Iain Simpson Stewart

There is a growing view that the mission of the Earth sciences ought to be reframed around the global sustainability agenda, and specifically the grand challenges of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Yet the SDGs are criticised for lacking a coherent sense of the complex interconnections and synergies between its economic, environmental and social ambitions, for maintaining the impetus of economic growth, and for the absence of a compelling narrative for what a sustainable future world might look like.

Given those limitations, this paper offers an alternative meta-narrative to the global sustainability challenge in the form of coupled planetary and human well-being. It is a narrative that emerges from an overview of five decades of environmental discourse and debate to emphasise the central importance of Earth stewardship as a unifying theme. It presents the Daly Triangle as a holistic conceptual framework to link the health of the planet’s natural resource base, through the operations of a sustainable economy, to the ultimate ends of long-term well-being for all.