The Textbook
It provides an integrated, system-oriented introduction to the concepts, theories and issues surrounding the quest for a sustainable future for Planet Earth.Lectures & Tools
In this section we are collecting lectures and interactive tools that can be used for research and teaching.Featured Content
The idea of ‘waste’
What is waste? A friend once took me to the urban waste treatment plant in Kolkata and I had the strange experience of looking into the stomach and intestines of a huge organism. Across an enormous field, human beings were processing from the right to the left the urban garbage stream in a kind of digestive process. It looked more organized than the thousands of people searching for recyclable material in the huge landfills and municipal waste dumps in Lagos, Rio [...]
Other Educational Material, Narratives and Relevant Content
Richer ánd cleaner? Is there an Environmental Kuznets Curve?
One unsustainable part of the industrial economy is the mining and processing of materials and fuels which creates also large flows of ‘waste’ and burdens environmental sinks. Upstream, huge amounts of solid waste are generated […]
Zen and the Art of Happiness
The aspiration of Sustainable Development (SD) is associated with well-being for life on Earth and in the long term (de Vries 2023). It is often narrowed down to human happiness, in which the long term […]
Guar gum: Indian farmers and USA gas fracking
Angkur Pailiwal and Jyotika Sood tell an interesting story about the rapidly increasing demand for guar gum for use in the exploitation of shale gas (‘frackgas’) […]
What are ‘needs’?
Needs is a broad category. It overlaps with wants and desires. It covers a broad array of items, from basic needs for food and shelter to spiritual aspirations. How needs are perceived and actualized is […]
Ancient settlements and resource depletion
Resource overexploitation may have been around from the earliest times. There is evidence that early 9th millennium BP villages collapsed around 8500 BP, while new settlements were founded in quite variable landscapes in the same […]
Book and Website Reviews
A simple introduction to system dynamics for sustainability – a report by Hördur Haraldson
We humans make mental ‘maps’ of processes around us in order to live and survive. Many of those maps are simplified, based on a limited set of acquired habits and experienced events. The maps also [...]
System dynamics for real-world complexity: two book reviews
There are quite some book on system dynamics which make a connection with sustainable development problems and solutions. Based on personal contacts, I choose two for a brief intrduction. The first one is the book [...]
Games for sustainability education, research and policy
One way to explore integration of the natural and the social sciences is the construction and use of simulation games and policy exercises (cf. Chapter 10 and 12). Since 2013 several websites have come online [...]