<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Sustainable development has been highlighted widely in productive sectors such as the sugar industry with new paradigms and trends such restructuring of sugar mills in biorefineries and development of green chemical from byproducts, considering issues such as technology adoption towards sustainability, circular economy, climate change, value chain, sustainability assessment and decision making. Production of cane sugar is one of Mexico’s main agro-industries; it conveys numerous positive socio-economic impacts and presents opportunities for productive diversification and enhanced profitability and competiveness. The sugar industry faces sustainability challenges due to the management of natural resources like soil, water, fossil fuels and agrochemicals, as well as the impacts of its greenhouse gas emissions and socio-economic constraints. However, sustainability of cane and sugar production cannot be assessed due to a lack of methodological frameworks for integrating economic and environmental indicators. We propose an index for Mexico’s sugar agro-industry that facilitates the identification of those system components that impact sustainability. This index is based on a reduced number of indicators aggregated through a multi-criteria evaluation using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). We apply this index to evaluate four sugar production systems in Mexico: producers of raw, refined, muscovado sugar and ethanol. Results show that systems with a high agro-industrial yield present better sustainability performance. This study is relevant because it provides quantitative information for decision makers towards a sustainable sugarcane agro-industry, based on the indicators used to build the sustainability index, to address actions as increase productive diversification by-products based, improve access to credit, irrigation, management practices and raw material quality reducing production costs, eliminate fossil fuel use in factories, make fertilizer application more efficient and reduce the area that is burned for manual harvest.</p></abstract>

Sustainable development has been highlighted widely in productive sectors such as the sugar industry with new paradigms and trends such restructuring of sugar mills in biorefineries and development of green chemical from byproducts, considering issues such as technology adoption towards sustainability, circular economy, climate change, value chain, sustainability assessment and decision making. Production of cane sugar is one of Mexico’s main agro-industries; it conveys numerous positive socio-economic impacts and presents opportunities for productive diversification and enhanced profitability and competiveness. The sugar industry faces sustainability challenges due to the management of natural resources like soil, water, fossil fuels and agrochemicals, as well as the impacts of its greenhouse gas emissions and socio-economic constraints. However, sustainability of cane and sugar production cannot be assessed due to a lack of methodological frameworks for integrating economic and environmental indicators. We propose an index for Mexico’s sugar agro-industry that facilitates the identification of those system components that impact sustainability. This index is based on a reduced number of indicators aggregated through a multi-criteria evaluation using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). We apply this index to evaluate four sugar production systems in Mexico: producers of raw, refined, muscovado sugar and ethanol. Results show that systems with a high agro-industrial yield present better sustainability performance. This study is relevant because it provides quantitative information for decision makers towards a sustainable sugarcane agro-industry, based on the indicators used to build the sustainability index, to address actions as increase productive diversification by-products based, improve access to credit, irrigation, management practices and raw material quality reducing production costs, eliminate fossil fuel use in factories, make fertilizer application more efficient and reduce the area that is burned for manual harvest.

Development of indicators for the sustainability of the sugar industry

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas y Agropecuarias

Región Orizaba-Córdoba. Universidad Veracruzana

Environmental & Socio-economic Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Development of indicators for the sustainability of the sugar industry"}

Sustainable development has been highlighted widely in productive sectors such as the sugar industry with new paradigms and trends such restructuring of sugar...

Development of indicators for the sustainability of the sugar industry

Published Online: Dec 14, 2018

Page range: 22 - 38

Received: Apr 30, 2018

Accepted: Nov 02, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/environ-2018-0025

Keywords
life cycle analysis, carbon footprint, multicriteria evaluation, AHP, decision makers

© 2018 Carlos Alberto García-Bustamante et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Development of indicators for the sustainability of the sugar industry

Published Online: Dec 14, 2018

Page range: 22 - 38

Received: Apr 30, 2018

Accepted: Nov 02, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/environ-2018-0025

Keywordslife cycle analysis, carbon footprint, multicriteria evaluation, AHP, decision makers

© 2018 Carlos Alberto García-Bustamante et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
life cycle analysis, carbon footprint, multicriteria evaluation, AHP, decision makers