ABSTRACT
As Canadians navigate the twenty-first century, they share with citizens of other countries an essential priority to develop sustainable and environmentally benign patterns of resource utilization and socio-economic development. This chapter describes one attempt to investigate the feasibility and impacts of a future for Canada. Based upon principles of environmental and sociopolitical sustainability, the Sustainable Society Project (SSP) provides a specific context for exploring the issues addressed by other chapters in this section. For more than six years, from September 1988 to December 1994, the SSP explored the prospects for the development of a future Canadian society that is sustainable in environmental economic, and social terms. The project enlisted scenario analysis to trace the path of Canada from 1990 into a sustainable future around the year 2030. The SSP assessed the relationships among values, lifestyles, and technological and economic development in the scenario, as well as the feasibility and sociopolitical implications of the scenario itself.
