Sustainability Strategies

Sustainability strategies are mechanisms that contribute to achieving sustainability and are well-established in the field of sustainability science. Originally, the term centered on a triad introduced by Joseph Huber, encompassing sufficiency, efficiency, and consistency. Each of these strategies has since developed its own school of thought, emphasizing different merits and contributions to sustainability. In recent debates, further strategies are discussed, culminating in a recent framework by Eric Hartmann, which describes a total of ten sustainability strategies.

Sufficiency focuses on reducing consumption and production levels without threatening human needs. Following the typology by Maria Sandberg, four types of sufficiency can be distinguished, namely absolute reduction of consumption (e.g. less travels), modal shifts (e.g. switching from air travels to trains), sharing (e.g. carpooling) and increased longevity (e.g. repairing a bike instead of buying a new one). Sufficiency is often discussed in the context of the degrowth paradigm of sustainability. Efficiency aims to reduce resource use, energy consumption, or pollution per unit of consumption or production within existing production and consumption systems - such as improved fuel efficiency in cars or energy-saving appliances. It is often considered to share an elective affinity with the green growth paradigm. Consistency involves shifting to new industrial metabolisms that are more consistent with nature’s metabolism and hence cause less environmental damage (such as renewable energies and circular design). This strategy is implicitly advocated by the circular economy approach and rooted in industrial ecology.