Stockholm Declaration (1972)
It was the limited natural resources and the growing concern about climate change and other environmental problems that gave rise in the late 1980s to the concept of sustainable development, a form of development without growth beyond environmental limits (United Nations, 1987).
Three decades later, the environmental limitations that define the biophysical conditions for human development and the limits to economic growth have been more precisely defined. An international team of Earth system scientists has defined the concept of planetary biophysical boundaries (Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2015) within which humanity can develop and thrive without compromising the survival of future generations. These are the interactions between land, oceans, atmosphere and life that together create the conditions on which the Earth system depends to remain in a Holocene state – a geological epoch in which a stable climate over the past 10,000 years has allowed human civilisation to emerge, develop and thrive (Rockström et al., 2009).
The Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era in which human activities became the main cause of global environmental change and was therefore named the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). Hansen et al., however, refer to the period from the mid-20th century onwards as the Hyperanthropocene due to the rapid acceleration of human impacts on the planet (Hansen et al., 2015). More recent calculations suggest that four planetary boundaries have already been crossed due to human activities, notably the explosive growth of fossil fuel consumption and industrialised forms of agriculture (Steffen et al, 2015), two of which – climate change and the integrity of the biosphere – are considered to be limits whose crossing increases the risk that human activities will irreversibly drive the Earth system into a much less hospitable state, undermining efforts to reduce poverty and leading to a decline in human well-being in many parts of the world, including rich countries. Humanity faces a major challenge to ensure rapid change in the governance of the planet’s living resources. The need for community-based governance – inclusive, coordinating (without the interests of one overriding the interests of the other), transparent, and inter-generationally and inter-species responsible – is great and pressing.
The establishment of mechanisms for community action on a global scale has been slow. However, there have been recent shifts on the international political floor aimed at ensuring that we as a civilisation do not saw off the branch on which we sit. The first such shift was the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement – a global deal to halt dangerous global warming (Paris Agreement, 2015). In addition to ending poverty, reducing inequality and ensuring progress, development within planetary boundaries and protecting the environment for present and future generations are also embedded in the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015).
But there is not much time left to act. The Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved in time without the active involvement of local communities. It is only in local communities that the link between policies and real life is made. Local policy is also more flexible and, above all, more connected to people’s livelihoods. Hundreds of local communities across Europe are far more advanced than national governments in introducing sustainable practices and tackling existential threats. Their good examples show the great potential of local communities to tackle today’s challenges. For example, since 2006, an international movement of local communities called the Transition Network has been growing (Transition Network, 2017), bringing together and supporting local initiatives. These are created to help individuals (re)feel connected to the people in their environment and to contribute to overcoming global problems through small projects. Although the contributions of individual local communities are small, the sheer number of these small initiatives makes them vital.
