Systemic Sustainability: Toward an Organic Model of Governance\textemdasha Research Note

Increasing pressure for sustainable development has resulted in a multitude of reporting practices intended to provide more transparent information on progress toward greater sustainability. We argue that measurement as an operating mode has emerged as a magic solution for reversing the trend towards unsustainable development, but as tools the use of such metrics cannot alone be regarded as sufficient to achieve this goal. We assert that to enable reflection on coherent systems of governance much work is needed on the conceptualisation, determinants and consequences of sustainable development. To this end we urge a shift away from this existing mechanistic type of corporate and public governance and propose a systemic transformation to cooperative multi-level interactions in governance where local communities are empowered to act according to the natural rhythyms of the planet. Our framework for this transformation, which we term organic governance, departs from local actions carried out in isolation, moving towards a global vision integrated at the national and regional levels based on shared values drawn from deeper understandings of natural ecosystems at local levels. This approach requires continual adaptation at local levels where economy and policy making serve the social well-being of local communities. In this research note we set out the conceptual basis for our organic governance framework. \textcopyright 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.