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MILUTARENA-Formidlings- og koordineringstiltak knyttet for miljø- og utviklingsforskning

What next for sustainable development? Our Common Future at thirty

Alternative title: Vår felles fremtid fyller 30 år: Hva nå bærekraftig utvikling?

Awarded: NOK 0.14 mill.

Thirty years have passed since the World Commission on Environment and Development released its landmark report Our Common Future, which brought the idea of sustainable development to international attention. The idea was endorsed by world leaders at the 1992 Rio Conference, and it has structured international debate about environment and development since that time. Most recently, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted the Sustainable Development Goals to guide international efforts until 2030. As it has become embedded in international discourse, sustainable development links a series of critical normative concerns related to improving human welfare, protecting the environment, equity within and between generations, and public participation in environment and development decision making. Although sustainable development has been subject to countless critiques and disappointments, the idea endures because it captures something essential about the problems of environment and development confronting the modern world. Over the past decades a number of major international conferences have offered periodic assessments of progress made in implementing sustainable development. And the scholarly literature on sustainable development has continued to expand. The purpose of this project is to reflect on critical themes raised by Our Common Future and practical experience with sustainable development. We have done so by gathering a number of international experts on two workshops: Oslo in 2017 and Ottawa in 2018. The experts' papers have been edited by the editor group (Meadowcroft, Banister, Holden, Langhelle, Linnerud and Gilpin) and were submitted as an edited book to Edward Elgar on the 20th December 2018. The book will be published in 2019. The purpose of the book is to make a distinctive contribution structured around three critical themes: (a) negotiating environmental limits (b) equity, needs and development and (c) transformation and transitions. A cross-cutting issue that makes these themes concrete, and appears in virtually every chapter, is the challenge of responding to climate change. This is in many ways the paradigmatic sustainable development problem, and Our Common Future was the first major international report to place climate change at the core of its concerns. Thus, at the close of the second decade of the twenty-first century, we offer a series of critical reflections on these enduring themes. Although this discussion is grounded in history, the overriding concern is with the present and with the future as we seek to explore the question: What next for sustainable development? In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion (by editors), the book?s content is as follows: 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); 4. The global sustainability challenges in the future: the energy use, materials supply, pollution, climate change and inequality nexus (Harald 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); 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); 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); 14. Beyond limits: making policy in a climate changed world (Eva Lövbrand); 15. A Future for Sustainable Development? (David Banister) With respect to a 'common message' we believe that there are many points of contact among the individual papers relating to the gravity of the current situation, the diagnosis of problems and pathways to change. Emphasis on these points of affinity can be drawn out in the introductory and concluding chapters. Nevertheless, one of the most important contributions of the book have been to identify critical cleavages and fault lines which run across the contributions (and through discourses of sustainability more generally) and which need to be addressed more seriously (for example: the relative weight given to 'inner transformation' or 'structural change'; 'decoupling' versus 'degrowth').

This book is a scholarly rather than a 'popular' publication. But one that will engage directly with the current societal predicament and suggest practical avenues for reform. The book should be suitable for university students, faculty, and researchers as well as individuals from international organizations, government, non-governmental organizations, development and environmental circles, and the business world, who are interested in global problems.

Thirty years have passed since the World Commission on Environment and Development released its landmark report - Our Common Future - which brought the concept of sustainable development to international attention. Defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs", the idea was endorsed by world leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and has structured international debate about environment and development over the ensuing decades. Most recently, the UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals to guide international efforts until 2030. As it has become embedded in international discourse, sustainable development links together a series of critical normative concerns related to improving human welfare, protecting the environment (especially global life support systems), equity within and between generations, and public participation in environment and development decision making. Although sustainable development has been subject to countless critiques and disappointments, the idea endures - because it captures something essential about the problems of environment and development confronting the modern world. To mark this important anniversary we propose to invite a group of international scholars to come together in two workshops to examine the current context for movement towards more sustainable patterns of societal development and to reflect on the legacy of Our Common Future. The first workshop will be held in Oslo 14-16 October 2017 and the second in Ottawa 9-11 May 2018.

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MILUTARENA-Formidlings- og koordineringstiltak knyttet for miljø- og utviklingsforskning