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Decision Support
Sustainable decision-making means integrating economic, social and environmental issues to reach conclusions. This section looks at tools and techniques your organisation can use to influence the outcomes of decisions at all levels. Some of the methods highlighted in this section can help you to improve decision making by identifying the social, economic and environmental effects of a proposal at its conceptual stage, so it can be modified to accentuate benefits and mitigate negative impacts.
- Financial management & accounting - The importance of the issue of sustainable accountancy and decision-making is reflected in the growing volume of literature dedicated to these subjects. A lot of this literature was reviewed in Part 1 of the Accounting for Sustainability Project's 2006 report . This found that the academic literature is complemented by organisations’ increased awareness of the importance of sustainable business practices, evidenced for example by the fact that in 2004 52% of the Global Fortune 250 produced voluntary environmental or sustainability reports. There is also a growing understanding that accountants have an important role to play, demonstrated by the work that is being done by the leading accountancy bodies to engage the profession in sustainability issues.
- Appraisal & evaluation techniques - Such techniques play an important role in shaping policies, plans and programmes before they are implemented. As these will continue to evolve over their life cycle, post-assessment monitoring and follow-up will help to evaluate the validity of impact predictions and the effectiveness of mitigation measures, and to identify any changes that would improve both the decisions taken and the method by which they were made.