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Leverage points for sustainability transformation

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Abstract

Despite substantial focus on sustainability issues in both science and politics, humanity remains on largely unsustainable development trajectories. Partly, this is due to the failure of sustainability science to engage with the root causes of unsustainability. Drawing on ideas by Donella Meadows, we argue that many sustainability interventions target highly tangible, but essentially weak, leverage points (i.e. using interventions that are easy, but have limited potential for transformational change). Thus, there is an urgent need to focus on less obvious but potentially far more powerful areas of intervention. We propose a research agenda inspired by systems thinking that focuses on transformational ‘sustainability interventions’, centred on three realms of leverage: reconnecting people to nature, restructuring institutions and rethinking how knowledge is created and used in pursuit of sustainability. The notion of leverage points has the potential to act as a boundary object for genuinely transformational sustainability science.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their critical and insightful comments which helped substantially improve the manuscript. This research is supported by a Volkswagenstiftung and the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur (Grant Number A112269).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Scharnhorststr.1, 21335, Lüneburg, Germany

    David J. Abson, Joern Fischer, Julia Leventon, Jens Newig, Thomas Schomerus, Ulli Vilsmaier, Henrik von Wehrden, Paivi Abernethy, Christopher D. Ives, Nicolas W. Jager & Daniel J. Lang

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  1. David J. Abson
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  2. Joern Fischer
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  3. Julia Leventon
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Correspondence to David J. Abson.

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Abson, D.J., Fischer, J., Leventon, J. et al. Leverage points for sustainability transformation. Ambio 46, 30–39 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0800-y

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