Special Issue "Sustainable Futures"
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2010)
Special Issue Editor
Interests: energy policy; environmental policy; sustainability; foresight; futures analysis; decision making under uncertainty; technology assessment; energy program evaluation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The purpose of this special issue is to explore sustainability from a futures perspective. Useful futures analyses do not attempt to predict the future. Instead good futures analyses work to imagine, describe, and/or create possible futures in such ways as to identify issues of concern for today’s decision makers. The papers in this special issue should address these types of questions related to helping today’s decision makers better understand future trends and issues related to sustainability. What progress can be made towards achieving sustainability in the next fifteen to twenty years? Are there any potential breakthrough technologies on the horizon that could make achieving sustainability easier or even more difficult? What about the convergence of new technologies? Are trends in politics, economics, and culture that may play out over the next twenty or more years consistent with achieving sustainability goals or inconsistent? What socio-economic breakthroughs are needed to support the achievement of sustainability? What should be done today to remove barriers to potential technological and socio-economic breakthroughs? What on-the-ground models for a self-sufficiency version of sustainability might emerge in the future and can these models co-exist with each other? Are there sustainability challenges in the deep future, centuries or longer from now, that are qualitatively different from those being addressed today that require the attention of today’s generation?
Dr. Bruce E. Tonn
Guest Editor
Keywords
- sustainability
- futures
- breakthrough technologies
- self-sufficiency
- energy policy
- environmental policy