ICSA-DIAS

Presentation of the conference

The concept of sustainability has been the subject of growing interest in recent years among the public and policymakers, driven by an increased awareness of the planet’s finite resources and the urgent need to preserve the quality of the natural heritage. The goal is to promote socio-economic development models that are more balanced compared to those adopted in the past.

In the scientific domain, sustainability has been, and continues to be, a topic of debate. Over time, it has become increasingly evident that the concept of sustainability remains purely theoretical unless it is associated with a specific context, process, or objective.

Recent phenomena and events experienced by much of the global population have highlighted how the fragility and unsustainability exhibited by many countries were closely linked to insufficient attention to the well-being of their people. The failure to prioritize systemic well-being in decision-making has led to such significant fragility that nations have faced genuine emergencies. In other words, the sustainability of a country (or even an individual) is inextricably connected to the level of systemic well-being. More precisely, sustainability is a means to achieve this well-being.

Ultimately, sustainability represents a paradigm that allows for observing, analyzing, predicting, and governing while respecting the complexity of reality. Consequently, the approach to sustainability must inevitably be multidisciplinary, integrating various domains of reality—such as the environment, the economy, social networks, and health—and aligning them all toward well-being. Being closely tied to well-being, sustainability depends on the values of a society and the individuals who compose it.

This conclusion calls for a new culture of complexity, leading to innovative analytical approaches (and not just governance) that can, through continuous monitoring, reveal areas, groups, and sectors of a country’s life where fragility (or lack of well-being) reaches levels that expose their unsustainability.

Conceptually, sustainability qualifies the future dimension of well-being, requiring a complex knowledge journey that integrates diverse fields and disciplines. Given this premise, the analysis of sustainability demands the definition of data, the construction of indicators, a systemic approach to monitoring, and the selection and use of analytical methods that ensure the translation of reality into numerical language is not only necessary but also meaningful for understanding.

The analysis of this complexity-dominated reality requires the adoption of a systemic and multidimensional approach. The goal of the reflections to be addressed within this group is to stimulate discussion and the definition of analytical approaches suited to studying complexity. This involves using appropriate data, adopting suitable methodologies to create and analyze indicators, and understanding and evaluating the imbalances and deficiencies that, if prolonged, render a system unsustainable.

Thematic areas (not limited to):