Gilberto C. Gallopín

Global Sustainability: Bending the curve

1. The Challenge 2. Scenarios of the Future 3. Sustainability Goals 4. Market-driven Globalization 5. Bending the Curve 6. Barbarization 7. Great Transitions 8. Reflections at the Branch Point

Windows on the Future: Global Scenarios & Sustainability

Abstract Of all the environmental policy concepts to emerge in the last 20 years, none is more compelling than that of sustainability. The reason, of course, is the growing recognition that humanity is currently on an unsustainable path, that our activities have reached the point where they threaten the very life-support systems of the Earth. The need to preserve those systems was first put on the international policy agenda by the Brundtland Commission more than 10 years ago, which also formulated the classic definition of sustainable development, namely, development that “seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future.” The same goal has guided other international policy endeavors, notably the Earth Summit in 1992 and the recent climate negotiations in Kyoto.

The Latin American World Model (a.k.a. the Bariloche model): three decades ago

Abstract Almost twenty five years ago, “Catastrophe and New Society. A Latin American World Model” was published [Herrera AO et al. Catastrophe or New Society? A Latin American World Model. Canada: DRC, 1976]. It described the work of a group of Latin American researchers, led by the late Amilcar O. Herrera, and it represented both a response to the diagnostic and proposal embodied in World 3, the first world model sponsored by the Club of Rome [Meadows D, et al. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books, 1972], and a new proposal for the global system. It remains to date the only global model made in the South. The present paper is a personal reflection by one of the authors of the Latin American World Model (LAWM) on what the model meant (and what it may still mean) in the context of the limits debate and the more general issue of the future(s) of the world system.