Regenerative sustainability. A relational model of possibilities for the emergence of positive tipping points

Abstract

Global environmental change problems are relational problems, so individual and collective actions aimed at dealing with them need to address fundamental changes about how we relate to social and biophysical systems. In this contribution, I suggest that current attempts to theorise and act on sustainability transformations would benefit from a relational perspective characterising individuals, organisations and societies as coupled social-ecological systems set in the context of accelerating global environmental change. Using a whole-life-systems’ non-exemptionalist worldview, a conceptual model is presented to help explore the theoretical possibilities for creating regenerative sustainability pathways. Learning to restore and improve the life-support conditions that ensure long-term sustainability will require enacting positive synergies between social and biophysical capitals as well as reframing anthropocentric conceptions of agency and of individual emancipation. In particular, regenerative sustainability pathways entail synergising different kinds and levels of agency in non-dualistic ways and tackle at the same time transformations in: social and institutional arrangements (S), energy and natural resources (E), information and knowledge systems (I) and accumulated environmental change (C) -the SEIC model.