Sustainable development is a global agenda to advance human development toward a state of sustainability. Facilitated by the United Nations and currently encapsulated in 17 sustainable development goals, its three pillars – economic growth, social progress and environmental protection – underpin several governments’ strategies, including the NZ Living Standards Framework and the EU Green Deal.…
The idea of sustainable development began 50 years ago with the theory that economic progress need not occur at the expense of nature or social progress. The sustainable development agenda, facilitated by the UN, aims to bring that theory alive through government, civil society and business action. The SDGs encapsulate the issues to be resolved.…
The UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 conceptualises economic growth meeting social needs while reversing environmental harms, based on decoupling theory or green growth. This is hugely popular among business people who want to protect the planet and grow their business. The problem is that green growth business strategies aren’t working. A feasible alternative is degrowth.…
Agenda 2030 involves 17 SDGs, each pointing at a global wicked problem. How can we possibly address even one of these challenges? Systems thinking is a way of seeing – creating simulacra of real world complex systems and the problems within them. The tried and tested strategy for effectively leveraging substantial systemic change is intervention.…
Heliocene 