Achieving sustainable development : building a coherent vision and motivations for change

Abstract

How do the different clusters (businesses, governments, civil society organizations, and individuals) behave currently? Why? And, why do these behaviors need to change? What does a 'sustainable future' mean? What is the vision we want to achieve? What cluster behaviors are needed to create that sustainable future? What motivations could produce these behaviors? How can we shape these motivations? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to change these motivational structures? These are all the questions that this thesis seeks to answer. Concerned with understanding how a more sustainable future can be created, the aim of this thesis is to examine the underlying structures (rationales and incentive structures) that motivate the different actors or clusters in our system, namely the for-profit private sector, the government, the civil society and individuals. Tracing back the evolution of systemic structures since the beginning of the Industrialization Era, we provide some insights into the origins of our existing system's unsustainability and paint out the nature of these actual limits. We then perform an envisioning exercise and depict the characteristics of the sustainable future we aim to achieve, building a concrete, desirable vision that has the capacity to inspire and align the motivations of the different clusters mentioned. Current motivations and behaviors of the different clusters are then exposed and contrasted with the motivations and behaviors needed for sustainability. We finish off by providing first thoughts on the mechanisms and instruments that could be leveraged to operate the desired shifts in our system's structure, as well as the necessary and sufficient conditions for these shifts to occur.