To arrive at effective policies and actions at country, organizational or area level, the planetary minimum conditions for sustainability need to be translated into local contexts. Scaling down, however, is often more a matter of socio-political and geo-political agreement than a matter of scientific boundaries: who gets to absorb what part of the necessary investments for sustainable transformation, and who decides about that?
There are also no widely accepted standards that tell us whether country X, community Y or Organization Z is sustainable. It is largely a matter of will and doing what is possible and necessary. Measuring the national and planetary minimum requirements will tell us if we succeed.
Of course, if people, organizations, communities, cities and countries decarbonize, increase their energy efficiency, use more clean energy, reduce carbon emissions in their supply chains and purchases, protect and restore natural resources, that is an impulse for good and better. The good news: we can probably be successful regarding sustainable development without exactly knowing what it is, without mesuring exactly and how it can be measured in detail. The bad news: we will have to adjust the consequences of real situations at any given moment in time to what we want for the future, for whom, where, and how much. Wars and death sentences have occurred to answer these questions.
And what about all of the national and corporate commitments: reaching Net-Zero Emissions by year X or Y? Reduce waste, get to full recycling of plastics? Different goals by different organizations linked to different scales and timelines? They are all preferred and possible sufficient IF and ONLY IF there is a mechanism to determine whether locally and planetarily the actions are enough to curb climate change. At present, we need nations state and an assembly of nation states to monitor, develop effective policies and reach agreements. Especially by the lack of alternatives. Leaving everything to a market, or to individual actions will allow rentseekers and freeriders to not do what is necessary. And the collective effort may be at risk of being too little, too late.
Go back to Sustainable Development.