Balancing Interests in Sustainability Assessments

In Measure 22 of the Sustainable Development Strategy 2002, the Swiss government (Federal Council) issued a mandate for the development of a set of tools which could be deployed at an early stage of political projects and initiatives in order to assess and optimize them from the sustainable development perspective. In 2004, the Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE), which provides the Confederation's sustainable development policy coordination platform, published a conceptual framework and basic methodology for assessing the sustainability of the Federal Government's political initiatives (ARE, 2004).