04027nam a2200181 a 450000100080000000500110000800800410001910000210006024501110008126002290019252032760042165300220369765300410371965300190376070000180377970000260379770000220382318994772024-05-06       2010    bl uuuu     u00u1 u    #d1 aMALHEIROS, F. T.  aIntegrated sustainability assessmentbcase study for the brazilian ethanol context.h[electronic resource]  aIn: EASY-ECO BRUSSELS CONFERENCE, 2010, Brussels. Sustainable development evaluations in Europe: from a decade of practices, politics and science to emerging demands. Vienna: Vienna University of Economics and Businessc2010  aConcerns about the intensive use of non-renewable energy and its global impacts, including the issue of greenhouse gases emission, are at the focus of discussions on environment and development in recent decades. In the world energy market, liquids remain the world's largest energy source, given their importance in the transportation and industrial end-use sectors. World use of liquids and other petroleum represented 86.1 million barrels per day in 2007. In this context, Brazil plays an important role in the energy area, in view of its high potential as a renewable energy producer, especially bio-energy, as such the ethanol produced from sugarcane. Ethanol production in the 2007/2008 harvest exceeded 22 billion liters. In 2009 Brazil exported 3.3 billion liters of ethanol, and in 2008, 5.2 billion gallons. Brazil exports to countries like USA, Japan, Jamaica, Nigeria, South Korea, Sweden, Netherlands, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico. Therefore, there is an important business opportunity for the Brazilian ethanol in the world market. The Brazilian government and companies, then, are focusing efforts to present the good side of the ethanol for these potential importing countries, and the results were a sudden great increase in the volume of ethanol sold, once exports were virtually zero in 2000. Considering the potential expansion of land occupied by sugarcane as a result of increasing global demands for biofuel, there are significant concerns of national and international society - the consumers of ethanol - about the balance of direct and indirect impacts from the current model of Brazilian production of sugar cane and ethanol. Social impacts derived from some of the traditional sugarcane crops have been described in literature, including the employment of cheap manpower and very stressful working conditions. Likewise, monoculture and intensive land uses inevitably lead to environmental impacts. The institutional capacity, in terms of socio-environmental management, to confront these negative impacts in a highly complex political and socioeconomic environment still needs to be assessed. Therefore, this article aims at presenting the preliminary results of the applied research project "The sweet and bitter sides of the sugarcane: an integrated sustainability assessment for the Brazilian ethanol context". The paper will then bring a contextual analysis of ethanol in Brazil, addressing impacts potentialities and weaknesses of the current model and will present the progress of the sector in building sustainability. Several actions of government and private sector are currently focused at the evaluation process, such as certification and indicators. Also, it will be addressed the experience of Brazil in the implementation of an extension of the SENSOR project - Sustainability Impact Assessment: Tools for Environmental, Social and Economic Effects of Multifunctional Land Use, under the coordination of EMBRAPA, in partnership with Alterra/Wageningen, ZALF and other institutions in Europe. Thus, from this framework of sustainability assessment systems, some highlights will be drawn in the perspective for the development and use of tools for integrated sustainability assessment in the context of the Brazilian ethanol.  aEtanol brasileiro  aIntegrated sustentability assessment  aSensor project1 aDUARTE, C. G.1 aCOUTINHO, H. L. da C.1 aTURETTA, A. P. D.