People, technology, and governance for sustainability: the contribution of systems and cyber-systemic thinking

We live in an ever-increasing unsustainable world in which sustainability shows to be a complex multidimensional and multi-stakeholder problem. The complexity to address is increasingly beyond our traditional response capabilities. Hence the challenge is “how we account for this complexity in the quest for a sustainable world underpinned by inclusion and fairness” (Espejo 2018). What is required is to account for the “individual and cumulative social, environmental and economic implications of decision or process based on an understanding of the systemic nature of the world, the interconnectedness of natural and human systems”, and for the “direct and indirect consequences for people and ecosystems based on an understanding of the global nature of the world and how local and regional issues are part of the whole” (Crofton 2000: 400).