Sustainability Maturity Assessment
Background Information
ESA aims to develop technologies, missions, applications and services that maximise societal benefits, while minimising the environmental impact of its own activities. This is reflected in ESA Strategy 2040, whose first objective is to develop the technologies, missions, applications and services that will enable progress in acting to address climate change, degradation of the environment and pressure on natural resources.
Sustainability has become a strategic differentiator for European space activities. ESA’s Green Agenda sets two overarching goals:
- Maximise sustainability benefits by increasing the contribution of ESA projects to sustainable societal development.
- Minimise environmental impacts by ensuring that ESA activities are managed in environmentally responsible manner.
Focusing on the first goal, ESA is implementing a range of methodologies and tools to identify, assess, and increase the sustainability benefits to society.
Objective of this assessment
The Sustainability Maturity Assessment (SMA) aims to ensure that ESA has a consistent and aligned methodology across programmes and projects to measure and maximise the Agency's overall sustainability benefits. Ultimately, this will allow ESA to send a clear message to the Member States about its strong commitment to sustainability using concrete examples and a consistent and aligned methodology.
To this end, the Strategic Sustainability Office makes available this simple SMA tool to assess the alignment of activities to sustainability benefits.
About this assessment
The assessment covers six sustainability areas of benefits which have been defined based on different reference frameworks (Paris Agreement, United Nations Sustainability Development Goals, the European Union Green Deal, the European Union Taxonomy, FIT for 55 and ESA Corporate Social Responsibility Principles).
Sustainability Areas of Benefits:
- Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation
- Biodiversity and Ecosystem Conservation
- Resource Efficiency
- Sustainable Transportation and Infrastructure
- Human Health
- Social Equity and Accessibility
The assessment covers one sustainability area of benefit per section. The responder is tasked with deciding to what extent these benefits apply to their activity and providing their rationale and sources in the comments section.
Scale
The following scale should be used as reference to rate the proposal's contribution to the sustainability areas of benefits.
Directly:
The proposal directly addresses this benefit and will contribute significantly to resolving the issue(s) it addresses. The proposal addresses (an) issue(s) that are highly significant for that benefit.
Indirectly:
The proposal indirectly addresses the benefit, allows limited progress towards that benefit, or allows a good level of progress to resolve an issue that is not highly significant for that benefit.
No contribution:
Despite an applicable context, the proposal does not set any strategy, objectives, or targets related to this statement. There could be a contribution in the future.
Opposite contribution:
The strategy objectives and targets oppose this sustainability benefit.
Not Applicable:
The context of the proposal is genuinely not applicable to this benefit.
No published results yet.