Prioritisation

Jay

Henrik

Contributors

Jay Whitehead
Henrik Moller
​Jayson Benge

Prioritisation methodologies and tools

The NZSD project is based on a comprehensive framework for assessing sustainability. The broad nature of the framework and the limited time and resources available to end-users to undertake monitoring activities requires that scientifically defendable tools are developed to prioritise goals, initiatives, objectives, indicators, and measures. We therefore reviewed existing prioritisation methodologies and tools to identify the most flexible and sensitive guide to investment in monitoring and the way of calculating aggregated sustainability measures for upscaling to regional and national levels and to weight the four main pillars of sustainability required by international and NZSD frameworks (governance, environment, economic and social). 

A meta-analysis to prioritise sustainability issues was piloted with New Zealand Winegrowers in 2015 by Jay Whitehead.

In 2015/2016, a similar study was led by Jayson Benge for the Kiwifruit sector. He completed an in-depth analysis of sustainability risks and opportunities at global, national and sector levels for the kiwifruit industry. The end-to-end analysis showed that some issues are relatively low priority or relevance for the NZ kiwifruit sector, but are highly important globally (for example biodiversity loss and climate change). A survey of growers, packhouse managers and Zespri sustainability strategists considered the relative likelihood and size of impact of 16 potential threats. This process identified the top five issues to be Biosecurity failure, Food safety failure, Lack of skilled labour, Water restrictions and Poor use of agrichemicals. A Choice Modelling (preference survey) exercise indicated that the views of Zespri strategists, customers & consumers, and growers should have a greater weighting in the development of a sustainability strategy than postharvest operators, regulators and public, or sustainability researchers and consultants.  It also indicated that future sustainability targets need to be relevant and important for the kiwifruit industry, as well as aspirational rather than just being minimum standards. Next the dashboard project will help industry identify metrics and targets for each high priority issue.

Available reports:

Report "Design criteria for effective assessment of sustainability in New Zealand’s production landscapes."

Presentation "Prioritising Sustainability Indicators and Initiatives using choice modelling" prepared for the Stakeholder workshop - 6 August 2015