Achieving Sustainability: The Ultimate Human Challenge: Critical Barriers and Future Perspectives

The book provides an assessment of whether sustainability is realizable in the current societal framework. What are the challenges and the barriers – and what are the levers necessary to meet and overcome them? Through a revision of the essence of sustainability the book provides an opportunity to understand the deeper level of the radical change that sustainability represents, and the resistance that is preventing its realization. To build the argument the sustainable development model is compared with current development theories as well as alternative solutions based on utopian models of the past. The book assesses the results that can be achieved within the current systemic framework, based on case stories. It outlines the limitations to sustainability, pointing out and defining the multiple, cross-sectoral and systemic barriers that hinder the transition. Finally, the book offers perspectives on achieving a sustainable future, encompassing the impacts from recent events including the pandemic as well as the multiple mitigation and transition initiatives undertaken globally. Brian Goodwin’s QuoteLike the caterpillar that wraps itself up in its silken swaddling bands prior to its metamorphosis into a butterfly, we have wrapped ourselves in a tangled skin from which we can emerge only by going through a similarly dramatic transformation.