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Purpose This study aims to assess progress toward achieving international (United Nations’) goals and targets for attaining sustainable development and discuss the risks of worldwide failure. Design/methodology/approach The authors highlight the relationship between global goals/targets and governance, relate this to the concept of sustainable development, outline and compare Millennium Development Goals and their successors, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and lastly view SDG implementation from two major spaces i.e. the governance and science space, respectively. Findings Governance and culture as new components of sustainable development may be sine qua non for humanity’s transformative action toward global and just sustainable development. Through fostering informed decision and policymaking, modern science, as sketched in this contribution, should provide the framework for realizing Agenda 2030. Earth System Science and its innovative notions such as the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries, tipping points and tipping elements will be key in the process of “designing” blank a sustainable future of and for Homo sapiens. Originality/value This essay proposes developing holistic approaches to cooperate at all levels in urgent efforts to meet goals projected for 2030 and 2050. The complexity and functioning of the governance space, comprising a system of governance systems, is illustrated not only in the diversity of the institutional landscape but in particular through the blurring of all scales – local to global.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the development of the evolving mental phenomenon of alternative history.Design/methodology/approach -The article analyzes the role of the fiction known as the ''What if?'' school of speculation about the past, some of its conspicuous exemplars, and how its adaptation might affect attitudes and even prejudices about how to view life.Findings -Present and future are not always what one thought they could become. ''What if?'' also gives rise to endeavours in ''science'' fiction and structured projections today dealing with circumstances of tomorrow and after.Originality/value -Besides providing diversion, the approach serves to illustrate foresight's conception of ''retrostrategy''.

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Purpose -The objective of this paper is to scan the extent of uncertainty and hesitation in the development of plans and strategy.Design/methodology/approach -The author evokes concrete cases of risk aversion, when the action either goes ahead or is stymied by lack of certitude. The incidents cited are of practical -rather than of theoretical -connotation.Findings -This essay shows that the willful overcoming of missing assuredness may sometimes incur, in its turn, hazardous risk.Originality/value -The paper illustrates the roles of intelligence, the measurement of precaution, and the willingness or failure to gamble on the (sometimes) long shot.