Scenarios and Indicators for Sustainable Development-Towards A Critical Assessment of Achievements and Challenges

• Main Author: Spangenberg, Joachim H. (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2019
• Subjects: sustainable development goals; science-policy interface; long-wave theory; scenarios; tweets; sustainability indicators; models and modes of science; environmental innovation; energy supply; renewable energy; gross domestic product; GDP; bio-economics; data needs; fake news; European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS); climate change; goals; Agenda 2030; Visit South Sardinia; tourist destination; indicators; monitoring; modelling; institutions; sustainable development; grid flexibility; global indicator framework; microdata; decision-making; world views; SDGs; Germany; challenges; values; sustainable production and consumption; policies; sustainability transition; storage; stakeholders; innovation systems; societal impact; fossil energy system; multi-level perspective; household consumption; biodiversity; agency; evolutionary economics; energy transition; material footprint; transformation; sustainable tourism; opportunities; policy advice; international inequality; resource indicator; curtailment
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Globalization and telecoupling are enhancing the complexity of the coupled socio-ecological system constituted by the interaction between the global ecosphere and the anthroposphere. As a result, the demand for tools to identify transformative innovations, assess future risks, and support precautionary decisions for sustainability is growing by the day in business and politics. Scenarios are a means of simplification, reducing the real-world complexity to a limited number of essential factors to analyze their interactions and support policy formulation, with indicators as communication and monitoring tools. In particular, in a time of fake news and alternative truths a critical reflection amongst producers and users of scenarios and indicators is overdue; the capability for critical self-reflection is what distinguishes science from pseudo-science, and is a condition of trust. The authors of this book test established measurement and modeling approaches against new challenges, assess the weaknesses of prevailing innovation theories and the political-ideological embedment of archetypical scenarios, highlight deficits in taking the physical basics into account, and the need to understand global interaction and the stepwise process of energy transitions, point out technical as well as conceptual weaknesses in data collection, harmonization and indicator generation, always with a view to solving problems.