Humanity faces the challenge of how to achieve a high quality of life for over 7 billion people without destabilizing critical planetary processes. Using indicators designed to measure a ‘safe and just’ development space, we quantify the resource use associated with meeting basic human needs, and compare this to downscaled planetary boundaries for over 150 nations. We find that no country meets basic needs for its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. Physical needs such as nutrition, sanitation, access to electricity and the elimination of extreme poverty could likely be met for all people without transgressing planetary boundaries. However, the universal achievement of more qualitative goals (for example, high life satisfaction) would require a level of resource use that is 2–6 times the sustainable level, based on current relationships. Strategies to improve physical and social provisioning systems, with a focus on sufficiency and equity, have the potential to move nations towards sustainability, but the challenge remains substantial.

/pdf/a-good-life-for-all-within-planetary-boundaries-21qth69acm.pdf

A good life for all within planetary boundaries

This paper offers a critique of sustainability reporting and, in particular, a critique of the modern disconnect between the practice of sustainability reporting and what we consider to be the urgent issue of our era: sustaining the life-supporting ecological systems on which humanity and other species depend. Tracing the history of such reporting developments, we identify and isolate the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’ (TBL) as a core and dominant idea that continues to pervade business reporting, and business engagement with sustainability. Incorporating an entity’s economic, environmental and social performance indicators into its management and reporting processes, we argue, has become synonymous with corporate sustainability; in the process, concern for ecology has become sidelined. Moreover, this process has become reinforced and institutionalised through SustainAbility’s biennial benchmarking reports, KPMG’s triennial surveys of practice, initiatives by the accountancy profession and, particularly, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s sustainability reporting guidelines. We argue that the TBL and the GRI are insufficient conditions for organizations contributing to the sustaining of the Earth’s ecology. Paradoxically, they may reinforce business-as-usual and greater levels of un-sustainability.

W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting

https://www.degrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Schneider-et-al-special-issue.pdf

Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability. Introduction to this special issue

Degrowth is the literal translation of ‘decroissance’, a French word meaning reduction. Launched by activists in 2001 as a challenge to growth, it became a missile word that sparks a contentious debate on the diagnosis and prognosis of our society. ‘Degrowth’ became an interpretative frame for a new (and old) social movement where numerous streams of critical ideas and political actions converge. It is an attempt to re-politicise debates about desired socio-environmental futures and an example of an activist-led science now consolidating into a concept in academic literature. This article discusses the definition, ori gins, evolution, practices and construction of degrowth. The main objective is to explain degrowth’s multiple sources and strategies in order to improve its basic definition and avoid reductionist criticisms and misconceptions. To this end, the article presents degrowth’s main intellectual sources as well as its diverse strategies (oppositional activism, building of alternatives and political proposals) and actors (practitioners, activists and scientists). Finally, the article argues that the movement’s diversity does not detract from the existence of a common path.

/pdf/what-is-degrowth-from-an-activist-slogan-to-a-social-4gr4wk0itp.pdf

What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement

Water availability is a major factor constraining humanity's ability to meet the future food and energy needs of a growing and increasingly affluent human population. Water plays an important role ...

/pdf/the-global-food-energy-water-nexus-4em7xks6ik.pdf

The Global Food-Energy-Water Nexus

John Polimeni, Kozo Mayumi, Mario Giampietro & Blake Alcott, The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements

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John Polimeni, Kozo Mayumi, Mario Giampietro & Blake Alcott, The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements