Abstract: Alongside Robert Costanza and colleagues’ plea to abandon gross domestic product as a measure of national success (see Nature 505, 283–285; 2014), we believe that there is an urgent need to change the way currencies are valued — by using a new ‘carbon standard’ that links economy to ecology. This would work in a similar way to the old gold-exchange standard, except that a country’s currency value would instead be determined by its saved and standing stocks of fossil and non-fossil carbon. Governments would need to decide whether to risk devaluing their currency by depleting carbon stocks — while still honouring a commitment to keep fossil-carbon stocks at 80% as a safeguard against extreme climate change. After the Second World War, huge investments radically altered the economies of the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. In the face of climate change, it is now the global energy system that needs reinvention.

Abstract: Growing populations, continued economic development, and limited natural resources are critical factors affecting sustainable development. Ex-ante impact assessment is an emerging field poised at the science-policy interface and is used to assess the potential impacts of policy while also exploring trade-offs between economic, social and environmental sustainability targets. The Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA) was selected for this study because it allows for the integration of various sustainability dimensions, the handling of complexity, and the incorporation of local stakeholder perceptions. FoPIA was adapted to the conditions of developing countries, and its implementation was demonstrated in five selected case studies. Based on the findings from the five case studies, FoPIA was found to be suitable for implementing the impact assessment at case study level while ensuring a high level of transparency. FoPIA supports the identification of causal relationships underlying regional land use problems, facilitates communication among stakeholders and illustrates the effects of alternative decision options with respect to all three dimensions of sustainable development.