The Six Critical Determinants That May Act as Human Sustainability Boundaries on Climate Change Action

Filipe Duarte Santos (), Tim O’Riordan, Miguel Rocha de Sousa and Jiesper Strandsbjerg Tristan Pedersen
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Filipe Duarte Santos: cE3c—Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, CHANGE—Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, 1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal
Tim O’Riordan: School of Environmental Sciences Member, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7TJ, UK
Jiesper Strandsbjerg Tristan Pedersen: cE3c—Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, CHANGE—Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, 1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Significant advances have been achieved in multilateral negotiations regarding human development and environmental safeguarding since the 1972 UN Stockholm Conference. There is much greater global awareness and action towards sustainability. However, sustainability has persistently been sidelined, leading to the identification and definition of a transgressed “safe and just space for humanity”. Here we develop a new evolutionary approach and methodology to explain the reasons why sustainability continues to be a difficult challenge for contemporary societies to adopt. We argue that these originate in six major biological, social, psychological, political, and cultural critical determinants that resulted from human biologic and cultural evolution. Although they are essential for human prosperity and wellbeing, these characteristics may also act as human sustainability boundaries. It is possible to reduce the inhibiting power of each critical determinant in the pathways to sustainability, a vital process that we term softening. Identifying, knowing, and softening these impediments is a necessary first step to achieving sustainability through greater self-knowledge and transformational processes. The application of the present methodology is restricted here to the climate change challenge. We examine the ways in which each human sustainability boundary is capable of obstructing climate action and offer possible ways to soften its hardness.

Keywords: sustainability; environment and development; evolutionary approach; critical determinants for sustainability; sustainability boundaries; climate change action (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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