Sustainability Handbook

This Special Issue is entitled “Environmental Sustainability in Maritime Infrastructures”. Oceans and coastal areas are essential in our lives from several different points of view: social, economic, and health. Given the importance of these areas for human life, not only for the present but also for the future, it is necessary to plan future infrastructures, and maintain and adapt to the changes the existing ones. All of this taking into account the sustainability of our planet. A very significant percentage of the world's population lives permanently or enjoys their vacation periods in coastal zones, which makes them very sensitive areas, with a very high economic value and as a focus of adverse effects on public health and ecosystems.

Introduction and Purpose of This Guide Having the capacity to compare a range of infrastructure alternatives objectively is critical to a water or wastewater utility’s long-term sustainability and its ability to serve the needs of its community. This guide is designed to help water and wastewater utilities undertake these critical comparisons, in the context of meeting their existing regulatory requirements and improving the sustainability of utility operations. This document is designed to supplement the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Planning for Sustainability: A Handbook for Water and Wastewater Utilities (“the Handbook”), issued in February 2012. The Handbook identifies a number of steps utilities can take to incorporate sustainability considerations into their existing planning processes, organized around four core elements of planning commonly used by utilities: • PLANNING ELEMENT 1: Goal Setting – Establish sustainability goals that reflect utility and community priorities. • PLANNING ELEMENT 2: Objectives and Strategies – Establish objectives and strategies for each sustainability goal. • PLANNING ELEMENT 3: Alternatives Analysis – Analyze a range of alternatives based on consistent criteria. • PLANNING ELEMENT 4: Financial Strategy – Ensure that investments are sufficiently funded, operated, maintained, and replaced over time.

This guide will help you navigate through the complex landscape of sustainability frameworks with a climate and energy focus. Despite the myriad of challenges of the last year including energy and cost of living crises, and geopolitical conflicts, momentum on climate-related sustainability continued in 2022. EcoAct’s annual research revealed that 70% of the largest listed companies are now committed to net-zero. The last year also saw many reminders of the urgency of the climate crisis, with scientists predicting that 2022 was the 8th consecutive year that global temperatures reached at least 1°C above pre-industrial levels. The impacts of this warming in the form of extreme weather events are all too clear..