Operationalizing Sustainability

Note to the Reader

“Sustainability is a keyword. We were happy to build a plane that is sustainable in terms of energy. We could also make life in the cockpit sustainable, as well as for a human being. And this, we didn’t know if it was possible”.

André Borshberg, Solar Impulse pilot, upon landing in Hawaii on July 3rd 2015 at sunrise, after a nonstop 5 days and 5 nights solar energy flight from Nagoya, Japan [SOL 15].

The ten principles of the UN Global Compact (UN Advisory Board, July 26th, 2000)

Will mankind one day secure a guide to a sustainable world? This book is an attempt. Like solar impulse and other far-fetched dreams, only attempts, trials and feedback can pave the new way. Although we share a definite clarity about this ultimate aim, steering the way through a highly complex world is not easy. Only smaller steps can be proposed to decision makers for the time being.

There exists by now a real concern for the life-sustaining capacities of the Earth. If only in the realm of climate change, the international Kyoto Protocol 1997 treaty slowly came into force for a number of countries in 2005. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proceedings now include the 2015 Paris COP21 Climate Change Conference. Yet, the concern is of an encompassing nature and it is called by one word only: sustainability.

The present book is the complementary book to ...