Sustainability and human relations: A brief address to Global Diasporas

The core part of this document is an under 3-page transcript of a short (8 min) video comment (in English, with translations in French, German and Romanian) as a message of acceptance of a prize (September 27th, 2024) during a conference dedicated to Diasporas and sustainable development in Paris, France. The technical supplement (English only) comprises the title page (title, author's historical affiliations, and abstract), footnotes-and-references and figures.

The main idea is that local-but-global gatherings like the cultural and human networks-based science-and-business eventevoked above is relevant for all national/cultural Diasporas and that the concise reflection it occasioned is worth spreading, namely three interrelated-and-complementary points: (1) because of their double local-and-global character, cities are key strategic platforms for holistic projects seeking to generate solutions in a hopefully (but uncertain) successful transition to sustainability, bringing a certain sense of urgency of more concrete eco-city and eco-innovation projects, (2) such projects need a realistic, systems perspective that recognize the fact that we all live in Complex Dynamic Systems that demand hard, knowledge and expertise-based stepwise development, i.e., we are not operating in some sort of mechanic clockwork world that is programmable and triggered at will, and (3) this systemic approach grounds the adequate mapping and treatment of economic, social and ecologic aspects (in that order) during problem definition and the necessarily opposite order during solution development – in a cyclical and iterative model that results logically from the coherent integration of insights from sustainability studies and project management.

Finally, professional interactions like the one evoked earlier can strongly catalyze our collective potential and capacity to succeed in the transition to sustainability, which also means that we need more of such inspiring professional interactions in the coming years and decades.