System transitions research and sustainable development: Challenges, progress, and prospects

The central challenge of our age is how to make development sustainable—to assure that it advances people’s well-being in the here and now without unfairly constraining the ability of people elsewhere, or in the future, to advance their own well-being. Efforts to meet that challenge are ultimately political, involving complex struggles over who should and does get what. Research, however, has much to contribute to those struggles by illuminating both where present development pathways are taking us, and what interventions can bend those paths toward sustainability.