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My hope is that one day everybody can find a place under the Law of the land where they live, transitioning our living systems into something that is sustainable in the true sense of the word.
Tyson Yunkaporta1
Cluster: Fundamental Practice Patterns
Type: Essential Practice Pattern
Purpose
The Sustainable Systems Pattern provides the basis for a common understanding of sustainability as a support for a Living Systems Practice approach.
Pattern Description
The Sustainable Systems Pattern offers a broad view of sustainability rather than a rigid definition and has been framed to address the confusion that comes from a narrow scope of understanding of sustainability, positioning sustainability as a dynamic, living process.
The term “sustainability” is shorthand for ecologically sustainable development, the original intent of the concept articulated in the Brundtland Commission in the late 1980s.
As we apply sustainability principles to specific socio-technical contexts, the working definitions of sustainability also evolve, and new models for understanding and practice emerge. There is room to share meanings and to debate meanings as part of the process of change: any definition is thus contingent.
Whether practitioners use terms such as ecologically sustainable development, sustainability, resilience, regeneration, circular economy, doughnut economics or any number of variations, the definition does not matter so much, if the rationale places economic and social development within ecological system capacity at the local or territorial scale and planetary boundaries at the global scale.
As sustainability gains broad acceptance and traction, practitioners will have to make sense of it in developing an approach to transformational practice that works in the relevant domains of practice, and this Pattern aids in that practitioner mission.
Elemental Patterns
Purpose: Sustainability is a dynamic, living systems process with a purpose to enable us to live well on country, with quality of life and livelihood with human flourishing, expressing our personal and cultural values harmoniously, while protecting and restoring the natural systems upon which we all depend, indefinitely into the future.
Goals: Sustainability is fundamentally a social goal that requires widespread commitment to action from people and their communities, businesses, industries, networks, organizations, institutions and governments.
Sustainability as a social goal is best expressed through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which have been ratified by the majority of national, state/provincial and local governments. The SDGs re-state and extended the original Brundtland definition of ecologically sustainable development.
Practitioners – whether acting in business, industry, government, community and universities – all have a role to play in the designing and implementing the sustainable development transition, in alignment with the purpose of sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Principles: Sustainability is supported by several broad principles: acting mindful of the interdependence of environment, society and economy; living within ecosystem limits at the local scale and planetary boundaries at the global scale; protecting, restoring and regenerating natural capital; managing ecosystems for intergenerational equity; using resources efficiently and keeping materials as either stocks or flows through recovery, reuse and remaking; applying the precautionary principle and a long-term perspective in decision-making; designing the made world mindful of second and third order impacts on human and natural systems; understanding the role of technology as socio-technical and a modifier of human behaviour; understanding that human systems, as living systems, are complex, adaptive and emergent; and sustainability is fundamentally a form of human culture.
Process: We can achieve a sustainability transformation through design innovation and continuous behavioural and cultural change requiring:
Continuous re-design of our systems and services, such as: resource and land use systems; food productions systems; transport systems; building and planning systems; manufacturing systems; energy systems; waste systems; and policy and regulation systems;
Continuous re-design of our things, such as: places, neighbourhoods, towns, cities and regions; cars, trucks, planes, trains, ships and other forms of mobility; houses and buildings; appliances and tools; clothing and textiles; consumer and business products; and packaging;
Continuous behaviour and culture change at personal, professional, community and societal levels encompassing: changing living practices; changing work practices; limiting product and service demands; reducing negative social and environmental impact; conserving resources; protecting, restoring and regenerating natural systems; strengthening communities; de-materialising our ways of living; and de-escalating economic growth, while increasing livelihood, livability and flourishing.
Practices: Every sustainability process embodies a different and open set of practices appropriate to the context - these are the domains of sustainability practice. Here practices are more specific actions, such as improving energy efficiency; carrying out a life cycle assessment; designing a green building; or circularising an industrial product. Different contexts have different demands, and in the context of change for sustainability at the organizational level, inevitably activity connects with the material world - that is, the world where we extract our resources for making and powering the things we do and where we have the most impact on natural systems.
Outcomes: With the purpose, goals, principles and processes outlined, sustainability transformation will be evidenced by humans flourishing in livable cities and communities; with good work maintaining sustainable livelihoods; in healthy built and natural environments; with increasing biodiversity and resilience in nature; through regenerative food, fibre and timber production; with high-quality governance across all sectors of society; sustainable practice common across business and industry; self-determination of indigenous lifeways; and harmony between countries and cultures.
Culture: All actions, whether personal, social, economic or technological create cultures around the actions, and those cultures then shape on-going adaptations and the development of new ways of doing things. Cultures can grow to support our social goals, or they can become barriers. Not only do we have to take sustainability-positive actions, we must also facilitate the emergence of cultures that support those actions. A sustainability culture, then is a culture where sustainable behaviour is a normal and accepted part of everyday practice, especially where situations are complex and difficult, and sustainable impact is hard to achieve.
Example Applications
Aligned Practices
Coherent Tools
Knowledge Base
References
Useful Links
Atlas Navigation
Go to the Elemental Patterns within the Knowledge Pattern:
Purpose Goals Principles Process Practices Outcomes Culture
Go to the Natural Systems Pattern within the Fundamental Patterns Cluster
Go to the Human Systems Pattern within the Fundamental Patterns Cluster
Version
Version 1.0 - 2 Jun 2024
Version 2 - 12 March 2025
Version 2.1 - 8 May 2025
Yunkaporta, T. (2019). Sand Talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world. Melbourne, The Text Publishing Company.