Dear Rudiger,

Reducing waste of any sort of resource is both an important reason for doing research and an important part of the process of conducting the research. Addressing the former is not an excuse for ignoring the latter. Research itself should therefore not be done wastefully, no matter how important we think the results might be. We should elicit maximum knowledge and understanding for the least possible investment of resource.

I found two paper that might be of help to you

1) Managing the environmental impact of research Article Managing the environmental impact of research

2) Assessing the ecological impact of a university

https://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~hdrossman/EV120/efcampus.pdf

Dear Rudiger,

quite a challenge. To my view this has two dimensions: One is on content: How does research relate to the issues / grand challenges / objectives of sustainable development. The other dimension is on process: In how far is research taking up societal needs, e.g. by means of consulting with stakeholder.

A fine example for the first approach is a project undertaken by WU Vienna on behalf of DG Research by European Commission: See: Martinuzzi, Andre. 2012. Monitoring the Expected Impacts of the 7th EU Framework Programme on Sustainable Development - A Case Study on Governance by Evaluation. In: Governance by Evaluation for Sustainable Development: Institutional Capacities and Learning, Hrsg. Martinuzzi, A., Sedlacko, M., 89-110. Celtenham (UK) Northampton (MA, USA): Edward Elgar.

On the second, there was an award granted by European Foundations for Responsible Research and Innovation (not the same as sustainability, but which is also very much characterized by process, therefore possibly of interest for you): http://efarri.eu/

ISOE in Frankfurt is running a project that may be of interest for you:

http://www.isoe.de/projekte/aktuelle-projekte/transdisziplinaere-methoden-und-konzepte/transimpact/

Other relevant projects could be http://www.lena-projekt.de/startseite/ and https://www.hochn.uni-hamburg.de/

following

I think you have a very difficult assessment to make. The total impact would be for some duration into the future, for some portion of the world, both of which are pretty hard to quantify.

Maybe you can predict the change from current conditions if the results of the research are fully implemented with a specific community? In which case, I think you would need to check for your community:

• what are considered needs in the community you are investigating, what activities are used to meet those needs, and what are the symptoms of unmet needs?
• how much time is spent by people in activities to meet their needs and what fraction of that time is used effectively (eg, people may spend 20 minutes per day in physical activity, and 50% are obese)?
• what is the ecological footprint distribution throughout the community?
• what is the relationship between the ecological footprint and the time used to meet needs within the community?
• find the slope of the EF/TU curve at the community managed biocapacity (the sum of the lesser of the EF and the BC for each biome)
• find the effectiveness of how people use their time to meet needs throughout the community - find the relationship.

Then you'd be ready to check to see what the impact of your research will be, when compared to the status quo:

• how will ecological footprint change?
• how will community managed biocapacity change?
• how will time use change?
• how will effectiveness change?

Potential Quality of Life = Time used to meet needs, less the slope of the EF/TU curve at capacity x (the community EF minus the CMBC)

Actualized Quality of Life= 24h/d/ca - (24h/d/ca - PQoL)/Effectiveness

You can then measure how the Actualized Quality of Life would change for your community as a result of the research.

I don't know how you would extrapolate that beyond...

I think this comes down to two areas of interest:

- What resources (energy, materials, waste creation, water, etc) are being consumed as a part of the actual research?

and

- What impact is the research having on the world? Does it have the potential to either reduce or increase the consumption of resources?

Once you have answered/gathered the data on consumption of resources from the first area, you can calculate some basic environmental impact areas (greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, impacts from resource use). You can then see if the outcome of the projects will offset these impacts.

You can generally apply the concepts of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and life cycle thinking to start to answer these questions.