The Triple Bottom Line

Chapter 11

Sustainability Assessment Model: Modelling Economic, Resource, Environmental and Social Flows of a Project

Tom Baxter, Jan Bebbington and David Cutteridge

Introduction

This chapter describes the development by British Petroleum (BP) (in collaboration with others) of an accounting tool for ‘making sense’ of the extent to which its operations could be said to be in accordance with the principles of sustainable development (SD). The accounting tool that has been developed is called the Sustainability Assessment Model (SAM). In brief, SAM seeks to track significant economic, resource, environmental and social impacts of a project over its full life cycle and then to translate these impacts into a common measurement basis – that of money. ...