Resource efficiency and green economic sustainability transition evaluation of green growth productivity gap and governance challenges in Cambodia

This study provides an analysis of Cambodian socio ‐ economic and environmental development. The analysis applies the Sustainable Society Index — database and uses Sustainability Window analyses linked to the green growth strategy in Cambodia. The novel analyses provide criteria for weak and strong sustainability and are further developed to evaluate the green growth productivity gap. We have carried out empirical analyses using indicators of the different dimensions of sustainability — economic, social, and environmental. The Sustainability Window defines the minimum economic development for social sustainability and the maximum economic development for environmental criterion for sustainability. This study demonstrates methodological usefulness of the Sustainability Window analysis in the fields of development studies and green growth. The methodological novelty of this study is to use Sustainability Window approach and to provide a novel empirical testbed for strong and weak sustainability analyses as well as for the analysis of the green growth resource use productivity gap.

maintain the direction of social and environmental development towards more sustainable targets. In this sense, it is linked to the discussion of the Doughnut Economy (Raworth, 2017) that sees the environmental limits (planetary boundaries) as environmental ceiling of resource use, limiting the economic development and the social foundation of resource use, below that lie unacceptable human deprivation. SuWi can be used for the quantitative assessment of the Doughnut Economy.
The SuWi method focuses especially on the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given.
There has been lot of discussion of the governance of sustainability transition, especially Geels has proposed three-level model of transition management (Geels & Schot, 2016). We can say that there are three systemic challenges of sustainability governance: (a) global landscape processes impacting sustainability, (b) macro level of sociotechnical systems, and (c) microsystems, local niche level. Our analysis focuses on the national macro level analysis of the sustainability transition, but it is possible to analyse links to global and micro systems if needed. SuWi analysis provides one promising approach to analyse sustainability transitions in developing economies. In this article, we demonstrate the SuWi approach with Cambodian data.
The tool can be used not only at national level but also at regional of local levels if data are available. One example of the use of the method is fishery sustainability study in the South China sea SuWi analysis (Luukkanen et al., 2015) indicates the minimum and maximum economic growth rates in order to guarantee that the development leads towards more sustainable social and environmental development in the context of economic development. The analysis does not refer to the absolute level of sustainability (which usually cannot be determined) but determines whether the direction of change is towards more sustainable state. The requirement for strong sustainability in the environmental dimension, meaning that emissions should not increase, may be seen as ethically justifiable in the case of the least developed countries. In countries such as Cambodia where the relative environmental loading (e.g., greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions) is very low, we are running into dilemmas of development equity. Therefore, using the weak sustainability criteria in the analysis reflecting economic growth for human development is also necessary.
In this article, we develop the concepts of the strong SuWi and the weak SuWi, referring to the concepts of strong and weak sustainability (see,e.g., Kaivo-oja, Luukkanen, & Malaska, 2001;Kaivo-oja, Panula-Ontto, Luukkanen, & Vehmas, 2014;Neumayer, 2013;and Vehmas, Luukkanen, & Kaivo-oja, 2007). The SuWi tool also provides information if the SuWi does not exist at all, which is a critical information for decision makers. It is also important for policy planning to find out how large the SuWi is and whether it is widening or getting narrower. This kind of information assuredly increases the transparency of sustainability policy and discussion.

| METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH: SUWI METHODOLOGY LINKED TO THE SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY INDEX SYSTEM
The SuWi approach is a useful tool in transdisciplinary sustainability science, because it makes "key transition paths visible for decisionmakers and stakeholders" (see Brandt et al., 2013;Kajikawa, 2008;Komiyama & Takeuchi, 2006). The analyses can be seen as governance tools for transition management (see Kemp & Parto, 2005;Loorbach, 2002;Loorbach, 2007). There is a clear value added in making transition and backcasting scenarios in sustainability science. With the SuWi method, both transition scenarios and realistic backcasting scenarios can be built, because the transition paths and associated backcasting targets can be identified (see Sondeijker, Geurts, Rotmans, & Tukker, 2006). Reflective evaluations of sustainable development can be developed by SuWi approach (see Quental, Lourenço, & da Silva, 2011;Voss, Bauknecht, & Kemp, 2006).We carried out SuWi analysis to assess Cambodian development with respect to three pillars of the Green Economy: (a) low carbon development, (b) resource efficiency, and (c) social inclusion. We have utilized different indicators in the analysis in order to compare their ease of use in analysis as well as to provide a broader view of the Green Economy development.
Several different sustainability indicator sets have been developed by international organisations, research centers, and statistical offices (see comparison by (Schoenaker, Hoekstra, & Smits, 2015). In this research, the Sustainable Society Index (SSI; van de Kerk & Manuel, 2014) has been used as a basic data source for the analysis. The SSI integrates human well-being, environmental well-being, and the economic well-being indicators. The SSI is also based on the previously elaborated Brundtland definition for sustainability. However, a third sentence is added to make it explicitly clear that both human well-being and environmental well-being are included (van de Kerk & Manuel, 2014): A sustainable society is a society • that meets the needs of the present generation, • that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, • in which each human being has the opportunity to develop itself in freedom, within a well-balanced society and in harmony with  Table 1.
In the case of Cambodia, the first SuWi analysis has been carried out on GHG emissions (environmental dimension of low carbon development) and healthy life years (social dimension of social inclusion) in the context of economic development (GDP). The strong criterion for environmental sustainability is defined as where GHG emissions do not grow (see discussion on strong sustainability in Vehmas et al., 2007, andin Kaivo-oja, Panula-Ontto, et al., 2014;. This is, in practice, too strong criterion for a country such as Cambodia, where CO 2 emissions per capita were 0.2 ton of CO 2 eq in the reference year 2006. On the contrary, the global average was approximately 4 tons of CO 2 eq in the same year.
That is why we utilize, in this analysis, the weak sustainability criterion for the CO 2 emissions, which states that the emissions produced per GDP should not increase. The criterion for social sustainability in this analysis is that the "healthy life years" should increase.
The analysis of SuWi is presented in Figure 1 (for more details of the method, see Luukkanen et al., 2015). In the figure, the SuWi is presented as the space on the x-axis between the minimum sustainable economic growth (defined by social sustainability) and maximum sustainable economic growth (defined by environmental sustainability). is marked with GDP min . This determines the minimum level of economic output in order to prevent a decrease in healthy life years.
In the analysis, this determines the lower limit of the SuWi, GDP min . FIGURE 1 Weak Sustainability Window for Cambodia using "healthy life years" as social indicator, "GHG intensity of GDP" (GHG/ GDP) as the environmental indicator (weak sustainability), and GDP as the economic indicator. "Healthy life years" productivity of GDP (Line r2) determines the minimum economic growth (GDP min ) in order to fulfil the social sustainability criterion ("healthy life years" should not decrease) in Point D. The "GHG intensity of GDP" should not increase, and the Line r3 (GDP productivity of the emissions) determines the maximum GDP growth (GDP max ) in point E in order not to increase the productivity. The real GDP growth (Points B and C) is within the weak SuWi (GDP min < GDP real < GDP max ) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary. com] In relation to environmental sustainability, the Line r3 determines the maximum GDP to keep the growth of GHG/GDP below the value of the reference year (development towards a more sustainable direction). At Point E in the figure, the weak environmental sustainability criterion is fulfilled, and this determines the upper limit, the maximum economic growth, GDP max , for the SuWi.
In this practical case, Cambodian economic development seems to be within the SuWi for the years 2006-2014. According to the analysis, the maximum sustainable economic growth (GDP max ) could have been about 15% higher between 2006 and 2014 than the real economic growth (GDP real ; difference between E and C in the figure).
Another SuWi analysis has been carried out using "food sufficiency" indicated by the blue line in Figure

FIGURE 3
Weak (red arrow) and strong Sustainability Windows (green arrow) for Cambodia using "food sufficiency" as social indicator (1/undernourished people) and "consumption of global hectares" as the environmental indicator for strong sustainability and "GDP intensity of consumption of global hectares" as the environmental indicator for weak sustainability. The actual GDP growth (Points B and C) is higher than the maximum strong sustainable growth (Point E) defined by productivity Line r3, whereas it is lower than the weak sustainable growth (Point G) defined by the productivity Line r4 [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] criteria for the consumption of global hectares is not fulfilled in the Cambodian case.
The use of the weak sustainability criteria for the environmental dimension (consumption of global hectares/GDP) indicates that economic growth is within the weak sustainability limits. This can be seen in Figure 3, where the strong SuWi is indicated with red colour and the weak SuWi with green colour.
We have carried out another SuWi analysis using "social inclusion" as an indicator for the social dimension and "unsafe sanitation" as the environmental indicator as presented in Figure 4. The indicator for "social inclusion" from the World Bank database is indexed to have a value of 1 in the base year. In the World Bank database, the policies for social inclusion and equity cluster includes gender equality, equity of public resource use, building human resources, social protection and labour, and policies and institutions for environmental sustainability (World Bank, 2016, CPIA database [http://www.worldbank.org/ida]).
In this analysis, the social inclusion should not decrease (social sustainability) and the number of people having unsafe sanitation should not increase (environmental sustainability). The analysis shows that using these indicators there exists a SuWi for Cambodia and the real GDP growth is within this window. In this case, the real GDP real growth is higher than GDP min (Point D defined by the social inclusion productivity Line r2) and also smaller than GDP max (Point E defined by the environmental criterion of unsafe sanitation productivity Line r3).  FIGURE 5 Sustainability Window for Cambodia using "social inclusion" as social indicator and "forest rent" as the environmental indicator and GDP as the economic indicator for the analysis of sustainability. The GDP productivity of "social inclusion" (Line r2) determines the minimum economic growth (Point D). The "forest rent" should increase, so we get the maximum economic growth using 1/"forest rent" as the environmental indicator (Point E, Line r3) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] In Figure 5, the SuWi analysis is carried out using "social inclusion" as the social indicator, "forest rent" as the environmental indicator (see World Bank Group, 2016), and GDP as the economic indicator. Minimum economic development, GDP min , is determined by Point D defined by the social inclusion productivity Line r2. Because the forest rent should increase, we have used "1/forest rent" as the environmental indicator in the analysis (which should not decrease). This determines the maximum economic growth (GDP max Point E defined by "1/forest rent" productivity Line r3).
For another analysis of SuWi, we have used "cereal production" as the social indicator that should increase (GDP min in Point D defined by the cereal productivity Line r2), the "GHG intensity of GDP" (GHG/ GDP) as the environmental indicator (weak sustainability, GDP max in Point E determined by the GHG intensity productivity Line r3), and GDP as the economic indicator. The results of this analysis are shown in Figure 6, which show that the development in Cambodia is within the weak SuWi when we use these indicators.
The SuWi framework can be utilized for the analysis of the Efficiency Gap if the development is not within the SuWi. Figure 7 shows FIGURE 6 Weak Sustainability Window for Cambodia using "cereal production" as the social indicator, the "GHG intensity of GDP" (GHG/GDP) as the environmental indicator (weak sustainability) and GDP as the economic indicator. The GDP productivity of "cereal production" (Line r2) determines the minimum economic growth (Point D) where the production does not decrease. The GDP productivity of GHG intensity (Line r3) determines the maximum economic growth (Point E)    "consumption of global hectares" the Efficiency Gap is about 4% (see Figure 9).
Another Efficiency Gap analysis is carried out in Figure  There has been lot of discussion about degrowth, zero growth, and positive growth (see e.g. Harangozo, Csutora, & Kocsis, 2018) and the limits of economic growth. SuWi provides a novel approach to deal with the limits in economic growth by integrating all the three sustainability dimensions in a same analytical framework and providing clear and transparent criteria for the development. In addition, the dynamics of the development pathways and their trends can be analysed, and it is possible to assess whether the development is widening the efficiency gap or not.
Aggregate national level indicators do not provide information of local level development but provide a view of the general development trends in society, and it is important that this is remembered when the results are interpreted. There can be large variations in regional development as well as variations between different income groups, gender differences, and so forth, and this type of national level analysis will not distinguish these variations. In addition, the qualitative aspects of development are not easily integrated into the quantitative indicators applied even though the indicators cover several aspects of development. This is a known limitation of all quantitative approaches to analysing development.
The developed SuWi tool can be used mainly in the analysis of the macro level of sociotechnical systems and their transformations. It provides basis for policy planning at this macro level and also possibilities for comparison for instance between the different ASEAN countries and for continuous policy learning and transfer of lessons learned (see Kaivo-oja et al., 2018). SuWi provides feedback mechanism of the functioning of the transition processes and gives valuable information for the investments of scarce resources in a most efficient way. The developed Efficiency Gap analysis is essential in this respect.
For a least developed country such as Cambodia, it is a challenge to further enhance and extend policy for sustainable development and to set up implementation plans for the various sectors. In this respect, SSI data-based knowledge about the actual level of sustainability is crucial. It is also of much relevance to understand the developments towards a sustainable society in the recent past. SuWi provides an efficient tool for identification of critical points for sustainability planning.