Sustainability and Sustainable Development

Abstract

If the survival of humanity on our planet is to be secured in the long term in an acceptable state, radical social changes are required, whereby it must be critically examined whether the radicalness and speed of these changes can even prevent a systemic collapse. These changes must be brought about both through political restrictions to comply with the planetary guide rails 1-the tolerable limits to the carrying capacity of our planet-and through individual changes in behaviour, and also affect the properties of products and services. Examples of political approaches are the energy turnaround with the coal phase-out and the transport turnaround with the promotion of e-mobility. Examples for behavioural changes would be sustainable nutritional patterns with regional/seasonal organic and vegan products or responsible mobility like the FlyingLess campaign 2. This chapter begins with a description of the state of the world in order to understand the importance of sustainable action and the complex starting point. Here, the current megatrends of climate change and other acute problems of anthro-pogenic emissions, the scarcity of resources due to overuse of the regeneratively available supply, and the population development, which exacerbates both effects, are addressed. Afterward the development of the concept of sustainability and sustainability research will be presented and the theoretical possibilities for sustainable design of human society derived from this will be discussed. Here, questions of definition and different views of sustainability are also presented, such as the interpretations of weak and strong sustainability. Possible starting points for sustainable development are 1 These crash barriers include the integrity of the biosphere, ocean acidification, ozone loss in the stratosphere, and new substances and modified life forms (see also Fig. 5.8).