability (i.e., social
conicts; economic conicts; conicts over environmen-
tal issues; or preferences), and therefore balancing their
interests regarding one pillar is sometimes more in the
foreground than to balance social, economic, and environ-
mental aspects (Kyburz-Graber et al. 2006).
The metaphor of balancing the three pillars does not
appropriately account for the complex interrelationships
between human activities and the environment as con-
ceptualized in theories on humanenvironment systems
(Kates et al. 2001; Scholz 2011; Schoolman et al. 2012).
This study thus takes a different perspective by using
the three pillars as the basis for the search of synergies
between important goals of sustainable development. The
three dimensions can mutually inuence each other in
positive as well as in negative ways. Thus, striving for
positive synergies between them represents a crucial task
of sustainability-oriented decision making. Accordingly,
the focus of this study is not on questions of trade-offs
between the pillars such as What are the nancial costs
ISSN 1350-4509 print/ISSN 1745-2627 online
2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2012.696220
http://www.tandfonline.com
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452 R. Hansmann et al.
for environmental protection we are ready to pay? but
on winwin questions such as How can socioeconomic
output and environmental quality be maximized conjointly?
The view that an encompassing positive integration
of the three sustainability pillars is needed to effectively
facilitate sustainable development has, for example, been
expressed in the sustainability strategy of the Government
of Western Australia (2003). It states that sustainability
requires new synergies to be identied as well as sys-
tems thinking to produce simultaneous outcomes for the
economy, community and environment (Government of
Western Australia 2003: 73), and economic, social and
environmental factors be integrated [. . .] seeking mutually
supportive benets with minimal trade-offs (Government
of Western Australia 2003: 30). From this perspective, the
main challenge of sustainable development as dened in
the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987) would be to fulll
the needs of current and future generations through simul-
taneous environmental, social, and economic improve-
ment. Many such synergies have been discovered and
investigated by researchers or acknowledged in public dis-
course. For example, high environmental quality, scenic
beauty, and biodiversity allow for regional economic
income through sustainable tourism from which local com-
munities may prot (e.g., Gurung 2008); sustainable con-
struction allows for reduction in the use of nonrenewable
energy resources and hence economic savings (e.g., Vatalis
et al. 2011), and the development of innovative technolo-
gies for generating power from renewable energy sources
such as wind or sun is broadly acknowledged to bear
the potential to generate workplaces and trigger economic
growth while saving nonrenewable resources and reducing
CO
2
emissions (e.g., Dalton and Lewis 2011).
However, it has not been systematically examined so
far, which aspects of the three pillars are typically con-
nected with each other in practice in ways involving such
positive synergies. Such an analysis shall be accomplished
here on the basis of reports on actual contributions to
sustainable development accomplished by graduates of a
sustainability-oriented university curriculum.
Scope of the study
In order to empirically investigate positive syner-
gies between the three pillars of sustainability, this
study analyzes best practice examples from gradu-
ates of the Environmental Sciences program at ETH
Zurich for professional contributions to sustainability
with reference to the Swiss sustainability strategy
(Schweizerischer Bundesrat 2002). This strategy formu-
lated 15 sustainability goals in total, 5 goals for each of
the 3 pillars. The graduates judged their own professional
contributions to sustainable development toward these
goals. These responses provide the basis for the investi-
gation of typical elds of synergies between the different
sustainability objectives by means of a factorial princi-
pal component analysis (PCA). This data-driven approach
shall provide insights into the actual (typical or prevalent)
goal structures of sustainability-oriented projects, mea-
sures, and innovations based on the analysis of concrete
sustainability engagement of environmental professionals.
These graduates completed a broad and interdisciplinary
sustainability-oriented curriculum, which combines pro-
found natural science education with environmental tech-
nology and social scientic courses, including law and
economics. It also offers possibilities for in-depth special-
izations in different scientic subjects and various envi-
ronmental or humanenvironment systems (Frischknecht
2000; Hansmann 2009). It was known beforehand that
these graduates work in a broad variety of professional
domains. Thus, their responses allow for an investiga-
tion into sustainability-oriented professional activities in
diverse topical areas (Hansmann et al. 2010; Mieg et al.
2012). Based on their educational background and pro-
fessional experience, the graduates can be considered as
sustainability experts to a certain extent (Mieg 2008,
2009). These aspects make the elicited sample of graduates
particularly suitable for an explorative empirical investiga-
tion of synergies between the three pillars of sustainability
in professional practice, a topic of utmost importance for
sustainable development. A further aspect of sustainability
practice that will be investigated is the question of how the
emergence of conicts between the sustainability dimen-
sions is related to their integration.
Method
Design of the graduate survey addressing contributions
to sustainability
A web-based survey of ETH graduates of Environmental
Sciences analyzed their professional development and con-
tributions to sustainability since graduation. The question-
naire elicited information on the graduates (e.g., gender,
age, and the year of graduation), their professional activ-
ities (e.g., relatedness of work to sustainability, branch of
activity), and asked for examples of personal professional
contributions to sustainable development after graduation.
The latter should allow for insights into sustainability-
oriented professional activities in concrete rather than
abstract terms.
Each graduate briey described his or her best practice
example in their own words and subsequently answered a
set of standardized items serving to classify and evaluate it.
The graduates thus assigned their example to the appropri-
ate topical eld(s) of a predened list with 19 categories
(including, e.g., energy, nature and landscape, climate,
water, soil, air, education, and also a category other elds
of activity) and specied the year in which their per-
sonal professional engagement for the contribution was at
its maximum. Finally, they evaluated their best practice
example as to whether
a systematic integration or balancing of ecological, eco-
nomic, and social aspects of sustainability took place
(yes vs. no);
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International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 453
conicts between these three sustainability dimensions
emerged (yes vs. no);
it contributed to achieving the 15 goals comprised
in the Swiss strategy for sustainable development
(Schweizerischer Bundesrat 2002).
For each of the ve ecological, economic, and social
sustainability objectives of the strategy, the graduates sep-
arately judged whether their best practice example con-
tributed to achieving it (yes vs. no). A PCA was applied on
these responses to analyze which sustainability objectives
were frequently achieved together in best practice contribu-
tions as reected in high loadings of certain objectives on a
common principal component. A possible outcome in this
regard was that components which load exclusively on the
sustainability objectives of one of the three pillars would
emerge from the PCA. This would indicate a lack of syn-
ergies and integration between the three pillars. However,
since objectives of the three sustainability dimensions can
be simultaneously targeted as has been outlined in the
Introduction the expectation was that the emergent load-
ing pattern of the objectives on the principal components
would reveal distinctive areas of synergies and integration
within the pillars, as well as transcending their borders.
The principal components resulting from the PCA will be
denoted as principle sustainability components (PSCs).
Participants of the survey
A total of 1081 students of Environmental Sciences gradu-
ated from ETH between 1992 and 2005. More than half of
them (N =567) visited the survey webpage and responded
at least to the rst question. Among these participants,
542 persons (96%) were professionally active at the time
of the survey. The predominant branches were research
(21%); environmental, planning, and engineering ofces
(15%); public administration (15%); nance and insurance
(10%); education (8%); and non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) (5%). The remaining 26% worked in diverse
further domains.
On average, participants were M = 36.7 years old
(Md = 37, SD = 4.3) and the distribution of the year
of graduation of the survey participants was similar to
that of all graduates from 1992 to 2005 (
2
-test, df =
13, p = 0.43). The gender distribution of the survey par-
ticipants was with 33% females and 67% males likewise
that among all graduates of the addressed years with 34%
females.
Results
The analyses focus on the best practice examples of the
graduates for professional contributions to sustainability.
In a rst step, the distribution of the contributions over top-
ical domains will be presented. Subsequently, it was ana-
lyzed which of the 15 objectives of the Swiss sustainability
strategy were addressed and whether conicts between the
triple line dimensions emerged and systematic efforts for
integrating or balancing them were made. Then, the PCA
identifying PSCs that reect elds of synergies between
sustainability objectives is reported.
Topical domains of the best practice contributions to
sustainable development
Participants were asked whether their current job is directly
related to fostering sustainable development. On a ve-
point rating scale (1 = no, 2 = rather no, 3 = rather
yes, 4 = yes, 5 = yes, very strongly), this relationship
was rated on average with M = 3.1 corresponding to the
answer rather yes. Consistent with this, a clear majority
of participants were able to provide a description of their
best example for a professional contribution to sustainable
development. When assigning their best practice contri-
bution to topical domains graduates could choose one or
more domains since these categories were not strictly dis-
junctive. The distribution of the 373 contributions over
the 19 predened topical domains is depicted in Figure 1.
Accordingly, 38% of the best practice examples were
related to energy, followed by 34% connected to nature and
landscape, and 31% with connections to the areas climate
and water. The domains of soil (24%), air, and education
(both 21%), environmental management, and waste (both
19%) were also quite frequently covered by the examples.
Contribution to the objectives of the Swiss strategy for
sustainability
The percentages of best practice examples contributing to
the ve environmental, economic, and social objectives of
the Swiss sustainability strategy are shown in Figure 2.
Considering environmental objectives, most examples
contributed to the responsible use of renewable resources
(69%) followed by the protection of the natural environ-
ment (65%) and the reduction of the use of nonrenew-
able resources (59%). Considering economic sustainability
objectives, the largest ratio was observed for the improve-
ment of the economic situation of future generations
(50%), and amongst social aspects, protection of health
and safety of the population (60%) was supported by most
examples.
The best practice contributions addressed on aver-
age 2.6 ecological objectives, 1.7 economic, and likewise
1.7 social objectives of the Swiss sustainability strategy.
In line with the environmental focus of the university
program, environmental objectives were thus covered sig-
nicantly more frequently than either economic or social
objectives (both paired sample t-tests, p < 0.001).
Systematic integration and conicts between ecological,
economic, and social aspects of sustainability
According to the graduates answers, 47% of the best
practice contributions involved a systematic integration
or balancing of ecological, economic, and social aspects
of sustainability, and in 46% of the examples a conict
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454 R. Hansmann et al.
11
9
10
10
10
11
13
13
14
14
19
19
21
21
24
31
31
34
38
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Other fields of activity
Media
Environmental planning
Noise
Management consulting
Building ecology
Environment law
Spatial planning
Chemistry
Risk
Waste
Environmental management
Education
Air
Soil
Water
Climate
Nature and landscape
Energy
Percentage of best practice examples (%)
Figure 1. Percentage of best practice examples contributing to sustainability in different topical domains (N
examples
= 373).
between the three dimensions was evident. The occurrence
of conicts between the dimensions and their systematic
integration is interconnected. In 63% of the examples with
conicts between the dimensions, efforts were taken aim-
ing at their systematic integration. In contrast, systematic
efforts toward balancing the three dimensions occurred
only in 34% of the examples with no such evident con-
icts. The statistical relationship between integration and
conict was clearly signicant (
2
-test, df =1,
2
=32.2;
p < 0.001).
In a further analysis, the percentage of best prac-
tice examples with efforts toward systematic integration
and with occurrence of conicts between ecological, eco-
nomic, and social sustainability aspects was compared
separately for the examples addressing each of the 15 spe-
cic sustainability objectives. Two of the corresponding
McNemar tests turned out signicant. Accordingly, con-
tributions which enhanced social and human capital (inte-
gration in 65.1%, occurrence of conicts in 43.0% of
examples, p < 0.01) or promoted the economic situation
of future generations (integration in 59.6%, occurrence of
conicts in 50.0% of examples, p < 0.05) involved signif-
icantly more frequently an integration of the three pillars
than conicts between them.
PCA of addressed sustainability objectives
PCA reduces a set of variables to a limited number
of principal components which underlie the correlations
between the original variables. In order to search for
elds of synergies between the ecological, economic, and
social sustainability objectives, a PCA was conducted to
identify PSCs. The gradient of the eigenvalues of suc-
cessively extractable components suggested the extraction
of three PSCs as the third extractable component 3 still
showed a eigenvalue of = 1.6, hence considerably larger
than 1 (Bortz 1999). The component loading matrix for
these components which resulted after varimax rotation is
shown in Table 1 with substantial loadings (>0.4) printed
boldly.
Accordingly, on PSC 1 the responsible use of renew-
able resources and the reduction of use of nonrenewable
resources loaded substantially together with promoting the
innovative power of the economy, consideration of exter-
nalities in the market, considering the economic situation
of future generations, and juridical equality and certainty.
PSC 1 was thus understood to reect sustainability-
oriented Product and Process Development and hence
named accordingly.
On PSC 2, the social objective education and free
personal development loaded most highly followed by sus-
taining cultural and societal values and the two economic
aspects generating income and employment and enhanc-
ing social and human capital. PSC 2 was therefore named
Education and Social Economics.
PSC 3 covered the aspects protection of natural spaces
and biodiversity, protection of the natural environment,
protection from environmental hazards/reduction of risks,
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International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 455
60
29
28
20
33
19
23
43
30
50
38
69
59
65
28
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Protection of health and safety
Education and free personal development
Sustaining cultural and societal values
Juridical equality and certainty
Solidarity between and within generations and global
Generating income and employment
Enhancing social and human capital
Promoting the innovative power of the economy
Consideration of externalities in the market
Consideration of future generations with respect to
economic aspects
Protection of natural spaces and biodiversity
Responsible use of renewable resources
Reduction of use of non renewable resources
Protection of the natural environment
Protection from environmental hazards, reduction of risks
Percentage of best practice examples (%)
Figure 2. Percentage of best practice examples addressing a total of 15 ecological, economic, and social aspects of sustainability
(N
examples
= 373).
Table 1. Rotated component loading matrix of a PCA with regard to 15 sustainability objectives covered or not covered by 373 best
practice examples.
PSC
Fifteen specic sustainability objectives 1 2 3
Ecological objectives
Protection of natural spaces and biodiversity 0.21 0.35 0.61
Responsible use of renewable resources 0.58 0.12 0.16
Reduction of use of nonrenewable resources 0.63 0.07 0.27
Protection of the natural environment 0.02 0.08 0.75
Protection from environmental hazards, reduction of risks 0.08 0.07 0.63
Economic objectives
Generating income and employment 0.19 0.61 0.02
Enhancing social and human capital 0.22 0.63 0.02
Promoting the innovative power of the economy 0.66 0.09 0.01
Consideration of externalities in the market 0.58 0.05 0.01
Economic situation of future generations 0.56 0.05 0.27
Social objectives
Protection of health and safety 0.26 0.02 0.47
Education and free personal development 0.01 0.78 0.06
Sustaining cultural and societal values 0.10 0.74 0.18
Juridical equality and certainty 0.43 0.10 0.38
Solidarity between and within generations and global 0.37 0.30 0.20
Component names (a posteriori) Product and Process
Development
Education and Social
Economics
Protection of Nature
and Humans
Note: Varimax rotation method with Kaiser normalization has been used, and component loadings of >0.4 have been printed in bold.
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456 R. Hansmann et al.
and protection of health and safety of the population. PSC
3 was thus named Protection of Nature and Humans.
Inclinations of topical domains to PSCs
In order to analyze the sustainability orientation of the
examples provided in the 19 different topical domains with
respect to PSC 1 Product and Process Development, PSC
2 Education and Social Economics, and PSC 3 Protection
of Nature and Humans, the average component scores
were calculated separately for the examples of each topical
domain, as shown in Table 2. Some examples of best prac-
tice contributions scoring high on each PSC are provided
in Table 3 to give an impression of their topical diversity
and orientation.
Many best practice contributions in the topical domains
of energy and climate are considerably oriented toward
PSC 1 Product and Process Development. Sustainability
contributions in the domains of environmental manage-
ment and waste as well as in further topical domains,
including environmental law, building ecology, manage-
ment consulting, and environmental planning, likewise
tended to score considerably positive on PSC 1. Best prac-
tice contributions loading high on PSC 1 often involved
the development and implementation of sustainability-
oriented products, facilities, or processes. Many exam-
ples of ecological innovation and modernization in the
form of technological innovation, improved methods for
sustainability-oriented assessment, or environmental man-
agement in economically relevant areas such as energy,
industries, and nance are found among these examples.
Contributions with high inclinations to PSC 2
Education and Social Economics were often found in the
topical domains of nature and landscape, education and
media, as well as in the residual category of other elds
of activity. Best practice examples loading high on PSC
2 included activities in ecological and sustainability edu-
cation on different levels (schools, universities, general
public), as well as efforts for the sustainability-oriented
transformations of the sociocultural and working sphere,
for instance, by means of fair trade labels or sustainability-
oriented development projects. Contributions in the topical
domain of media also scored high on PSC 2. This can
be regarded as tied to the educational function of media,
which by conveying sustainability-oriented values and eco-
logical knowledge also enhances human and social capital.
Actually, the topical eld of media as a sole topical
eld scored markedly positive (0.3) on all three PSCs.
This nding is plausible as media may play an overarch-
ing role by covering sustainability-oriented contributions
corresponding to all three components.
Best practice contributions loading high on PSC 3
Protection of Nature and Humans were most often found
in the topical domains of nature and landscape, water, and
soil. The topical areas of risk, environmental law, chem-
istry, as well as spatial and environmental planning are also
showing a considerable inclination to PSC 3. Best practice
contributions loading high on PSC 3 were, for example,
concerned with the development of nature parks, soil and
ood protection, emission reduction, sustainable forestry,
and environmental impact assessment.
Discussion
PSCs and the three pillars of sustainability
It is commonly acknowledged that fostering sustainable
development requires consideration of ecological, eco-
nomic, and social aspects (WCED 1987). Consistent with
this, the Swiss government formulated ve objectives
Table 2. Average component scores (Cs) of examples in 19 topical domains on PSC 1 Product and Process Development, PSC 2
Education and Social Economics, and PSC 3 Protection of Nature and Humans.
PSC 1 Product and Process
Development M(Cs1)
PSC 2 Education and
Social Economics M(Cs2)
PSC 3 Protection of Nature
and Humans M(Cs2) n
contributions
Energy 0.5 0.0 0.4 142
Nature and landscape 0.3 0.4 0.6 127
Climate 0.4 0.0 0.3 116
Water 0.2 0.0 0.5 115
Soil 0.1 0.1 0.7 88
Air 0.2 0.2 0.2 77
Education 0.1 0.6 0.1 77
Environmental management 0.4 0.2 0.2 71
Waste 0.5 0.2 0.3 71
Risk 0.1 0.3 0.7 54
Chemistry 0.3 0.4 0.6 53
Spatial planning 0.1 0.3 0.4 50
Environmental law 0.5 0.2 0.7 48
Building ecology 0.5 0.3 0.1 42
Management consulting 0.6 0.2 0.1 39
Noise 0.4 0.1 0.3 39
Environmental planning 0.5 0.1 0.5 38
Media 0.4 0.5 0.3 35
Other elds of activity 0.1 0.4 0.3 41
Note: Component scores correspond to z-scores, and average scores of 0.4 have been printed in bold.
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International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 457
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458 R. Hansmann et al.
for each of these three pillars when developing the
national sustainability strategy (Schweizerischer Bundesrat
2002). These objectives were used in this study to
investigate synergies between ecological, economic, and
social sustainability objectives. University graduates of
an Environmental Sciences program described best exam-
ples of their professional contributions to sustainable
development and specied to which of the 15 objectives
they contributed. A corresponding PCA analysis identied
three PSCs which all transcended the three dimensions of
sustainability. Accordingly, each PSC reects interrelation-
ships between elements of the three pillars in practice and
indicates potentials for positive synergies between them.
PSC 1 Product and Process Development covers pos-
itive synergies between reduced and more responsible
use of natural resources, promotion of innovation, con-
sideration of externalities in the market, economic situa-
tion of future generations, and fostering juridical equality
and certainty. Best practice examples loading very high
on this component illustrate how sustainability-oriented
projects, measures, products, or processes can contribute
to the simultaneous achievement of these goals. Many
sustainability contributions in the topical eld of energy
tended to score high on PSC 1. This is plausible as mea-
sures increasing the use of renewable energy in the form of
wind, water, or solar power are connected to reductions in
the use of nonrenewable resources and tend to be connected
with innovation and reduction of externalities in particular
in the form of greenhouse gas emissions. Economic con-
sideration of such externalities tends, in turn, to facilitate
market access for these renewable energy sources. High
PSC 1 scores in the topical elds of building ecology,
waste, noise, environmental management, and planning
reect ecological modernization of economy and society
through increasing energy efciency, for instance, in the
building sector, or through sustainable treatment of waste,
reduction of noise emissions, and in relation to further
aspects of environmental management and planning. High
PSC 1 scores in the topical eld of environmental law
reect the crucial role which standards, norms, and laws
play for ecological reorientation and modernization, and an
adequate consideration of externalities in the market.
PSC 2 Education and Social Economics cap-
tures sustainability contributions allowing for synergetic
achievement of sociocultural goals, namely education, free
personal development, and sustaining values together with
the economic goals of generating income and employment
and enhancing social and human capital. Many best prac-
tice examples scoring high on PSC 2 were found in the
topical elds of education and nature and landscape. This
reects that sustainability education serves protection of
nature and at the same time, projects serving the protection
of natural spaces and biodiversity can serve educational
objectives and promote environmental literacy of the pop-
ulation (e.g., nature experience parks). Furthermore, PSC
2 shows how various sustainability-oriented contributions
simultaneously promote social responsibility and equality,
foster social and human capital, and generate income and
employment, for example, through introduction of fair
trade labels or in regional sustainable development projects
involving the local population.
PSC 3 Protection of Nature and Humans reects that
many sustainability-oriented contributions serving envi-
ronmental and nature protection at the same time decrease
environmental hazards and risks and are thus also protect-
ing the health and safety of the human population. The
topical elds of sustainability contributions scoring high on
this component, namely nature and landscape, water, soil,
chemistry, environmental law, spatial planning, and envi-
ronmental planning refer to domains where these synergies
are important. The best practice contributions scoring high
on PSC 3 include activities for environmental manage-
ment, as well as protection of natural spaces and landscape
which focuses on nature protection together with the pro-
tection of humans, for instance, from ooding, avalanches,
or landslides. Others involve impact assessments or envi-
ronmental protection, regulation, and control measures in
urban environments and industries.
Integration and conicts between the three pillars of
sustainability
In nearly half of the best practice examples, efforts
to systematically integrate or balance the three pillars
of sustainability were undertaken. An interesting nding
regarding integration of the three dimensions was that it
often coincided with the occurrence of conicts between
them. This could be due to conicts between the three
dimensions leading to systematic efforts for their inte-
gration, or the other way around, conicts could actually
arise when efforts to balance ecological, economic, and
social aspects of a sustainability issue are made. In any
case, the nding suggests that resolving conicts is often
an essential part of integrating and balancing the three
sustainability dimensions.
In this context, an interesting explorative nding was
that best practice examples which consider the economic
situation of future generations and/or enhance social
and human capital tend to allow for integration while
circumventing conicts between the three pillars. Both
ndings appear plausible. The consideration of the eco-
nomic situation of future generations rather refers to
conicts between generations than to conicts between
ecological, social, and economic aspects of sustainability.
For instance, achieving ecological aims in the present
(e.g., through strict ecological regulations and conser-
vation of natural resources) may have synergetic posi-
tive effects on the economic situation of future genera-
tions, even though it may hamper short-term economic
growth. Enhancing social and human capital also has
the potential to promote sustainability in an integra-
tive way (OECD Education Ministerial Meeting 2010;
laus and Jacobs 2011; Mieg et al. 2012). However,
to fulll this potential the development of such capi-
tal needs to be linked to sustainability education and
individual, organizational, and societal sustainability learn-
ing (United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural
Organization 2002; Hansmann 2010). Not all individual
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International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 459
and social learning processes improve the resilience of
humanenvironment systems and the co-adaptive sys-
temic capacity of agents to anticipate and deal with the
unintended, undesired, and irreversible negative effects of
development (Tbara and Pahl-Wostl 2007: 1).
Limitations, additional research needs and conclusion
One limitation of this study results from the environmen-
tal orientation of the graduates study program which was
linked to a prevalence of environmentally oriented con-
tributions to sustainability. The environmental focus of
the program may have inuenced the results of the PCA.
Therefore, a similar investigation based on sustainability
contributions made by professionals with other academic
or nonacademic educational backgrounds would be desir-
able in order to investigate whether the same PSCs would
be found. A second limitation is given by possibly subjec-
tively biased judgments of the graduates when valuating
their best practice examples. This could only be resolved
when independent evaluators assess sustainability contri-
butions on the basis of standardized assessment criteria.
Finally, the explorative character of this research needs
to be mentioned. Since no explicit a priori hypotheses
have been formulated with regard to the loading patterns
of the PSCs, further research is needed to conrm them.
Nevertheless, the three PSCs identied in this research
possess considerable face validity as they reect syner-
gies between goals that appear consistent with each other,
and because the sustainability-oriented contributions scor-
ing high on these PSCs were found in topical elds that
offer plausible ways for achieving corresponding syner-
gies. This suggests that these PSCs can indeed be helpful
and provide orientation for the search after positive syner-
gies between environmental, social. and economic aspects
of sustainability.
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