National assessment of regional sustainability across the United States

Abstract

Industrial agriculture, climate change, biodiversity loss, global conflict, and increasing inequality undermine the life-supporting services provided by our planet. Recently, the global community has started developing frameworks aimed at averting a climate catastrophe. Global agreements are undoubtedly instrumental in providing humanity with a roadmap for sustainable transformation, but policies to affect national and regional change are needed. Here, we argue that regional sustainable transformation is an actionable way to work toward global sustainability. We used the Doughnut Model (DM) and compiled a database of 8 ecological ceiling metrics and 12 social foundation metrics to assess regional sustainability across 32 metro areas and 180 counties in the United States representing roughly 35% of the US population. Using targeted keywords, we reviewed county-level websites to assess to what extent urban and rural counties collaborate on regional sustainable transformation. Finally, we provide two case studies of regional sustainable transformation across urban and rural regions. We found that generally urban areas had lower social foundation deficits (6 of 12 metrics) and higher ecological ceiling overshoot (3 of 8 metrics) compared to rural areas. We also found low levels (16 out of 180 counties) of cross county collaboration between urban and rural counties for sustainability transformation. Disparities across and between urban and rural areas highlight the potential for cross county collaborative programming to increase regional sustainability. We end with a call for increased collaboration between private and public sectors focused on sustainable transformation and increased cross-county collaboration between urban and rural areas.