5. Conclusion and outlook

Emergetic assessment thus offers an innovative and inspiring vision of the relationship between human activities and nature. It is an ecocentric approach, placing man and his activities as part of the geobiosphere. This method should therefore be seen in contrast to traditional, anthropocentric approaches, which see nature as serving human activity, providing it with resources and assimilating its waste.

This is one of its main strengths, but also a major drawback: an original point of view, enlightening and complementary to conventional analyses, requires a certain intellectual effort to appreciate the importance of the paradigm shift.

Emergetic assessment deserves to be disseminated and adopted by a wide community, because in addition to its innovative character, it combines many of the ingredients needed for environmental assessment:...