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Journal of Environmental Studies and
Sciences
ISSN 2190-6483
Volume 4
Number 3
J Environ Stud Sci (2014) 4:265-266
DOI 10.1007/s13412-014-0179-7
Robert Costanza and Ida Kubiszewski
(eds): Creating a sustainable and desirable
future: Insights from 45 global thought
leaders
Glenn Strachan
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BOOK REVIEW
Robert Costanza and Ida Kubiszewski (eds): Creating
a sustainable and desirable future: Insights
from 45 global thought leaders
Glenn Strachan
Published online: 30 July 2014
#AESS 2014
Constanza and Kubiszewski have produced a book aimed at
addressing concerns about the future of humanity and the
future of the planet as a whole. The challenge this poses is
reflected in the first sentence of chapter 1: ‘Creating a shared
vision of a sustainable and desirable future is the most critical
task facing humanity today.’The enormity of the challenge is
exposed when you consider the questions inherent in this
initial sentence. Who is included in the shared vision? Is it
local or global? Is it possible to achieve a consensus on what is
desirable? And, probably most important of all, how can you
make the vision a reality? Through the four distinct parts of
this book, Constanza and Kubiszewski address these ques-
tions with the aid of 45 distinguished thinkers, many of whom
will be familiar to readers.
The authors of the chapters bring viewpoints from a range
of backgrounds, and they include distinguished academics
from the fields of economics, ecology, psychology, engineer-
ing and design; founders and leaders of civil society organi-
zations and companies and voices from the world of politics
and government. With so many contributors and with many of
the chapters originally written for other publications, it is not
surprising that there is a great deal of diversity in terms of both
style and content. The book offers perspectives on the future at
different levels, from global governance to community and
household actions and solutions through to Tim Kasser’s
value-based perspective which is concerned with finding the
solutions within ourselves. There is a bias towards American/
Western worldviews in the book, although in terms of solu-
tions there are examples from other parts of the world includ-
ing a chapter from the first democratically elected prime
minister of Bhutan.
Despite the diversity of contributions, there are some com-
mon, related themes that reoccur through the chapters. These
include the need for a new economic framework and a new
approach to value; the need to reduce high levels of consump-
tion, realigning human activity with the natural world and the
assumption that there will be some form of major transition (or
‘the great turnaround’as Ronald Colman puts it in chapter 11).
The notion of transition is a theme that emerges in different
contexts throughout the book. A transition to new forms of
social organisation is presented by Paul D Raskin in chapter 7;
a potential transition to 350 ppm of CO
2
in the atmosphere is
described by Walsh and Croner in chapter 20; and in chapter
27, Tucker and Swimme explore how individuals might trans-
form their views on their place in the universe.
While the book focuses on a sustainable and desirable
future, and the positive steps that can be taken towards it,
there is recognition of the fact that this goal might not be
achieved. Many authors acknowledge that even if it is
achieved, the journey though the transition is likely to be a
harsh and painful one for many people.
Part 1 of the book is concerned with the power of
envisioning as part of the change process. This includes a
chapter from the late Donella Meadows whose enduring in-
fluence is also detected in subsequent chapters through refer-
ences to her work. The chapters in Part 1 argue that we should
not look to governments to provide the vision of the sustain-
able future we want; rather, inspiration is likely to come from
non-governmental organizations and corporations. At the
same time, the authors acknowledge the presence of vested
interests as barriers to achieving the vision. Frances Moore
Lappé encourages the reader to adopt an ecological perspec-
tive in seeking a vision and to recognise the qualities of
connectedness, continuous change and cocreation.
Parts 2 and 3 of this book contain visions, or elements of
visions, for a sustainable and desirable future. The chapters in
Part 2 adopt a viewpoint from around the year 2050, a ‘future
G. Strachan (*)
Education for Sustainability Programme, London South Bank
University, London, UK
e-mail: glenn@glennstrachan.co.uk
J Environ Stud Sci (2014) 4:265–266
DOI 10.1007/s13412-014-0179-7
Author's personal copy
histories’perspective presenting a description of various aspects
of life in the future and looking at the changes that have taken
place over the previous decades. In chapter 5, Robert Costanza
and colleagues use the five capitals model to describe how the
world has changed, while in chapter 8 Les Kuzyk takes the
reader through an environmental history exam from 2052 which
covers the previous five decades. Kuzyk and others reference the
economic downturn of 2008 as a trigger point for significant
change. From the contemporary perspective of 2014, there seems
to be a greater danger of slipping back into business as usual than
there was in 2008, but the book is clear that business as usual has
no place in a vision of the future.
Part 3 describes various elements of a future world that the
various authors assume people would want to live in. The
chapters in this part provide examples of what some major
issues, which are of concern to people now, will be like at the
end of the twenty-first century. These include new economic
frameworks; new approaches to well-being and to happiness;
the positive impact of genuine gender equality; the manage-
ment of the Earth’s resources, security, climate change and a
conceptual design for a future transport network.
Achieving consensus on what sustainability might be and
what a sustainable future might look like is difficult enough and
making it desirable to the majority just adds to the task. How-
ever, Part 4 of this book takes on what might be seen as the even
greater challenge of how the vision of a sustainable future can
actually be achieved, or as the book puts it, ‘how we get from
here to there.’In the final 20 chapters, which is over 40 % of the
book, the editors have assembled examples of how the vision
might be achieved. The book should be commended for devot-
ing its largest section to going some way to answering the
‘how’questions that will be raised by reading the earlier chap-
ters. But it is the nature of the complex changes needed to move
towards a sustainable future in these latter chapters that will also
leave the reader with many questions.
The areas of debate raised in Part 3 are all here in the final
20 chapters. Using economic drivers and particularly changes
in the tax regime and changes to GDP as a key indicator are
amongst the most discussed areas with alternative economic
viewpoints coming from authors such as Ernest Callenbach,
Van Jones, L Hunter Lovins and Eckart Wintzen. Mhan
Munasinghe introduces the concept of the Millennium
Consumption Goals in one of several chapters on the
ways in which consumerism could be addressed. Manag-
ing the Earth’s resources; the roles played by science,
ecology and education; and the ways in which we might
shift individual world views are all present. In the main,
these debates take place between the chapters rather than
within the chapters as different authors offer solutions
from different perspectives.
Many of the contributors to this book have produced
whole books on specific aspects of sustainable develop-
ment or achieving change towards sustainability. For ex-
ample: Peter Senge on organizations; David Orr on design
and Bill McKibben on climate change. This book is
different because it pulls together many of the facets of
sustainability into one volume and taken as a whole it
does offer a broad view of potential futures and strategies
for getting there. Inevitably, however, the diverse contri-
butions mean that it is a compendium rather than a round-
ed thesis. Its real value is in the fact that it offers a
stimulating range of individual think pieces most of which
have the potential to be triggers for discussion and debate
in educational contexts.
This book will be of interest to anyone with a broad
concern about the social, political and economic changes that
are needed for a shift towards living within the ecological
limits of the planet. Individuals working as agents for change
in a community context or an institutional context may draw
ideas and inspiration from this book. In the academic sphere, a
future’s perspective has relevance in many disciplines and the
fact that individual chapters can stand alone makes this book
an accessible reference text for students on the increasing
number of degree level and higher degree level courses that
engage with sustainability issues.
Books about the future will always be contested, but
that is part of the process of debate. Speculation about the
future of humanity and the future of the planet as a whole
is far from new; the contribution of this book to the
debate is to bring together existing views from a wide
range of distinguished thinkers. Producing a book that
seeks to make a significant contribution to moving hu-
manity towards a sustainable and desirable future is in
some respects an impossible task. But it is a necessary
task and I, for one, am grateful to Costanza and
Kubiszewski for rising to the challenge.
266 J Environ Stud Sci (2014) 4:265–266
Author's personal copy