Science and Challenges of Sustainability

This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the volume by providing the scientific basis for the business and investment implications of sustainability. The chapter describes how over the past few hundred years, and especially over the past few decades, the world has witnessed significant economic development and made great progress in meeting human needs. Unfortunately, this economic development has come with significant consequences in terms of climate change, access to water, population growth, depletion of resources, pollution, loss of biodiversity, poverty, inequity, and diseases. Continuation of current trends has been deemed by many as unsustainable. The chapter defines “sustainable development” as the study of how to eliminate and mitigate these challenges so that the progress enjoyed by many parts of the world can be extended to all parts of the world and sustained far into the future. Finally, it presents the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which have been widely adopted by the international community and the public sector. More recently, many private businesses and investors have also started to embrace “sustainability” in their underlying business models. The chapter concludes that without significant change, the ecological, environmental, and climatic resilience that have supported economic development in the past may not hold up into the future.