Re-conceptualizing the Science of Sustainability: A Dynamical Systems Approach to Understanding the Nexus of Conflict, Development and the Environment

The concept of sustainability has come to permeate many spheres of governance, decision-making and scientific inquiry. Although current academic conceptualizations of sustainability often acknowledge the conflicts inherent in the pursuit of sustainable development, the present discourse does not explicitly include the concepts of peace and conflict. This omission has been in error, as the pursuits of sustainable environmental governance and sustainable human development are themselves efforts to manage and resolve conflict. Thus, this article advocates for an expanded framework of sustainability that operates at the nexus of conflict, environment and development by exploring current mainstream conceptualizations of sustainability and illustrating the direct connections between sustainability and the fields of peace studies and conflict resolution. It goes on to discuss the utility of applying a complex systems approach to the expanded conceptualization of sustainability, including aspects of both coupled systems and dynamical systems theory, in order to provide an analytical framework for studying mechanisms that enable sustainable development by dealing explicitly with conflicting needs and interests among actors in social-ecological systems. Copyright (c) 2016 The Authors Sustainable Development published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd