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Beyond Sustainababble
Abstract and Figures
We live today in an age of sustainababble, a cacophonous profusion of uses of the word sustainable to mean anything from environmentally better to cool. The original adjective-meaning capable of being maintained in existence without interruption or diminution-goes back to the ancient Romans. Its use in the environmental field exploded with the 1987 release of Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Sustainable development, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and the other commissioners declared, meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
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... The term "sustainable development" evolved throughout the 1980s starting from an obscure 1980 report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, through several popular "green" books, and eventually it became an organising concept in the Brundtland Commission report (Jamieson, 1998). The Brundtland Commission's report contains a definition for the enigmatic terms "sustainable," "sustainability," and "sustainable development," which has sparked debate among environmental analysts (Engelman, 2013). According to Engelman (2013), "sustainable development" elicits two critical points. ...
... The Brundtland Commission's report contains a definition for the enigmatic terms "sustainable," "sustainability," and "sustainable development," which has sparked debate among environmental analysts (Engelman, 2013). According to Engelman (2013), "sustainable development" elicits two critical points. The first is that any environmental trend line can theoretically be measured to determine its anticipated impact on future generations' ability to meet their needs. ...
... Furthermore, by involving stakeholders in developing these policies, SIDS will be better able to approach long-term development due to increased awareness. Despite this, the literature indicates that SIDS with abundant natural resources must consider resource conservation to reduce their economic vulnerability and anticipate the impact of tourism development on future generations' ability to meet their needs (Engelman, 2013). ...
Purpose
This review article aims to outline the challenges that small island developing states (SIDS) face in developing long-term sustainability with particular reference to the implications for policymakers and tourism stakeholders who have to operate with limited resources.
Design/methodology/approach
The study sought to determine how SIDS should develop and implement policies and plans for sustainable tourism through a thematic review of the literature. The data were gathered from previous studies that examined how SIDS should accomplish this.
Findings
The findings indicate that the best approach for long-term sustainable tourism requires the development of a system for effective monitoring and policies that are implemented promptly through good governance. Developing sustainable tourism through quantifiable indicators has become critical given the growing need to understand the potential impacts of tourism development on destinations. This review also reveals that long-term sustainability of cultural resources can be achieved by compiling an inventory of existing tangible resources and involving stakeholders during the development phase to increase their attention and awareness of the critical nature of resource conservation.
Originality/value
This review determines how SIDS should develop and implement policies and plan for sustainable tourism and how to mitigate the challenges associated with unsustainable conditions.
... This is because the concept of sustainable development is unclear, difficult to implement, thus starting to lose momentum. Some authors even ridicule sustainable development as a 'theoretical dream' [10] and 'sustainababble' [11]. The relationship between circular economy and sustainable development was found to be weak [6]. ...
Circularity is not a new concept. Activities such as reuse or recycling have been around for centuries. Today, an urgent solution to tackle the increasing harmful emissions resulting in severe climate changes is being proposed and investigated. This is because a link between industry and the environment is critically important for business. A more sustainable socio-technical system is therefore urgently needed. There has been a rapid growth of academic articles on the circular economy. The circular economy concept has been considered a solution to many of today’s challenges, including resource scarcity and waste generation.
... The elevated attention toward social sustainability increases the development and application of the social assessment as well. The need for assessing and evaluating social sustainability is also emphasized by Engelman (2014), as quantifying the concept of sustainability is the first stage prior to managing it. The complication associated with the social impacts based on the action plan and policy from global to the household level, macroeconomic model to regional disaggregation (Brinkman et al., 2019) thus increases the challenges of the social assessment. ...
Climate change, resource scarcity, and an aging population are the most concerning global issues in recent decades. One of the best methods to manage and mitigate these problems while continuing to boost the economies and offer opportunities for the growing world population is sustainable development. As Malaysia is one of the major oil consumers in the world, the sustainability of palm oil has been controversial. Several sustainability standards are introduced to ensure the balance performance in terms of economic, environmental, and social performance of the industry. Nonetheless, the social aspect of the sustainability of palm oil has received relatively less emphasis as compared with the economic and environmental aspects. Literature, experts, and anecdotal evidence often claim that it is due to the complication in assessing and evaluating social factors and impacts. Thus, this work aims to fill the gap in the literature on social sustainability for the palm oil industry both in terms of methods and facets. Suggested facets and their implication can enrich the theoretical contribution of this field while providing a comprehensive profile of the social sustainability of the palm oil industry. The outcomes can also be adopted by policymakers and industry stakeholders to assess, manage, and enhance the social sustainability of the industry.
... Respect for the environment has ancient roots in human cultures. For example, the popular saying "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children" is attributed to the indigenous culture of North America (Engelman, 2013). Caradonna (2014) states that the history of sustainability can be traced back to the late 17th century, to the criticism of the impact of industrialisation and to the efforts to solve issues impacting on forestry. ...
The evolution to a just, Low Carbon and Circular Economy could be accelerated if additional education and training professionals embraced the practical implications of terms such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) or for Sustainability (ES). Therefore, this study identified the numerous elements of Environmental and Sustainability Education that are relevant to effectively encourage the implementation of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP). The identification of these elements was based on the available literature in the fields that have stemmed from the ‘Environmental Education (EE)’ and ‘Sustainable Development (SD)’ movements. Finally, their synthesis was proposed as a ‘Theoretical Framework for an ES as Transformative Education for Sustainable Consumption and Production (ESCP) from a complex, critical and constructivist perspective’. This framework is intended as a basis for the reflection on current ES practices and to inspire the realisation of the full potential of ES in formal, non-formal and informal settings, from early childhood to old age learning. Especially, given the Agenda 2030 and the climate emergency, it could serve to improve Adult Learning and Education, Vocational Education and Training and Organisational Training for Sustainability (e.g., courses on energy or water saving, Green Public Procurement, Sustainable Product Design), in public and private organisations.
... This dispute about the meaning of terms for the development of science is also significant for social sciences, for which "terminology matters" (Eitzel et al., 2017). The blurriness of the concepts, which provides social values into business practice, was pointed as a primary reason for failure in applying them into the practice (Engelman, 2013;Janoušková et al., 2019;Loiseau et al., 2016;Naudé, 2011). There is plenty of theoretical and empirical evidence that achieving sustainable policy goals depends on effective communication between their stakeholders, communication in which the first step is to find a shared space of ideas meaning (Lindenfeld et al., 2012;Sartori et al., 2011;Shahzalal & Hassan, 2019). ...
A growing interest in the circular economy, which is seen in the intensification of public discourse, could lead to a danger of blurring the concept and introducing inefficiency in implementing circular economy-based solutions. This study explores the trend in concomitant or accompanying concepts of the discussion about the circular economy themes understanding regarding scientific publications (3,486 publications from Web of Science and Scopus) and popular (non-scientific) domain (represented by 106,504 tweets) in the years 2011-2018. By employing text mining, we calculated the Jaccard similarity index divided into years. The results reveal changes over time in themes accompanying the circular economy discussion and a trend of rising recognition of research-related keywords in general public discussion, with unweighted similarity reaching 39.44% in 2018. Our Twitter keyword research perspective indicates the need to consider the consumer's role in the development of the circular economy-through keywords that are closely related to consumers' daily activities.
As an analytical and normative concept, sustainable development has been in gestation for decades. Just like any other concept with deep societal implications and impact, it is best understood, therefore, by unravelling the various strands of its history. In the following pages, we will unpick notions of “sustainability” and “development” and their eventual combination in a long-term historical context.
No novo contexto mundial, a inovação e a sustentabilidade têm um importante papel no desenvolvimento da sociedade. O Estado, atento a este aspecto, optou por fazer uso de seu poder de compra para fomentar o desenvolvimento sustentável e a inovação. Neste cenário, propusemos avaliar o panorama dos gastos públicos e do comportamento licitatório, a fim de identificar se, nos últimos anos (2012-2018), o poder de compra do Estado esteve direcionado ao desenvolvimento sustentável e à inovação. A realização deste trabalho justificou-se em virtude de uma lacuna na literatura com relação ao tema. Ao final, concluímos que o Estado tem focado seus recursos no fomento do desenvolvimento sustentável de forma considerada e na inovação de forma tímida, advindo desta política novas oportunidades de negócios para as empresas.
The higher education system plays a critical role in supporting the transition towards a circular economy (CE). It helps create business leaders and policymakers having appropriate skills, competences, and consciousness referring to the CE challenges. Nevertheless, few studies have specifically investigated how the higher education system is addressing the CE, how the current academic offering is integrating the CE principles, and which skills and competences are currently provided. This paper overcomes these limitations by investigating the current offering of the higher education for the CE in Italy. We analyze the academic programs, courses, and modules at different levels of 49 Italian universities and, by means of a detailed classification of the learning outcomes, provide a clear picture of the knowledge, skills, and competences offered by the CE education. We finally discuss implications of our findings concerning the development of CE education and CE jobs.
Like other animal production systems, aquaculture has developed into a highly globalized trade-dependent industry. A major part of aquaculture technology requires fishmeal to produce the feed for farmed species. By tracing and mapping patterns of trade flows globally for fishmeal we show the aquaculture industry's increasing use of marine ecosystems worldwide. We provide an in-depth analysis of the growth decades (1980–2000) of salmon farming in Norway and shrimp farming in Thailand. Both countries, initially net exporters of fishmeal, increased the number of import source nations of fishmeal, peaking in the mid-1990s. Thailand started locally and expanded into sources from all over the globe, including stocks from the North Sea through imports from Denmark, while Norway predominantly relied on northern region source nations to feed farmed salmon. In 2000, both have two geographically alternate sources of fishmeal supply: the combination of Chile and Peru in South America, and a regional complement. We find that fishmeal trade for aquaculture is not an issue of using ecosystems of the South for production in the North, but of trade between nations with industrialized fisheries linked to productive marine ecosystems. We discuss the expansion of marine ecosystem appropriation for the global aquaculture industry and observed shifts in the trade of fishmeal between marine areas over time. Globalization, through information technology and transport systems, has made it possible to rapidly switch between marine areas for fishmeal supply in economically connected food producing systems. But the stretching of the production chain from local to global and the ability to switch between marine areas worldwide seem to undermine the industry's incentives to respond to changes in the capacity of ecosystems to supply fish. For example, trade information does not reveal the species of fish that the fishmeal is made of much less its origins and there is lack of feedback between economic performance and impacts on marine ecosystem services. Responding to environmental feedback is essential to avoid the trap of mining the marine resources on which the aquaculture industry depends. There are grounds to suggest the need for some global rules and institutions that create incentives for seafood markets to account for ecosystem support and capacity.
Sea-level rise (SLR) is a critical and uncertain climate change risk, involving timescales of centuries1. Here we use a semi-empirical model, calibrated with sea-level data of the past millennium2, to estimate the SLR implications of holding warming below 2 °C or 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperature, as mentioned in the Cancún Agreements3. Limiting warming to these levels with a probability larger than 50% produces 75–80 cm SLR above the year 2000 by 2100. This is 25 cm below a scenario with unmitigated emissions, but 15 cm above a hypothetical scenario reducing global emissions to zero by 2016. The long-term SLR implications of the two warming goals diverge substantially on a multi-century timescale owing to inertia in the climate system and the differences in rates of SLR by 2100 between the scenarios. By 2300 a 1.5 °C scenario could peak sea level at a median estimate of 1.5 m above 2000. The 50% probability scenario for 2 °C warming would see sea level reaching 2.7 m above 2000 and still rising at about double the present-day rate. Halting SLR within a few centuries is likely to be achieved only with the large-scale deployment of CO2 removal efforts, for example, combining large-scale bioenergy systems with carbon capture and storage4.
Humanity has emerged as a major force in the operation of the biosphere, with a significant imprint on the Earth System, challenging
social–ecological resilience. This new situation calls for a fundamental shift in perspectives, world views, and institutions.
Human development and progress must be reconnected to the capacity of the biosphere and essential ecosystem services to be
sustained. Governance challenges include a highly interconnected and faster world, cascading social–ecological interactions
and planetary boundaries that create vulnerabilities but also opportunities for social–ecological change and transformation.
Tipping points and thresholds highlight the importance of understanding and managing resilience. New modes of flexible governance
are emerging. A central challenge is to reconnect these efforts to the changing preconditions for societal development as
active stewards of the Earth System. We suggest that the Millennium Development Goals need to be reframed in such a planetary
stewardship context combined with a call for a new social contract on global sustainability. The ongoing mind shift in human
relations with Earth and its boundaries provides exciting opportunities for societal development in collaboration with the
biosphere—a global sustainability agenda for humanity.
KeywordsSocial–ecological systems–Resilience–Ecosystem services–Natural capital–Adaptive governance–Planetary stewardship
Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale 'tipping point' highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.
Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced. However, in the twenty-first century, we face scarcity in critical resources, the degradation of ecosystem services, and the erosion of the planet's capability to absorb our wastes. Equity issues remain stubbornly difficult to solve. This situation is novel in its speed, its global scale and its threat to the resilience of the Earth System. The advent of the Anthropence, the time interval in which human activities now rival global geophysical processes, suggests that we need to fundamentally alter our relationship with the planet we inhabit. Many approaches could be adopted, ranging from geoengineering solutions that purposefully manipulate parts of the Earth System to becoming active stewards of our own life support system. The Anthropocene is a reminder that the Holocene, during which complex human societies have developed, has been a stable, accommodating environment and is the only state of the Earth System that we know for sure can support contemporary society. The need to achieve effective planetary stewardship is urgent. As we go further into the Anthropocene, we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.
Climate change is now doing far more harm than marooning polar bears on melting chunks of ice-it is damaging the health of people around the world. Brilliantly connecting stories of real people with cutting-edge scientific and medical information, Changing Planet, Changing Health brings us to places like Mozambique, Honduras, and the United States for an eye-opening on-the-ground investigation of how climate change is altering patterns of disease. Written by a physician and world expert on climate and health and an award-winning science journalist, the book reveals the surprising links between global warming and cholera, malaria, lyme disease, asthma, and other health threats. In clear, accessible language, it also discusses topics including Climategate, cap-and-trade proposals, and the relationship between free markets and the climate crisis. Most importantly, Changing Planet, Changing Health delivers a suite of innovative solutions for shaping a healthy global economic order in the twenty-first century.
Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe -and that make clear who the real enemy is. f the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere -the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe. Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation -in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history. Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world's nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn't even attend. It was "a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago," the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls "once thronged by multitudes." Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I've spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we're losing the fight, badly and quickly -losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.
Energy, food, and water crises; climate disruption; declining fisheries; increasing ocean acidification; emerging diseases;
and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating
scale of human activity. They are outpacing the development of institutions to deal with them and their many interactive effects.
The core of the problem is inducing cooperation in situations where individuals and nations will collectively gain if all
cooperate, but each faces the temptation to take a free ride on the cooperation of others. The nation-state achieves cooperation
by the exercise of sovereign power within its boundaries. The difficulty to date is that transnational institutions provide,
at best, only partial solutions, and implementation of even these solutions can be undermined by internation competition and
recalcitrance.