ABSTRACT
The prevailing ‘three-sector’ model of sustainability – which aims to focus attention on finding overlaps between environmental, economic and social domains of thought and action – represents an attempt to tease out the notion of economically sustainable development as it was introduced in the 1987 Brundtland Report. Giddings et al. argue that problems arise as soon as we think of economy, society and the environment as having any degree of separation from each other. The focus on the personal helps to bring the big concerns of sustainability back home without losing sight of the big global picture. Much of the thinking about sustainability is influenced by an approach to complexity known as ‘systems thinking’. It has become harder to hold large corporations to account for their social and environmental impacts, posing a need for stronger global systems of regulation and governance.
