Question
What are the challenges and pathways for sustainability?
Answer
Sustainability is a critical global challenge, requiring comprehensive strategies to address environmental, social, and economic issues. The transition towards sustainable systems involves overcoming various challenges and leveraging specific pathways.
Challenges in Achieving Sustainability
Acceleration Challenges: Transitioning to sustainable systems involves whole systems change, multi-system interaction, resistance, and governance issues (Markard, Geels and Raven, 2020).
Resource and Population Imbalance: Current population sizes and resource use are unsustainable, necessitating a balance between natural and agricultural land and human population (Henderson and Loreau, 2023).
Local Implementation: Diverse local conditions pose challenges such as disagreements on priorities and competing interests, requiring tailored approaches (Moallemi et al., 2020).
Sustainability in Agriculture: Challenges include biodiversity imbalances, ecosystem degradation, and the need for sustainable practices like precision farming and integrated pest management (Chowdhuri and Pal, 2025).
Urban Development: Cities face challenges in achieving sustainable development, with varying sustainability indices under different policy scenarios (Yang, Yang and Wang, 2020).
Production Planning: Manufacturing processes contribute to environmental and social issues, requiring new technologies for sustainability-based planning (Zarte, Pechmann and Nunes, 2022).
Adoption of Sustainability Systems: Organisations face challenges in adopting sustainability information systems, influenced by motivational and design factors (Kirchner-Krath et al., 2024).
Pathways to Sustainability
Leverage Points and Strategic Actions: Key interventions include visions of a good life, reducing consumption, addressing inequalities, and responsible technology use. Strategic actions involve incentives, coordination, adaptive decision-making, and environmental law (Chan et al., 2020).
Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs): Strategies include economy-driven innovation, resilient communities, and managing global commons, each offering different benefits and challenges (Soergel et al., 2024).
Transdisciplinary Innovation: Local-scale, grassroots transformations led by communities and businesses can effectively address sustainability challenges (Moallemi et al., 2020).
Sustainable Agriculture Practices: Pathways include agroecological approaches, sustainable intensification, and conservation agriculture, supported by policy interventions and stakeholder engagement (Chowdhuri and Pal, 2025).
Conclusion
Achieving sustainability requires addressing complex challenges through strategic interventions and innovative pathways. These include leveraging key points for societal transformation, adopting sustainable practices in agriculture and urban development, and fostering local and transdisciplinary innovations. A holistic approach that integrates environmental, social, and economic dimensions is essential for sustainable progress.
References
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Moallemi, E., Malekpour, S., Hadjikakou, M., Raven, R., Szetey, K., Ningrum, D., Dhiaulhaq, A., & Bryan, B., 2020. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Requires Transdisciplinary Innovation at the Local Scale. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ONEEAR.2020.08.006
Chowdhuri, I., & Pal, S., 2025. Challenges and potential pathways towards sustainable agriculture crop production: A systematic review to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). Soil and Tillage Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.still.2024.106442
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Zarte, M., Pechmann, A., & Nunes, I., 2022. Problems, Needs, and Challenges of a Sustainability-Based Production Planning. Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074092
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