This report examines why current societal systems fail to deliver sustainability, despite widespread recognition of ecological limits and social challenges.
The central argument is that unsustainability is not primarily the result of individual choices or isolated policy failures, but of structural characteristics embedded in economic, financial, and political systems. Modern societies are fundamentally dependent on continuous economic growth to maintain employment, public welfare, and financial stability. This growth dependency creates persistent conflicts with ecological boundaries and long-term social resilience.
The report shows how fragmented governance, short political time horizons, debt-based financial structures, and growth-oriented measurement systems reinforce unsustainable outcomes. Incremental reforms and efficiency improvements, while valuable, are insufficient as long as underlying system drivers remain unchanged.
Sustainability is therefore framed as a systems issue requiring structural change rather than optimisation of existing arrangements. This includes rethinking how success is measured, reducing dependence on growth, strengthening social foundations, and developing governance capable of long-term responsibility.
The report does not propose simple solutions. Its purpose is to clarify the conditions that shape current outcomes and to contribute to an informed discussion about what a sustainable society requires within planetary and social limits.
This report is based on a vision of a sustainable society – a world in which human needs are met within the limits of the planet.
The vision is timeless and unifying. It describes a future state that few would openly reject.
The United Nations’ work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) translates this vision into 17 concrete areas that together define the path toward a society that is socially just, ecologically sustainable, and economically stable.
The SDGs provide a shared reference framework for combining social justice, ecological balance, and economic stability.
This report examines why today’s societal systems do not lead toward that vision – and how they can be changed so that governance is guided by wholeness, long-term responsibility, and balance.
For more than two hundred years, industrialisation and economic growth have improved living conditions for large parts of humanity.
At the same time, they have produced a system that drives over-exploitation of natural resources, growing inequality, and short-term decision-making.
To understand why the system must change, we need to look at how several fundamental mechanisms interact.
Key drivers of unsustainability
• Economic focus: Growth is measured almost exclusively through GDP, which rewards consumption rather than well-being and sustainability.
• Political cycles: Short electoral terms encourage decisions aimed at the next election rather than the next generation.
• Lack of holistic governance: Responsibility is fragmented across sectors, levels, and actors, without a shared direction toward sustainability.
• Unequal distribution: Profits are concentrated among a few, while social and ecological costs are spread across society as a whole.
• Growth dependency: The system requires constant expansion to maintain employment and welfare, despite the planet’s finite resources.
• Misaligned incentives: Taxes, subsidies, and regulations often encourage increased production and consumption rather than efficiency and balance.
Conclusion
Today’s societal system is not designed to create sustainability – it is designed for growth.
To move toward the vision of a sustainable society, we therefore need to change not only individual policies, but also goals, governance structures, and measurement systems.
Success must be measured in terms of human and ecological well-being, not solely in economic output.
Sustainability is often presented as a collection of separate challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, public health, or economic instability.
In practice, these challenges are deeply interconnected and cannot be understood or addressed in isolation.
This report is based on the premise that sustainability is fundamentally a systems issue.
A system is defined not only by its individual components, but by the relationships between them. When one part of the system changes, it affects the others – sometimes in ways that are delayed, indirect, or difficult to predict.
Modern governance structures are largely organised around sectors, policy areas, and administrative boundaries.
Environmental policy, social policy, economic policy, and health policy are often developed independently, with different goals, indicators, and time horizons.
This fragmentation creates several problems:
• Measures in one area may undermine progress in another.
• Responsibility is diffused, making accountability unclear.
• Long-term consequences are overlooked in favour of short-term gains.
• Complex feedback loops are ignored or misunderstood.
As a result, well-intentioned reforms frequently fail to produce lasting change.
Many political and economic decisions are based on linear assumptions:
that cause and effect are proportional, predictable, and controllable.
In reality, social and ecological systems are non-linear. They contain thresholds, tipping points, and feedback mechanisms that can lead to sudden and irreversible change.
Examples include:
• Ecosystems that collapse once critical limits are exceeded.
• Social trust that erodes gradually, then breaks down rapidly.
• Economic systems that appear stable until systemic risk materialises.
Linear policy tools are poorly suited to managing such dynamics.
Efficiency is often presented as a solution to sustainability challenges.
Producing more with fewer resources is seen as inherently positive.
While efficiency gains are important, they are not sufficient.
In many cases, increased efficiency leads to higher total consumption, a phenomenon known as rebound effects.
As costs decrease, demand increases, offsetting or even reversing environmental gains.
Efficiency without limits therefore risks reinforcing unsustainable patterns rather than transforming them.
A sustainable society must prioritise resilience over short-term optimisation.
Resilience refers to the ability of a system to absorb shocks, adapt to change, and continue to function under stress.
This requires:
• Diversity rather than uniformity
• Redundancy rather than maximal efficiency
• Long-term planning rather than short-term optimisation
• Robust institutions rather than fragile performance targets
Resilience thinking shifts the focus from growth and speed to stability and adaptability.
If sustainability is understood as a systems issue, this has important implications for governance:
• Goals must be aligned across policy areas.
• Measurement systems must reflect long-term outcomes, not short-term output.
• Decision-making must account for uncertainty and systemic risk.
• Governance structures must support coordination and shared responsibility.
Without such changes, sustainability strategies risk addressing symptoms rather than causes.
Sustainability cannot be achieved through isolated interventions or sector-specific solutions.
It requires a systemic perspective that recognises interdependence, complexity, and long-term responsibility.
Only by addressing the underlying structure of the system can a sustainable society become possible.
Modern societies are structurally dependent on continuous economic growth.
Growth is not only presented as desirable, but as necessary to maintain employment, public welfare, and political stability.
This dependency has profound implications for sustainability.
When growth slows or stops, the system begins to malfunction: unemployment rises, public finances weaken, and social tensions increase. As a result, growth is treated not as a means, but as an end in itself.
In today’s economic system, growth performs several critical functions:
• It generates tax revenues needed to finance public services.
• It supports employment through expanding production and consumption.
• It stabilises financial systems based on debt and interest.
• It legitimises political leadership through rising living standards.
Without growth, these mechanisms come under pressure simultaneously.
This creates a situation in which governments are compelled to prioritise growth, even when its negative consequences are well known.
A central driver of growth dependency is the structure of the financial system.
Debt-based finance requires future economic expansion to service existing obligations.
Interest payments assume that tomorrow’s economy will be larger than today’s.
This creates a self-reinforcing dynamic:
• New debt requires future growth.
• Future growth generates new debt.
• Environmental and social costs are deferred to maintain short-term stability.
As long as this structure remains unchanged, calls for sustainability will conflict with the system’s financial logic.
Technological development and productivity gains reduce the amount of labour required to produce goods and services.
In a growth-dependent system, this creates a paradox:
• Productivity increases are celebrated.
• At the same time, they threaten employment unless production expands.
Growth becomes the mechanism through which productivity gains are absorbed into the labour market.
This reinforces the pressure to expand consumption, even when basic needs are already met.
The planet’s resources and ecosystems are finite.
Economic growth, however, is treated as potentially unlimited.
This creates a fundamental conflict:
• The economic system requires continuous expansion.
• The ecological system imposes absolute boundaries.
Technological innovation and efficiency improvements can delay this conflict, but they cannot eliminate it.
At some point, growth collides with physical limits – in the form of climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, or ecosystem collapse.
Growth dependency also creates political lock-in.
Leaders who challenge growth-oriented policies risk:
• Economic slowdown
• Rising unemployment
• Loss of public support
• Electoral defeat
As a result, even policymakers who recognise the need for systemic change often limit themselves to incremental reforms that do not threaten growth.
This explains why sustainability strategies frequently emphasise “green growth” rather than questioning growth itself.
Growth dependency is not primarily a matter of ideology or choice.
It is embedded in the structures of the economic, financial, and political systems.
As long as these structures remain intact, sustainability efforts will be constrained by the need to maintain growth.
Addressing sustainability therefore requires confronting growth dependency directly – not as a moral argument, but as a systemic necessity.
What a society measures determines what it values.
Current measurement systems strongly influence political priorities, economic policy, and public debate.
In most countries, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) remains the dominant indicator of success.
While GDP captures the monetary value of production and consumption, it provides little insight into well-being, sustainability, or long-term resilience.
GDP measures economic activity, not outcomes.
It increases when goods and services are produced and sold, regardless of whether this activity improves quality of life or degrades natural and social systems.
Examples of GDP’s limitations include:
• Environmental destruction contributing to economic activity through cleanup and reconstruction.
• Health problems increasing healthcare expenditure and GDP.
• Traffic congestion, accidents, and stress generating economic costs that are counted as growth.
At the same time, many essential contributions are excluded:
• Unpaid care work
• Volunteer activities
• Ecosystem services
• Social cohesion and trust
As a result, GDP can rise while overall well-being declines.
Political and economic decision-making is often guided by short-term indicators.
Quarterly growth rates, annual budgets, and electoral cycles dominate attention, while long-term risks receive limited weight.
This bias leads to:
• Underinvestment in prevention and resilience
• Delayed action on environmental degradation
• Accumulation of systemic risk
Problems are addressed only when they become acute, by which time they are more costly and difficult to manage.
Recognising the limitations of GDP, several alternative frameworks have been developed.
These include:
• Well-being indicators that capture health, education, security, and life satisfaction
• Environmental accounting that reflects resource use and ecological impact
• Inclusive wealth measures that consider natural, human, and social capital
While none of these frameworks is perfect, they share a common insight:
What matters cannot be reduced to economic output alone.
For measurement systems to support sustainability, they must:
• Reflect long-term outcomes rather than short-term performance
• Integrate ecological and social boundaries
• Be transparent and understandable to the public
• Guide decision-making across policy areas
Measurement should function as a compass, not merely as a scoreboard.
When indicators are misaligned with societal goals, even well-intentioned policies risk producing unintended consequences.
Changing what is measured is not a technical adjustment – it is a political act.
Indicators shape narratives about success and failure.
They influence public expectations and constrain policy choices.
Revising measurement systems is therefore a necessary step toward governance that prioritises sustainability, resilience, and long-term responsibility.
A sustainable society requires a redefinition of success.
As long as economic output remains the primary measure of progress, sustainability will remain secondary.
Only by aligning measurement systems with ecological and social realities can long-term stability be achieved.
Recognising the structural causes of unsustainability raises a crucial question:
If the system is the problem, how can it be changed?
There are no simple solutions or quick fixes.
Systemic change is gradual, contested, and uncertain.
However, understanding the nature of the challenge helps clarify which directions are meaningful – and which are not.
Many sustainability strategies focus on incremental improvements within existing structures.
Examples include:
efficiency gains
technological substitution
behavioural nudges
market-based incentives
While such measures can reduce harm in the short term, they do not address the underlying drivers of unsustainability.
Incremental reform tends to:
optimise an unsustainable system
delay necessary structural change
create a false sense of progress
This does not mean that incremental measures are useless, but that they are insufficient on their own.
A central pathway toward sustainability is reducing society’s dependence on continuous economic growth.
This requires changes across multiple domains:
• Financial systems that are less reliant on debt-driven expansion
• Welfare systems that prioritise security and well-being over consumption growth
• Labour markets that distribute work more evenly rather than maximising productivity
• Public finances that are resilient under low-growth conditions
Reducing growth dependency does not imply economic collapse or austerity.
It implies redefining stability in non-growth terms.
Social sustainability is a prerequisite for systemic change.
High levels of inequality, insecurity, and exclusion undermine trust and collective capacity.
In such contexts, long-term transformation becomes politically and socially fragile.
Key elements include:
• Social safety nets that reduce vulnerability
• Fair distribution of resources and opportunities
• Participation and democratic legitimacy
• Strong public institutions
A society that feels secure is better able to accept change and uncertainty.
Systemic change requires governance structures capable of acting beyond short political cycles.
This involves:
• Long-term goal-setting anchored in ecological and social boundaries
• Institutions that coordinate across sectors and levels
• Decision-making processes that incorporate uncertainty and risk
• Accountability mechanisms focused on outcomes, not short-term performance
Such governance does not eliminate conflict or trade-offs, but it makes them explicit and manageable.
Finally, sustainability involves cultural change.
Norms related to success, consumption, and status shape individual behaviour and collective expectations.
As long as social recognition is tied to material accumulation, pressure for growth will persist.
Cultural change cannot be legislated, but it can be supported through:
education
public discourse
role models
institutional signals
Over time, norms evolve – often faster than formal systems.
The transition toward a sustainable society is not a technical challenge alone.
It is a systemic transformation involving economic structures, governance, social relations, and cultural norms.
As long as societies remain locked into growth dependency and short-term thinking, sustainability will remain out of reach.
Change becomes possible when long-term responsibility replaces short-term optimisation, and when societal success is defined by resilience, equity, and ecological balance rather than continuous expansion.
This report does not claim to provide definitive answers.
Its purpose is to clarify the structural conditions that shape current outcomes – and to contribute to an informed discussion about what a sustainable society requires.
This report is published as a web-based document for accessibility and readability.