trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

Figure 1.Dynamic and Folding Field of Social ActionThis figure depicts physical events (upper right), social and institutional processes (lower right),cultural systems (lower left), and personal subjective states (upper left) as collectively constituting thereality in which all decision making, action and reaction takes place. In developing this figure, theresearch team was keen to illustrate that practical responses need to be considered through a sociohistoricallens in which action is always framed by social, cultural and personal conditions (Inayatullah2007; Diamond 2005). It was also important for these conditions to be understood as mutuallyreinforcing. For such a context to emerge, this paper argues that we need to understand the role that thekey determinants of complexity of social process, technology, leaders and institutions have to play insocial learning. Such determinants both drive the adaptive capacity that underpins sustainabledevelopment while also determining the barriers that do limit context.These four key determinants are a subset of those identified by the report. In all there are nine keydeterminants affecting social learning and the degree of resilience present in any context. Thesedeterminants were complexity and leadership, institutions and values, technology and imagination,information and knowledge, and scale. Resilience relates to the ability of a system to cope with change(Folke 2002). It implies social learning and the ability to develop appropriate practical responses to anemergent condition. A resilient system is a learning system. Adaptive capacity is therefore a measure ofthe resilience within a system (van Drunen 2011). The key determinants can be understood as conditionsthat shape and direct the capacity of a social system to effectively negotiate periods of stress anduncertainty.242