Sustainable Technology Development

These results of the Dutch STD project presented in a comprehensive, specifically written English-language book, together with a description of the unique working method of STD and the results and key lessons from a set of the programme's illustrative case studies. "an exciting example of what can be done to create and carry out visions of sustainability" Carl Etnier

Based on the evaluation of the results of a five-year inter-ministerial programme of the Dutch Sustainable Technology Development Group, this is an examination of which technologies might be able to become more eco-efficient, and how they may be able to do so.

In the time it takes to read this sentence, about fifteen people will be added to the world's population.

Read the sentence again, and there will be thirty. Tomorrow, each of these people will be demanding greater prosperity. Production and consumption are increasing fast but will have to grow even faster in the future to keep up with population growth and a world increasingly divided by inequality. How should we react to these trends? Certainly, many use growth figures to forecast disaster. But there is an alternative vision: one of a sustainable future, in which growth is seen not as a threat, but as the driving force behind innovation. This is the scenario worked out in the Netherlands by Sustainable Technology Development (STD), a five-year programme of research and "learning-by-doing" based on setting up new innovation networks and working with new methods to search for sustainable technological solutions.

In order to make sustainability tangible, STD made a leap in time. What human needs will have to be satisfied fifty years from now? Taking a sustainable future vision as a starting point, STD demonstrated what steps we should take today for new technologies and systems to be in place in time. These results are now available for the first time in a comprehensive, specifically written English-language book, together with a description of the unique working method of STD and the results and key lessons from a set of the programme's illustrative case studies. This book serves as a manual for industry, governments and social leaders wanting to prepare themselves for a sustainable future.

Sustainable Technology Development sets out the programme's underpinning philosophy and describes its approach, methods and findings. Delivering sustainability means finding ways to meet human needs using a fraction of the natural resources we use today. The world's richer nations would be wise to target at least ten-fold improvements by 2050 in the productivity with which conventional natural resources and environmental services are used....read more...