What Next? 4 Ways To Build A Sustainable Future

For example, “The Future We Want,” a road map for the future of sustainable development, was an official outcome of the 2012 Rio+20 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development. Will convene member states to outline Sustainable Development Goals aimed at building upon the earlier Millennium Development Goals. But with the proposed shifts in food, water and energy use, we can do better for nearly all habitats in our more sustainable scenario.

The menu items for a sustainable food future, described and analyzed in our five courses, focus heavily on technical opportunities. However, menu items cannot be implemented in isolation, and they are all subject to a variety of cross-cutting public and private policies. Crop rotation is the practice of planting different crops in the same farm to enhance soil fertility and assist control diseases and insects.

For others, however, the convenience of home delivery, variety of food options, all at supermarket-comparable prices are the selling points. These satisfy their functional need of getting food for the week in an affordable and convenient way. In addition to the demand-reduction measures addressed in Course 1, the world must boost the output of food on existing agricultural land. To approach the goal of net-zero expansion of agricultural land, under realistic scenarios, improvements in crop and pasture productivity must exceed historical rates of yield gains.

Promote collaboration between different social agents to create an environment of peace and sustainable development. In this video we show you what sustainability is, its origin and its importance to try to achieve a global well-being of the present and future generations. We believe that both economic sustainability and environmental sustainability go hand in hand. Read 2021 Snapshot of Sustainability Maturity The sense of urgency to address climate change is intensifying. Each of us needs to make a few changes to avoid the catastrophic tipping point, to buy ourselves the time necessary to implement sustainability technology, develop sustainable economies and construct a sustainable society. Collectively, the global economy will need to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reach net zero before 2050.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. The UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development is the main global forum for reviewing successes, challenges and lessons learned on achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and for countries to present their Voluntary National Reviews. The Forum is convened under the auspices of both the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly, and its meetings alternate between the two.

As the visual language of geography, maps reveal to us just how interrelated everything is in the world and how interrelated we are to each other—something we understand all the more in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Geography integrates disciplines like sociology, biology, economics, and even psychology by uniting them within the context of location. Sustainable strategies for the future don’t have to be technically complex or sweeping. Geographer Christopher Swan of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, studies biodiversity in parks, backyards and other natural areas around the city of Baltimore. Swan wants to see what species thrive in cities and how human activities affect them.

If your goal is to create a more sustainable energy system, does that mean reducing carbon emissions — thus including nuclear energy — or are you referring to “clean” sources of renewable energy such as solar and wind? Protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to the world can no longer be either-or propositions. We have at our disposal the cross-sector expertise necessary to make informed decisions for the good of life on our planet, so let’s use it wisely. Meeting the sustainable targets we propose requires a second front on land to shift how we decentralized use available real estate and where we choose to conduct necessary activities. Overall, the changes we include in our more sustainable view allow the world to meet global food, water and energy demands with no additional conversion of natural habitat for those needs—an outcome that is not possible under business as usual. We need this level of integration in our thinking and problem-solving as our planet faces dire and complex sustainability challenges—related to environmental viability, social equity, and economic prosperity.

Understanding sustainable development and its goals is the first step to learning what we can do to make it happen. There are many initiatives already in place, but still many roadblocks to sustainable development that have to be overcome. This means we want companies to expand, people to have the best jobs, everyone to afford nutritious foods wherever they live, quality and affordable education for everyone, freedom of speech without violence, and our economies to grow exponentially. We want to develop innovative technologies while keeping the environment safe. We’ve also launched a multiyear effort to reduce Stanford’s Scope 3 emissions—the indirect emissions generated by activities like travel, investments, and producing and transporting food and goods.