Rethinking Sustainable Development

Angela Espinosa and Jon Walker

Chapter 6 in A Complexity Approach to Sustainability:Theory and Application, 2017, pp 315-386 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: The core idea behind this book is that dominant theories about the world and how to run it have worked adequately for the last 300 years because they evolved in a particular environment. However, that environment is rapidly vanishing. Despite the many warnings, we still assume that we can depend on an inexhaustible availability of energy and raw materials, that the various eco-systems will absorb all the waste products we generate, and that never-ending economic growth is possible. It is only as an afterthought that consideration is given as to how the many catastrophic consequences of this growth can be dealt with. We are trapped in old ways of thinking that do not have sufficient variety for the complexity of today’s world. In the context of sustainable development, the traditional development paradigms that may have worked in the past now need rethinking from a more realistic and accurate understanding of the complex multi-verse we now inhabit. Naomi Klein argues convincingly over 500 pages that there is little hope of reversing the warming of the planet until we invent and implement a new socio-economic order (Klein, 2015, p. 21).

Keywords: Sustainable Development; Operations Management; Complexity Science; Climate Change; Viability and Sustaibility; Management Systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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