Sustainable development: looking for new strategies

Many strategies have been proposed to reach sustainable development. A great many of these strategies aim at one type of problem-preventing environmental deterioration-while ignoring the importance of economic or social goals. In addition, while political decisions are at the heart of the choices to be made, most researchers seem to consider sustainable development as a mere technical problem. In this paper we describe a more complete strategy for sustainable development. We use the outlines of this strategy to find out what knowledge and skills are still needed. The strategy is based on the idea that it is necessary to find consensus on the development of a socio-environmental system as a whole, and between all people involved. It leaves us with at least two main areas that need further study: the supply of information and the management of consensus building. A formal procedure for consensus building might be developed based on the literature and on experiences with Environmental Impact Assessments. Special attention is paid to the information needed. It can be summarized as information about: (1) delimiting a socio-environmental system; (2) the needs and wants to be satisfied via that system; and (3) the physical, ecological, economic, social and cultural constraints of satisfying those needs and wants.