What are the challenges and pathways for sustainability?

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challenges and pathways for sustainability

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

Markard, J., Geels, F., & Raven, R., 2020. Challenges in the acceleration of sustainability transitions. Environmental Research Letters, 15. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9468

Chan, K., Boyd, D., Gould, R., Jetzkowitz, J., Liu, J., Muraca, B., Naidoo, R., Naidoo, R., Olmsted, P., Satterfield, T., Selomane, O., Singh, G., Sumaila, R., Ngo, H., Boedhihartono, A., Agard, J., Aguiar, A., Aguiar, A., Armenteras, D., Balint, L., Barrington-Leigh, C., Cheung, W., Díaz, S., Driscoll, J., Esler, K., Eyster, H., Gregr, E., Hashimoto, S., Pedraza, G., Hickler, T., Kok, M., Lazarova, T., Mohamed, A., Murray-Hudson, M., O’Farrell, P., Palomo, I., Saysel, A., Seppelt, R., Seppelt, R., Settele, J., Strassburg, B., Xue, D., & Brondízio, E., 2020. Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10124

Henderson, K., & Loreau, M., 2023. A model of Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges and opportunities in promoting human well-being and environmental sustainability. Ecological Modelling. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2022.110164

Soergel, B., Rauner, S., Daioglou, V., Weindl, I., Mastrucci, A., Carrer, F., Kikstra, J., Ambrósio, G., Aguiar, A., Baumstark, L., Bodirsky, B., Bos, A., Dietrich, J., Dirnaichner, A., Doelman, J., Hasse, R., Hernandez, A., Hoppe, J., Humpenöder, F., Iacobuţă, G., Keppler, D., Koch, J., Luderer, G., Lotze-Campen, H., Pehl, M., Poblete-Cazenave, M., Popp, A., Remy, M., Van Zeist, W., Cornell, S., Dombrowsky, I., Hertwich, E., Schmidt, F., Van Ruijven, B., Van Vuuren, D., & Kriegler, E., 2024. Multiple pathways towards sustainable development goals and climate targets. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad80af

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

Yang, Z., Yang, H., & Wang, H., 2020. Evaluating urban sustainability under different development pathways: A case study of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Sustainable Cities and Society, 61, pp. 102226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102226

Zarte, M., Pechmann, A., & Nunes, I., 2022. Problems, Needs, and Challenges of a Sustainability-Based Production Planning. Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074092

Kirchner-Krath, J., Morschheuser, B., Sicevic, N., Xi, N., Korflesch, H., & Hamari, J., 2024. Challenges in the adoption of sustainability information systems: A study on green IS in organisations. Int. J. Inf. Manag., 77, pp. 102754. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2024.102754

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