Sustainable Development: Ways to the Common Future

Sustainable development, the global policy including all components of the Great Transformation to deal with the social and ecological problems, becomes a transformation of society, nature, and societal relations with nature. The duration of the sustainability transformation is longer than the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions until the mid-twenty-first century. The transformation implies changing the parameters of growth and acceleration in the industrial society and economy, the growth-driven processes in social and ecological systems, the societal relations with nature, and the patterns of resource use. The means and pathways of transformation are controversially discussed in the political sustainability process and among the actors involved.