| Summary: | This dissertation describes a transdisciplinary research project undertaken at the University of Iceland in 2009 to 2013, that focused upon the creation and testing of a public participatory process through which individual communities can take steps towards sustainability and social equity within Earth’s boundaries. If the United Nations’ prediction of more than nine billion people in 2050 is realized, and if a large number of those people aspire to today’s Western lifestyles with larger than sustainable ecological footprints, then humanity as a whole faces an enormous dilemma. Earth cannot support that many people living unsustainably, and the growing pressure on current mechanisms for the allocation and management of resources leads to an increasingly ‘unfair’ planet. As we only have one Earth, a possible solution to this dilemma might be to change the way resources are divided between nations, communities and individuals, towards new processes of management and allocation that are fair and within biological planetary limits. This dissertation describes the creation and testing of the Convergence Process; a collection of principles, tools and methods meant to aid communities in moving down the path to sustainability and social equity, while keeping in mind our planet’s biophysical boundaries. The process consists of a systems approach and organized public participatory World Café-style workshops, where systems analysis is applied when carefully selected local citizens draw causal loop diagrams of a chosen system. The idea is that those who live with the system collectively know it better than others, and can therefore draw forth solutions unpredictable to outsiders. By using the Convergence Process, communities can identify changes necessary within their systems – for example within policies or lifestyle choices – that may increase convergence and contraction of resource use in their communities and bring them to a more sustainable and socially equal way of living. The intention is that different communities ...
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