What Next for Sustainable Development?: Our Common Future at Thirty

Sustainable development brings together a series of normative themes related to negotiating environmental limits, to addressing equity, needs and development, and to the process of transformation and transition. To mark the 30th Anniversary of Our Common Future (1987), that first placed sustainable development on the global agenda, the editors have brought together a group of international scholars from a range of social science backgrounds. They have discussed these same themes – looking backwards in terms of what has been achieved, assessing the current situation with respect to sustainable development, and looking forwards to identify the key elements of the future agenda. This book presents a series of critical reflections on these enduring themes. The overriding concern is with the present and with the future as the editors seek to explore the question: What next for sustainable development?

Table of Contents:
Contents: Forward Preface 1. Introduction James Meadowcroft, David Banister, Erling Holden, Oluf Langhelle, Kristin Linnerud and Geoffrey Gilpin Part I Setting the Context 2. Our Common Future in Earth Systems perspective Simon Dalby 3. A normative model of sustainable development: how do countries comply? Kristin Linnerud, Erling Holden, Geoffrey Gilpin and Morten Simonsen Part II Negotiating environmental limits 4. The global sustainability challenges in the future: the energy use, materials supply, pollution, climate change and inequality nexus Harald Ulrik Sverdrup 5. Implications of deep decarbonisation pathways for sustainable development Sabine Fuss 6. Brundtland+30: the continuing need for an indicator of environmental sustainability Paul Ekins and Arkaitz Usubiaga Part III Equity, needs and development 7. Sustainability and redistribution Iris Borowy 8. Necessities and luxuries: how to combine redistribution with sustainable consumption Ian Gough 9. Taming equity in multilateral climate politics: A shift from responsibilities to capacities Sonja Klinsky and Aarti Gupta Part IV Transitions and transformation 10. The Transition to Sustainability as Interbeing . . . or: from oncology to ontology Felix Rauschmayer 11. Taking climate change and transformations to sustainability seriously Karen O’Brien 12. Sustainability and the politics of transformations: from control to care in moving beyond Modernity Andy Stirling 13. Politics and technology: deploying the state to accelerate socio-technical transitions for sustainability Oluf Langhelle, James Meadowcroft, and Daniel Rosenbloom Part V Facing the future 14. Beyond limits: making policy in a climate changed world Eva Lövbrand 15. A Future for Sustainable Development? David Banister 16. What Next for Sustainable Development? David Banister, Erling Holden, Oluf Langhelle, Kristin Linnerud, James Meadowcroft and Geoffrey Gilpin Index

About the Author :
Edited by James Meadowcroft, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, David Banister, Emeritus Professor of Transport Studies, School of Geography and the Environment and Senior Research Fellow, St Anne's College, University of Oxford, UK, Erling Holden, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Oluf Langhelle, University of Stavanger, Kristin Linnerud and Geoffrey Gilpin, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway

Review :
'This book is a masterful round up of 30 years of sustainable development thinking by some of the topic's most renowned and deep thinkers. The authors expose the progress made in the last 30 years, but also many gaps, flaws and more dangerous trends accompanying our times. Sustainable development now involves more forward and critical ideas, such as de-growth, critiques of fossil capitalism, insistence on equity and redistribution, moving towards ethics of care and eco-social policies focused on satisfying human needs within planetary boundaries. This book thus is a timely summary and renewed introduction to a complex and engaging body of thought, a path forward for the possibility of global human progress in troubled times.' --Julia Steinberger, University of Leeds, UK'The editors have brought together a distinguished international team of social scientists from different disciplines to assess the legacy of the landmark Brundtland report, Our Common Future (1987), along with the present and future prospects for sustainable development in the Anthropocene. The world is at a critical ecological juncture. This book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand how to accelerate the transition to a more equitable development path that can safe-guard both local ecosystems and Earth Systems.' --Robyn Eckersley, University of Melbourne, Australia 'Is sustainable development ''everything'' or ''something''? This edited volume makes a very important contribution to the discourse on critically analyzing the content, process and outcomes of sustainable development politics and policies; a discourse very different from the United Nations sponsored program for promoting sustainable development, which has been seriously ''stymied'' and ''diluted'' at the international and national levels of implementation.' --Carlo Aall, Western Norway Research Institute, and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway