Rauschmayer, F., Omann, I., Frühmann, J., (2010)

The concept of Sustainable Development (SD) showed to be an agreed upon and important concept in science and media. However, despite of SD strategies in the EU and its member states, lots of international meetings, protocols, guidelines and frameworks and partial implementations as well as, small successes, a real transition towards SD has not really started yet. Problems do not seem to get less; on the contrary, we face more and bigger problems – such as poverty, climate change, loss of biodiversity or the current financial crisis.
But why has SD not been successful although it is heavily used by different actors, such as politicians and scientists?

One reason is – in our opinion – that SD is a rather technocratic concept, which does touch our brains but rarely our hearts. As a transition towards SD requires efforts from everybody, big structural changes in our economic system, strong political decisions and in the end also changes of lifestyles, habits and behavioural patterns, it (the transition) has to be wanted, really wanted. And in order to really really wish something, we have to be touched in our hearts.

Which concept could help to bring SD into our hearts as well? In the famous Brundtland Report of 1987 SD is defined as meeting the NEEDS of the current generation as well of those of the future generations. Needs are only shortly explained in the report, with emphasis on needs such as JUSTICE, SUBSISTENCE. And needs are hardly taken into account explicitly in SD science, policy making or in operationalising concepts.

What if we put our focus more on needs? The fulfilment of needs and feeling well about it is the key to reach a high Quality of Life (QOL). QOL can be defined as having two components:

• Objective conditions: the resources that a person has, including the real opportunities to use these resources to meet one’s needs; in figure 1 this is represented by the ‘capabilities’
  approach;
• Subjective experience: experience of one’s capabilities and the fulfilment of these needs; in figure 1 this is represented by concepts of ‘well-being’.

Concepts of well-being explicitely include emotions and feelings. Thus, our hypothesis is: “If a transition towards SD leads to a higher or maintain a high QOL for everybody now and in future, then the emotional side of humans can be touched and this can make the transition real.”

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