Exploring the possibility of a systematic and generic approach to social sustainability

There is a growing need to understand how existing concepts and tools for sustainability relate to each other and to a robust, trans-disciplinary systems perspective for sustainability. As a response, a group of scientists, including some of the authors, have developed a framework based on backcasting from sustainability principles over the last 20 years – the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), also known as The Natural Step Framework. The intent of this study is to scrutinize the existing framework as regards its social dimension. The study demonstrates dichotomies and lack of robustness and proposes a way forward to make the social dimension of the FSSD more cohesive as well as operational.