Sustainability—a theoretical idea or a practical recipe?

Abstract

In this paper, the notion of sustainability as a general regulative idea is distinguished from sustainable development as a more concrete concept leading to practical actions. After that, different economic meanings of sustainable development are discussed, and a concept of critical sustainability is proposed especially with respect to the problem of climate change. Maintaining critical crash barriers and bottlenecks presupposes, however, demanding, continuous improvements in energy efficiency.After discussing problems of decision theory in cases of uncertainty, which is constitutive for climate change, the links between intragenerational and intergenerational justice are analyzed, and by using Barry's notion of justice and Goodin's concept of vulnerability, two possible positions of the general idea of fairness inherent in sustainable development are presented. We conclude by shortly sketching the notion of sufficiency as an additional supplementary sustainability strategy in cases where efficiency improvements based on innovation are less than sufficient for securing the (energetic) fundaments of economic activity and human life.Zusammenfassung In diesem Artikel wird das Konzept der ''Nachhaltigkeit'' als regulative Idee von einer ''Nachhaltigen Entwicklung'' als prinzipiell handlungsleitendem Begriff unterschieden. Daran anschließend werden verschiedene

Paradigm Found? Immanent Critique to Tackle Interdisciplinarity and Normativity in Science for Sustainable Development

“…Formally speaking, the "critical capital" sustainability approach is in effect a stronger variant of "weak" sustainability; as acknowledged by the proponents of this type (e.g., [109,110]). As such, it relies on an adoption and operationalization of concepts and tools from both the disciplines of economics and ecology.…”

“…Once a particular critical natural capital is identified, sustainability is no longer in line with economic development, and the latter must give way to Economic Sufficiency, or some similar concepts. And because instances of critical natural capital occur at specific geographic locations and are by nature local, a host of questions about distributive justice and ethics in general are raised [109,110]. Once again, as with "strong" sustainability, what started as a modest correction to "weak" sustainability ends up far removed from the realm of economics, and has to grapple with the question of values and ethics for its vision of SD.…”

The Ecology of Education: Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development and Sustainability

“…However, both sustainable development and sustainability remain conceptually elusive, as illustrated by how the term has been variously utilized in a variety of disciplines in varying contexts that range from forestry management to sustaining maximum yields in fisheries to envisioning steady state economies in sustainable societies (Brown, †Hanson, Liverman, & †Merideth, 1987;Jahnke & Nutzinger, 2003). Stemming from the ambiguity regarding generally applicable operational definitions, it has, perhaps not surprisingly been difficult to develop and implement valid and effective curricula for sustainable development and sustainability in schools (Johnson & Mappin, 2005).…”

Migration and justice in the era of sustainable development goals: a conceptual framework

“…Hewing close to this, our work aims to provide an analytical framework or "tool box" to systematically grasp the different aspects influencing the quality of migration processes, and how these aspects influence and partially clash across scale-for example individual, generational and national scales (trade-offs). To operationalize and systematize sustainability aspects in migration, we use the commonly accepted core of sustainability, the concepts of inter-and intragenerational justice (Anderson et al 2016;Burger and Christen 2011;Christen and Schmidt 2012;Jahnke and Nutzinger 2003;Langhelle 2000;Ott 2003) as analytical lenses. We further integrate the perspective of different scales (e.g.…”