With its guiding vision for sustainable development (Leitbild der Nachhaltigen Entwicklung, hereafter LNE), routed in the German government’s strategy for sustainable development, Germany set its strategic orientation on sustainable development policy just over one and half decades ago (Bundesregierung 2002). The vision has not been revised or modernized since its original formulation in 2002.
Since that time, a diverse set of developments have taken place with regard to both strategy and implementation. Given these developments, the failure to achieve targets in many areas, and the pressing need to strengthen the LNE’s effectiveness, a comprehensive update of the LNE for the future direction of environment and sustainability policy appears crucial.
The project “Sustainability 2.0 – Approaches to modernisation of the guiding vision of sustainable development” aims to stimulate a discussion on an LNE update. It aims to contribute to the process of updating, supplementing and strategically optimizing the LNE while bringing the guiding vision closer to current political and societal processes. In the context of a planned update of the national sustainability strategy, adelphi and the Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment Berlin have designed concise political recommendations for the further conceptual development and implementation of the updated LNE. The final report of the project Nachhaltigkeit 2.0 aims to contribute important impulses to that development. Further papers add different discourse analyses to explore the topic in depth as well as to give recommendations on the new guiding vision for sustainable development.