ABSTRACT

This final chapter of Green Development pulls together the book’s arguments about the search for sustainability and the need for a radical economic transition and the challenge of achieving it. This means somehow fashioning a route forwards for human societies that offers prosperity without growth, that creates a low energy and low material throughput economy, and yet addresses human poverty and inequality and maintains an ecologically functioning biosphere. It is clear that such a shift is needed but less clear how to achieve it, and how to build a politics that can give democratic support to the changes needed. The chapter reviews what might be achieved ‘from above’, through technologies and markets, and the potential for delivering sustainability ‘from below’, through grass-roots participation. It discusses the role of social movements in resisting development and developing alternative models for human futures. Those interested in crafting a sustainable future face huge challenges. They will need vision, fortitude and wisdom in balancing reformist and radical strategies for change.