p.1220 Bossells [sic] concept of orientors represents one important way
of making progress in this area of inter-disciplinary modelling of sustainable development process.
p.1220 In a series of publications Bossel has argued that an orientor is a useful device for describing
and evaluating the development of ecosystems and the way they move towards or away from a sustainable trajectory [Bossel 1987,
1992, 1996a, 1996b].
p.1220 Bossel has argued that any earthbound environmental and socio-economic system can
be characterized by six fundamental environmental properties... Bossel then argued that a set of basic orientors
can be used to describe and evaluate the way in which integrated systems change... existence... effectiveness... freedom of
action... security... adaptability and... coexistence... for each of the... orientors... one or more measures of sustainability
are used.
p.1221 By examining changes in the orientors through time, the actual development of a
system can be illustrated and the implications of alternative paths would have on system viability and sustainability
can be assessed as part of strategic environmental decision making... we can use this approach as part of the process
of modelling sustainable development.
p.1222 Despite the vast literature concerned with defining and measuring sustainable development very few
studies have moved on to model current systems to determine whether or not they are sustainable.
p.1223 This paper has described briefly Bossell's [sic] concept of orientors as fundamental building
blocks for making development sustainable. The idea was developed over 24 years ago [Bossel, 1977] and has recently
been applied to case studies of ecological and socio-economic systems [Muller and Leupelt, 1998]... it has been demonstrated
that it is possible to use orientors as a basis of determining the environmental constraints within which any socio-economic
system must remain... it was demonstrated that orientors can be used to ascertain the limits in a dynamic
system.
p.1223 More research on more complex models of sustainable development needs to be undertaken... In dynamic
simulation modelling of sustainable development the use of orientors has not been fully exploited - yet on the basis of this
preliminary work it appears to have some merit... The full potential of Bossel's method has yet to be exploited in
dynamic simulation modelling. [JLJ - agreed]
