Atle Midttun Sustainability for the 21 st Century : Overcoming Limitations to Creative Response to Climate Challenge Project Description

Background The emergency of the climate challenge constitutes the main background for this study. Most existing reports on the subject have been formulated at a fairly general level and focused on the natural sciences and macroeconomic outlooks (Stern 2006; IPCC 2007). This project addresses the need of exploring in more detail the implications of the climate challenge for both developed and developing countries. Further, it aims at adding cultural, political and economical dimensions to the existing, predominantly techno-economic analysis. The project develops a previous pilot study “Sustainability for the 21 Century: A Humanist Agenda,” undertaken by a group of international researchers with a basis at SUM, Oslo University. The SUM study (led by Nina Witoszek) was in 2007 financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Environment. The results of the group’s research were presented at the side event of the CSD conference of the United Nations on 8 May 2007 (Witoszek 2007). The positive reception at the UN encourages us to take our ideas further and to undertake a more thorough, conceptual and theoretical elaboration of the project. This will be done by linking our study to the problematique of innovation and anchoring it in an extended global stakeholders’ dialogue. The project will combine the study of the effects and perceptions of environmental challenges and the exploration of a new, emerging paradigm of sustainable development. This is a pioneering study, involving a multidisciplinary challenge, cross cultural perspectives, and a novel conceptual and theoretical approach. The complex nature of staging a major societal transformation to meet the climate challenge, however, requires a multidimensional approach.