The Environment: Towards a Sustainable Future

Book excerpt: A sustainable future: a world in which sustainable development is possible and guaranteed? In this book, the Dutch Committee for Long-Term Environmental Policy, an expert advisory board to the Dutch Minister of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment, shows possible ways in which society can move towards a sustainable future. The book goes in search of a new social order, an order in which sustainability is guaranteed. This search holds four main elements: signs of hope: which positive initiatives and developments exist which will lead to a sustainable future? transformations: which transformations are needed to reach a sustainable future? philosophical and methodological reflections: can one predict the future? institutions: what are the necessary changes in the basic institutions of society to reach a sustainable future? The committee has invited well-known experts from different disciplinary backgrounds to check the existing social order from a point of sustainability and to give recommendations for a sustainable future. The central conclusion is that we are in need of an evolving green strategy aimed at sustainability. The contours of this strategy are described and a large set of recommendations to reach a sustainable future are given. As the committee states: `There is no certainty and no statistical probability for a sustainable future, but there is at least a chance.'