Evidence for Hope: The Emerging Sustainability Revolution

This book explores what is evidence, and notes that too much is accepted as evidence without sufficient attention for observations, explanations and expectations. Evidence is a reasoned judgements of these, and that is more than is promised by the evidence-based movement that focuses on research methodologies. Worldviews play a major role in how we consider evidence, as demonstrated in history and in the current global situation. Lack of sustainability is the major problem of our time. The origins of our problems with sustainability are traced back to the 16th century when a global trading system emerged out of colonisation. This mainly led to social injustice. The second wave of unsustainability started with the Industrial Revolution which took off around 1760 in the UK. The increasing consumption of natural resources (most prominently fossil fuels) have led to overuse, causing sustainability challenges linked to breaking through planetary boundaries. In order for humanity to survive, we will need to work towards an adaptive, resilient balance between the social, economic and environmental domains. We need to broaden our perspective on causality, which - perhaps to the readers' surprise - is hardly defined at the moment. Systems play a key role in how we need to achieve sustainability. Their causality and dynamics, as shown in many pilot projects in the last twenty-five years, provide evidence for hope that transformation is possible. Several systems, mainly related to energy, are reaching tipping points towards sustainability. In other areas of concern pilot programmes and projects for a sustainable world have proven to be effective, relevant and bring an assured impact if upscaled. It is time for action! One of the initiatives that could take shape is to ensure that the world knows about the evidence for hope, through a clearing house of evidence. There is also evidence that a sustainable future would enrich humanity, rather than to make it poorer. It will especially lead to higher levels of energy availability, leading to the Sustainability Revolution that the title refers to!