308 Enabling Policies and Institutions for Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems
None the less, our definition, as this book shows, has proven robust because it fits
so well the outcomes of research on the interface between people and their envi-
ronment. It also serves our immediate purpose of illuminating the facilitation of
sustainable agriculture.
Our definition is consistent with Wouter de Groot’s (1992) ‘problem-in-con-
text framework for the analysis, explanation and solution of environmental prob-
lems’ (Box 16.5). A problem is here defined as an undesirable difference between
‘wants’ or norms, and ‘gets’ or impacts. According to De Groot, an environmental
problem is an undesirable difference between the environmental impacts of human
activity and environmental norms. Solving environmental problems thus requires
changing human activity to fit the norms, and vice versa. The problem-in-context
framework provides for an integration of environmental sciences and the deriva-
tion of norms for human activity.
Box 16.5 De Groot’s ‘Problem in Contex Model’ of environmental problems
(simplified adaptation of De Groot, 1992).Box 16.4 Sustainability defined
Sustainability is an emergent property of a ‘soft system’ (Woodhill and Röling, this
volume). It is the outcome of the collective decision making that arises from interac-
tion among stakeholders. Stakeholders are identified here as natural resource users
and managers. A natural resource can be considered at the field, farm or higher
level of aggregation, including watersheds, landscapes, agroecological regions,
lakes and rivers and, ultimately, the Earth itself.The formulation of sustainability in this manner implies that the definition is part of
the problem that stakeholders have to resolve (Pretty, 1995). That is, securing agree-
ment on what people shall take sustainability to mean for a given environment, is
half the job of getting there.