By 2050, an estimated 6.3 billion people or 66% of the world population will live in cities. Therefore, cities are in a high impact position regarding sustainability. The question is, how do we increase awareness of the sustainability challenge among these populations and gain citywide buy-in and multi-stakeholder collaboration to address this challenge? The Sustainable City Year Program (SCYP) at the University of Oregon offers one approach to tackle this issue by matching higher education institutions (HEI’s), with local and regional cities to address their sustainability related needs through publicly engaged scholarship. The objective of this research was to examine how SCYP contributes to strategic sustainable development (SSD). Our research methods included a peer-reviewed literature review, semi-structured interviews, surveys and further document review. Our sources included SCYP co-founders, partner city program managers, strategic sustainable development experts, and municipal planners from around the world. Our research suggests that SCYP creates a subtle paradigm shift towards sustainability among partner city staff and community members while accelerating practical implementation of sustainability related projects. Furthermore, the added layer of SSD concepts can increase the efficacy of this approach and allow the model to embrace a larger systems level perspective over time.

Globally, the transport system faces a paradigmatic shift where, in addition to increased local traffic problems, climate change and depletion of fossil oil reserves will foster a successive transition to renewable fuels and a need for more resource-efficient mobility management and communication alternatives. Foresighted countries, cities or companies taking the lead in adapting to these tougher conditions might well not only solve those problems, but also turn the problems into business advantages. This thesis is based on six studies that attempt to develop future strategies based on rigorous principled emission and energy efficiency targets and to modulate the impact of travel policies, technical components and behaviours in economically advantageous ways. The modelling frameworks developed throughout the thesis build on a target-orientated approach called backcasting, where the following general components are applied: (1) target description at a conceptual level i.e. the potential for sustainable energy systems, emissions, costs, behavioural patterns, preferences, etc.; (2) mapping of the current situation in relation to target description; and (3) modelling of alternative sets of policies, technologies, behaviours and economic prerequisites to arrive at target achievement. Sustainable travel strategies are analysed from two main viewpoints. The first four studies focus on company travel planning, where behavioural modelling proved to be an important tool for deriving targetorientated travel policies consistent with employee preferences. The latter two studies focus on strategies and preconditions to meet future emission targets and energy efficiency requirements at a macroscopic regional level by 2030. Backcasting’s role as a generic methodology for effective strategic planning is discussed. / QC 20100816

Currently society is facing a set of interconnected challenges, known collectively as the Sustainability Challenge, which are systematically increasing socio-ecological unsustainability on a scale never experienced before.  In order to address the Sustainability Challenge, Social Labs provide an approach that is systemic, participatory and emergent, enabling solutions that are responsive to the dynamic nature of those interconnected challenges. Our research explores how a specific lab - U.Lab - can be re-designed in order to move society strategically toward a sustainable future. We use the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, designed to help practitioners to facilitate society’s transition towards sustainable development, as well as concepts of strategic sustainable development, which support s shift from unsustainable systems, structures and practices towards sustainable ones in a strategic way. Our research follows Design Research Methodology (DRM). DRM aims for the formulation, validation and development of theories and models in the field of design. U.Lab’s experiential response to the Sustainability Challenge inspires participants to question paradigms of thought and societal norms. However, U.Lab is still an emerging social technology and lacks boundary conditions and a scientific basis for understanding our current reality and creating the solutions that will lead society systematically towards a sustainable future.

Current methods for reaching and defining success in society are not sustainable. A major shift in society’s definition of economic success is required, and organizations represent a key leverage point in the transition to a sustainable economy. This research looks to practices within organizations with a sustainability purpose in an attempt to understand how their organizational culture creates an environment for continual strategic decision making towards sustainability. A combination of literature review and structured interviews were used to elicit the cultural practices of 18 organizations with a clear social and ecological sustainability purpose. The research confirmed the importance of organizational culture for maintaining alignment with a sustainability purpose by fostering motivation and commitment towards sustainability at both a collective and individual level in the organization. Eight overarching areas of practice were identified as being present in the organizations included in the study. The practices identified help organizations to act strategically and in the right direction towards sustainability on a daily basis, standing as a complement to the strategic prioritization model of the FSSD. / <p>giancarlo@pucci.cr</p>

The purpose of this paper is to give suggestions for how to preserve intangible cultural heritage (ICH) towards sustainability. We will use Tibet as a case study. Understanding the importance of ICH for tourism, we scrutinize ICH through the lens of strategic sustainable development (SSD) and use tourism as a leverage point to enter into a real life situation. ICH is the root of all cultural expression. Without guarding ICH there is little meaning to the physical culture that remains and, ultimately, tourism declines. ICH is a new topic and there is little research and few ideas as to how to guide its preservation. We offer recommendations which include identifying the stakeholders, educating them, adequate marketing research especially in tourism, investing on technology of dematerialization and searching substitutions under the guidelines of the Golden Rule within the social sustainability context. Our contributions is to build a vision of success for preserving Tibetan ICH via tourism within the constraints of the four sustainability principles, and then demonstrate some prioritized actions in order to develop towards sustainability.

A company cannot be more sustainable than its supply chain. Given their complexity and the need for collaborative, strategic action for sustainability across supplier networks this research takes a systems perspective to answer, “How can a Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) lens support supplier network collaboration towards sustainability?”.The application of the SSD lens includes mapping barriers and enablers to collaboration for sustainability found in literature and a case company along with the Five-Level Model (5LM) to which we add complex adaptive system elements. Based on this a thematic analysis of the barriers and enablers is performed paper presents results of the 5LM and thematic analysis, finding that taking an SSD perspective shows interconnections across the multiple enablers and barriers to collaboration. The challenges encountered during 5LM along with the results implications for the Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) academic field and practitioners are discussed. We conclude that the variety and complexity of barriers and enablers for collaboration make it important to approach sustainability strategically across the supplier network. The SSD perspective supports collaboration for sustainability by providing an opportunity to examine it from a systems perspective and to formulate prescriptive considerations for the case company and guiding questions for SSCM practitioners.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) structures long-term plans for Europe's threatened water resources. Owning to the inherent and human-made complexities of the water cycle, stakeholders must move strategically to avoid crisis and restore sustainability. Yet, the reality of water resource management today is falling short on delivery. Stakeholders require strategic tools that will help them to build consensus and take action in the right direction. Using the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), this study shows how Decision Support Systems can be strategically improved using a whole-systems approach grounded in basic Principles for Sustainability. In this way, stakeholders will be capable of making synchronized moves towards sustainability and thus more likely to realize the WFD’s goal of ‘good status’ for all European waterways by 2015.

Describing novel ideas and solutions that more effectively meet people’s needs than existing products, processes, or structures, social innovation (SI) is a promising concept to address the pressing issues of the sustainability challenge that society faces. Social innovation education (SIE) is a recent field in higher education that has gained attention regarding its potential contribution to sustainable development (SD); as such, SIE is nested within the system of education for sustainable development (ESD). The Sustainability Competencies Framework (SCF) suggests key competencies that equip students for work in SD. This thesis assesses the presence of sustainability competencies in SIE programs to provide insights on how SIE can strategically contribute to SD. A global sample of ten SIE programs has been qualitatively investigated; the findings map the content and pedagogies within the programs and provide recommendations for curriculum design that successfully teaches key sustainability competencies. Following a strategic approach for SD, the researchers take the nested system of ESD into consideration and suggest a science-based definition of sustainability across the diversity of programs to facilitate a common discourse and mutual contributions for successful education. The research addresses both educators and institutions of SIE and ESD programs.