Imagining a Sustainable Future: Shaping Emergent Thinking by Reflecting Through Aesthetic Action

To Achieve a Sustainable Blue Future, Progress Assessments Must Include Interdependencies between the Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable development thought has become the common idea of international community and every country, sustainable development way has become the best development model pursued by every country of the world. Sustainable development research is a transcentury integrated field of multidisciplines. The forming process of sustainable development thinking is retrospected in this paper. Based on the introduction to the concept and viewpoints of sustainable development at home and abroad, the profound connotation of sustainable development thought is analysed. The paper also introduces the theoretical framework of sustainable development and the basic theories of regional sustainable development, sums up the major discipline directions and their characteristics, main contents and their progresses in sustainable development research.

This article explores the role of physics education in resource utilization and environmental awareness cultivation, as well as the integration strategy with sustainable development education. Physics education enables students to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of energy generation, transformation, and utilization through experiments, observation, and exploration, thereby enhancing their understanding of resources. At the same time, physics education can also cultivate students' environmental awareness through case analysis and practical activities, emphasizing interdisciplinary cooperation and action practice. The integration of physics education and sustainable development education contributes to sustainable development education, cultivating students' environmental awareness, sustainable development values, and scientific literacy, making them citizens with sustainable development thinking and action abilities. Therefore, the integration of physics education and sustainable development education can help shape a more sustainable future.

Sustainable development thinking in tribology design

The 2030 Agenda was set in 2015 by the United Nations, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The Amazonian riverine people are recognized as traditional communities that have their own culture and use the local natural resources of their territories in an ancestral and traditional way. The Sustainable Development Reserve is a Brazilian protected area category which aims to ensure the protection of the natural environment while allowing the residence and the use of these lands by traditional populations. This article reports and discusses the achievements and challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals in two sustainable development reserves in Central Amazonia. The goals were evaluated in the Mamirauá and Amanã Sustainable Development Reserves, due to the large research programs developed in those areas along the past 20 years. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals have a clear connection with the mission of these sustainable development reserves in Central Amazon. Despite the many achievements conquered over the years, there are many challenges yet to overcome; and while striving to achieve the goals from the 2030 Agenda, new challenges will emerge. The current main challenges to reach the Sustainable Development Goals in the Mamirauá and Amanã Sustainable Development Reserves, in Central Amazon, are connecting to the reality of rural areas.

In the new framework of the Psychology of sustainability and sustainable development, this paper addresses the issue of building socially sustainable processes to develop a better quality of life in an urban context. The aim is to explore and highlight the connection between the acknowledgment of a pluralistic and multi-stakeholder scenario, the entwined implications for sustainability at different levels (personal, social, organizational), and the enhancement of the participatory process of planning for future accomplishments. A case study supported by the Municipality of Milano (Italy) is analyzed with the aim to understand the key issues to improve the well-being of the citizens. The paper describes the context of the experience, highlighting the Delphi approach adopted and the ways applied to involve citizens in urban development policies. Discussion and conclusions address the lesson learnt from the case study, pointing out how to prompt and nurture sharing and knowing opportunities and the specific conditions that can support plural stakeholders’ engagement in a sustainable urban future.

This study explores the critical intersection between cybersecurity and sustainable development, aiming to understand how cybersecurity measures can support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Employing a systematic literature review and content analysis, the research scrutinizes peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings, and reports from international organizations, focusing on literature published from 2010 to 2024. The inclusion criteria targeted works that directly address the role of cybersecurity in sustainable development, particularly those discussing emerging technologies and their potential to enhance digital security in support of the SDGs. The exclusion criteria filtered out non-peer-reviewed articles, opinion pieces, and studies not explicitly linking cybersecurity with sustainable development efforts. Key findings highlight the indispensable role of cybersecurity in safeguarding digital infrastructure essential for achieving SDGs, emphasizing the transformative potential of innovations such as blockchain technology and artificial intelligence in enhancing cybersecurity measures. The study identifies significant challenges at the intersection of cybersecurity and sustainability, including emerging threats and the need for a global framework to integrate cybersecurity within sustainable development efforts. Strategic recommendations for stakeholders encompass fostering international cooperation, investing in cybersecurity education, and promoting inclusive cybersecurity practices. Finally, the study underscores the necessity of integrating advanced cybersecurity measures with sustainable development initiatives. Enhanced cybersecurity is pivotal for creating a secure, resilient, and sustainable digital future, thereby supporting the global pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Ignoring the coordinated development and the natural environment carrying capacity plight caught the traditional development model, emphasizing the natural environment and the economy to adapt to the pursuit of harmony between man and nature, sustainable development become a wise choice, eco-design of the built environment is a human realization important tool for sustainable development. Sustainable eco-design of the built environment and the long-term goal of the current interests combine to maintain maximum coordination with the natural environment, not only become the reality of human needs, while also considering the needs of the human potential. Ecological construction and environmental protection around the significance of in-depth discussion of the needle eco-building for sustainable development thinking and practice of environmental design, environmental design proposed ecological architecture reflects the theme of sustainable development, while recycling is designed to achieve low carbon, environmentally friendly eco-building environment design approach.

An implementation plan for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by the implementing agency UNESCO, launched in 2005 to build partnerships with various partners mainly aimed to reflect the great diversity of interests, concerns, and challenges for ESD. Embedded in this UN program is the challenge to academic engineering programs to develop a technical workforce which is capable of designing and continually developing sustainable processes and products. ESD therefore requires engineers to be able to learn and perform in an interdisciplinary work environment as critical thinkers and problem solvers, to be value-driven and to practice participatory and transparent decision making. Taking these challenges back into curriculum development, the authors of this paper propose that their Lean Engineering Education (LEE) initiative be examined and scrutinized as a contribution to ESD. Thus, this paper reviews ESD roots and partnerships and, then, present, succinctly, LEE as a curricular innovation for engineering courses that promotes the behavior intended for future engineers, to foster a ESD and the Sustainable Development thinking.

Sustainable development is now widely accepted as a political objective in the UK and elsewhere but to what extent has the UK’s rhetoric on sustainable development become a reality? The aim of this book is to critically examine the UK’s approach to promoting and delivering sustainable development. It begins by providing a detailed account of UK law on sustainable development by reviewing the various policy, institutional and legal mechanisms used by the UK since the 1980s and by devolved administrations since devolution took effect in 1999. Progress has been slow, too slow and, according to the scientists, time is running out. To deal with this lack of progress, the book advocates increasing the status of ecological sustainability and sustainable development through the introduction of a wide range of legal mechanisms which would compel the change needed. The book calls for ecological sustainability, or respecting the Earth’s environmental limits, to be afforded the status of legal principle and argues that with ecological sustainability at its normative core, sustainable development could provide an effective framework for decision making and governance. It argues that to support this approach and ensure consistency, the time has come for sustainable development to receive explicit legal backing. Over and above its symbolic and educational value, legislation can impose mandatory rules on policymakers and decision makers, often with meaningful consequences both inside and outside the courtroom. To this end, the book contributes to the theory on sustainable development governance by suggesting three possible legislative approaches for such intervention. The volume concludes that while a lack of leadership on sustainable development may hinder the introduction of these innovations, once introduced, these innovations would equally provide much needed support for effective leadership towards a sustainable future. Andrea Ross is a Reader in the School of Law at the University of Dundee and has taught and researched in the areas of public and environmental law for over 18 years. Before becoming an academic she qualified as a Barrister and Solicitor in Ontario, Canada.An Earthscan from Routledge book.

The idea of this editorial research article is to start making sense out of the seemingly limitless debate on the environmental dimension of sustainable development. We have evaluated a collection of international peer‐reviewed papers. These contributions have been debated at the conferences of the International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDRS). Our main research objective here is to consider the often posed question of why the progress made in sustainable development has been so slow and the work implemented so unsuccessful. We argue that one of the main explanations is that the approaches used in sustainable development are reductionist and often lead into problem shifting and problem displacement. To address the problem of reductionism, we propose what we call ‘strategic thinking’ and its incorporation into sustainable development work in general. To open up this argument, we arrive at the discussion of three central dimensions of strategic thinking and the relevance of these dimensions when addressing reductionism. These dimensions are the strategy content, strategy process and strategy context. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Sustainability and sustainable development are terms that mean different things to different people. They are considered by some people to be rather vague ideals with implications we have yet to understand, while other people have used these concepts to identify their systems of interest and to develop clear plans of action with achievable goals. This paper will consider some of the thinking and action for sustainability and sustainable development that have taken place in the context of Agenda 21, the huge international agenda for environment and development which emerged from the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (Quarrie 1992). In particular, it will consider the extent to which systems ideas and techniques have been used by the groups of people involved.

A huge tension exists between recognizing sustainable development (SD) as a meta-discourse and accepting a limitless interpretational width. We analyse the impacts of diversity of worldviews on the interpretation of SD—as a knowledge-based concept—through a critical literature review, resulting in recommendations on the topic. We apply a social-constructionist approach, appreciating the complex socio-ecological interactions at the heart of SD. Only recently worldviews are recognized as constitutive elements of SD. Little attention has been given to the impacts on generated knowledge for SD. Variety of worldviews induces a variety of knowledge claims and needs. To retain SD’s ‘universal’ appeal as practical decision-guiding strategy for policy and action, we propose an integrative approach towards knowledge for SD—entailing an explicit pluralization of knowledge. SD should be re-interpreted as a joint worldviews construct, embracing a diversity of views in collaborative research and co-production of knowledge. Interpreting SD as a joint endeavour is necessary to overcome historical obstacles like cultural hegemony and a hierarchy of knowledge systems. We identified the following requirements for an inclusive knowledge for SD paradigm: re-interpretation of SD as a worldview constructs in progress; interpretative flexibility; co-production of knowledge; subjectivity awareness and self-reflexivity; respect for a diversity of worldviews/knowledges; identifying shared goals; collaborative research; a systems approach; transdisciplinarity; and recognition of contextuality. Further research—concerning potential methodologies and typologies—to reconcile variety of worldviews and knowledge systems in a joint SD worldviews construct is urgently needed.

The UIA World Congress of Architects 2023, held in Copenhagen, marked a pivotal moment in architectural history. Themed “Sustainable Futures – Leave No One Behind,” it attracted over 6,000 delegates from 135 countries. The event showcased innovative approaches to sustainable architecture, aligning with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. A highlight was “The Copenhagen Lessons,” ten principles for sustainable development, emphasizing inclusivity, environmental responsibility, and resource efficiency. The congress fostered global collaboration among architects, researchers, and policymakers, highlighting the importance of stakeholder engagement, impact monitoring, and legacy building. It set a new standard for future architectural practices, emphasizing sustainable, equitable, and regenerative development. This congress is a crucial step towards a more sustainable architectural future, with its influence expected to resonate until the next congress in Barcelona in 2026 and beyond.

How can knowledge of traditional water practices in India help build more sustainable futures? Launched in 2017, the Living Waters Museum addresses the rich and diverse traditions of water heritage and practices in India. It is building a digital repository of visual knowledge that celebrates the past, inspires the present and is a source of learning to prepare for the future. Through the use of storytelling, digital media and the creative arts, the team behind the Living Waters Museum works in collaboration with young water professionals, conservation architects, urban planners and artists to raise awareness of our water challenges and the need to foster more inclusive and sustainable water futures. As a digital and virtual museum, the Living Waters Museum uses its digital platform to promote capacity building, outreach to youth, and equality in water access. It works toward sustainable development in a number of ways, particularly SDG 5 on gender equality (Living Waters Museum 2019) and SDG 6 on clean water. We are using our content to develop interdisciplinary, innovative and engaging water classrooms for children and youth (SDG 4 on quality education) and to build partnerships (SDG 17).