The Complex Initial Situation of the Current Activity Landscape on Sustainability and UN SDG Coverage

In this chapter, the general direction and framing of the book will be explained, its purpose and the need for it stressed and the key terms under consideration clarified from different perspectives. In this context, especially the fundamental connection between the term “Sustainability” from a UN point of view and the UN SDGs, the Strategic Development Goals ( https://sdgs.un.org/goals ) will be touched. Additionally, some special focal points of the nearly infinite landscape of activities and projects to reach sustainability for organizations, regions, countries, or for the world as a whole and to cover the UN SDGs will be highlighted, regarded, and explained. This will include a first rough try to categorize activities and actors on a high level. Last but not least, the increasing cooperation between public and private sector organizations will be touched upon briefly. As it is important to have a joint “language” for the explorations and evaluations, an easy but powerful thinking style or model will be brought in to explore, describe, and understand the diversity and dimensions of the activity landscape in achieving sustainability and UN SDG coverage in terms of content and actors. Thus, the so-called Three-Pillar Model is already briefly introduced in the first chapter and connected with the direction of the book. To round off and supplement, a very common perception bias—application of linear progress thinking for transformational developments in S-Curves (at the beginning a very slow increase in the first phases of the transformation, then an ever-faster acceleration with rapid progress and at the end of the maturing period a flattening and asymptotic development toward a target state)—will be elaborated and considered in its problematic impacts. As an overall outcome of the chapter, the key message of the book is placed: it is supposed to give a taste of the topic and its possible dimension by introducing important and interesting use cases but not at all strives for a detailed systematic and comprehensive overview. At the end of the chapter the book’s structure is explained in detail.