*scientific director of the Digital World Foundation and Personal Chair in Technology Strategy, University of Edinburgh
If we ask ChatGPT for help in reconstructing the motherhood or fatherhood of the expression “holistic sustainability”, it leads us astray: it is unable to identify the terms of the debate, it considers it a “collective product of many minds”, a concept that emerged gradually in the context of sustainability discussions.
According to the definition of the Treccani Encyclopedia, sustainability implies constant and preferably growing well-being (environmental, social, economic) and the prospect of leaving future generations with a quality of life no less than the current one.
Sustainability scholars and scientists have largely focused on external sustainabilitythat is, the complex relationships between society, economy and environment.
But internal sustainability is also of fundamental importancethat is, values, beliefs and attitudes that constitute everyone’s personal dimension.
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Holistic sustainability then integrates all dimensions of sustainability, personal and collective, internal and external to guarantee a lasting balance. And it is also closely linked to the capacity for action; it outlines a sort of global competence, crucial for our future, for its transformative power.
But how can we help people grasp the close connection between personal values, behaviors and sustainability? Are people aware of the effects of their choices? Do they know how to self-evaluate? Do they know what and how they would like to change?
We at the Digital World Foundation use the concept of holistic sustainability based on Personal ecosystem theory. And to support it we have created a personal and collective development tool, the Personal Ecosystem Canvas (PEC).
L’personal ecosystem – multidimensional, dynamic, evolutionary and complex – includes all aspects that influence a person’s life and is also crucial for social and professional fulfillment. We imagined it organized into seven concentric spheres: in the centre, in the first sphere, there is the self, in the broadest possible sense, and then the subsequent spheres are the goods we possess (2), the relationships (3), the organizations ( 4), infrastructure (5), culture (6) and finally the trends of the period in which we live (7). Obviously personal micro systems and social macro systems influence each other.
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Il Personal Ecosystem Canvas (PEC) is a tool that allows anyone, thanks to the intuitive model of concentric spheres, to begin a path of reflection on the development and construction of their personal ecosystem, to align it, for example, in its social and work dimensions. It is applicable in different contexts (school, university, corporate.
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