Sustainability-Navigating Beyond Business as Usual

QC 20260505

Abstract

This thesis, based on six scientific papers, explores analytical tools and methods for expanding society’s natural resource accounting and how systems thinking and future scenarios can be utilised to improve governance towards more sustainable development. The starting point is that traditional analyses frequently omit ecological dimensions, the potential to harness synergies, and they avoid goal conflicts and are often more retrospective than forward-looking.

The papers draw from economic theory, systems ecology, and futures studies. The first three papers contribute to natural resource accounting and capital theory and show how sustainability goals and their mutual interactions can be visualised and used to identify and prioritise synergies and goal conflicts. The latter three papers develop and apply qualitative normative backcasting scenarios, as well as tools and methods to illustrate them quantitatively and use them for policy analysis. The scenarios’ post-growth orientation, which focuses on social and ecological societal objectives rather than economic development, enables the analysis to be broadened to include policy instruments for achieving sustainable development beyond those traditionally discussed. By combining these perspectives, the thesis enables a more systemic and future-oriented approach to analysing sustainability issues.

The six papers in the thesis employ a broad range of methods to investigate sustainability-related resource accounting, interdependencies among sustainability goals, scenario planning, and policy analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are combined, where traditional literature reviews and economic valuation methods are complemented by network theory, expert assessments, workshops, and interviews. The methods are used to describe and quantify relationships among sustainability factors related to environment, economy, and society. In the latter papers, backcasting is also used to explore sustainable alternative futures beyond the economically oriented growth paradigm, and—as in article—identify which policy areas and proposals can facilitate progress towards sustainability goals. A common feature is the demonstration of how empirical data and forward-looking scenarios can be used alongside various academic disciplines and stakeholders to address the complexity of sustainability challenges and produce more applicable and legitimate research outcomes. 

The six papers in the thesis collectively address research gaps identified in the academic fields concerning the analysis of society’s resource use in relation to a more sustainable development, and how quantitative and qualitative methods can be improved and used to jointly make such sustainability analyses more systemic and forward-looking. 

By responding to the two overarching research questions—RQ1: How can integrated extended resource accounting be set up and leveraged to provide comprehensive decision support for sustainability governance? and RQ2: How can backcasting scenarios be used to qualitatively and quantitatively illustrate and analyse policy options for sustainable futures?—the six papers address the identified research gaps and thereby jointly provide contributions to bridging the disconnect between theoretical frameworks and practical decision-making. Answering RQ1, Papers 1 to 3 illustrate how assessments and analyses of quantitative ecosystem services, the concept of critical natural capital, and Sustainability Goals interdependency can enable comprehensive decision support. Addressing RQ2, by constructing and using backcasting scenarios Papers 4 to 6 illustrate how participatory methods and expanded quantitative models can be used to envision and assess policy options for sustainable futures, helping identify robust, multi-objective policies and strategies.

Concerning the first research question about integrated extended resource accounting, paper 1 contributed more comprehensive and detailed data into integrated resource accounting by extending quantitative methods to encompass a wider range of ecosystem services into forest accounting. Paper 2 added more analytical depth to the novel concept of critical natural capital, emphasising the resilience aspects of the regulatory and support ecosystem services, which act as insurance not only for ecosystem functions but also for human needs. 

Concerning the second research question about illustrating sustainable futures and policy analysis, Papers 4 to 6 focus on post-growth backcasting scenario construction and on developing methodologies for illustrating them quantitatively and testing how they could be used to ex-ante test policy robustness assessments. The contributions of Paper 4 concern how decision-makers can envision alternative post-growth futures, moving beyond business-as-usual trajectories and instead aiming to fulfil multi-faceted social and environmental goals, in which the post-growth focus and the multi-goal fulfilment were the novel aspects. The contributions of Paper 5 concern the expansion of the IPAT identity model used to describe the different scenarios and their goal fulfilment, where the technology-factor expansion included not only energy aspects but also novel material intensity and material circularity aspects, and a novel affluence-factor expansion deconstructing the GDP-per-capita-proxy into its labour and capital input-components, also introducing a capital-utilisation-term, allowing for the analysis of new policy options. Paper 6 contributed a new elaboration of policy robustness testing, using the scenarios and two workshop designs for ex-ante policy robustness assessments. Altogether, the thesis’ six papers strengthen cumulative research knowledge by expanding tools and methods which allow for more systemic, forward-looking, and integrated approaches that can bridge the gap between theory and application.

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