Shaping Sustainable Economies – Holistic Strategies and Principles

This is a guest post by our colleague Thieß Petersen. Thieß – who is working for the Bertelsmann Stiftung – has recently published the paper “Shaping Sustainable Economies – Holistic Strategies and Principles”.

A society acts sustainably if it ensures the long-term stability and productivity of ecological, sociopolitical and economic systems. In the past, issues of sustainability were typically handled separately, neglecting individual measures’ effects on other elements implied by a comprehensive conception of sustainability. The challenge ahead is to develop a holistic strategy for sustainable economic activity that takes into account interdependencies between the various aspects of sustainability, and does not seek to solve problems of sustainability at other aspects’ expense.