Ecological crisis between the sustainability of development and participative processes

In line with the indications of Pope Francis in his Encyclical letter ‘Laudato sì’ (2015), in this essay we intend to provide a contribution to the understanding of how the still abstract concept of sustainable development can be translated into concrete terms. Since its appearance now thirty years ago, the scientific community has had to confront itself with the problem of how to be able to guarantee an equilibrated and durable growth of society as a whole and within its diverse dimensions – social environmental and economic. Specifically, chapter 1 illustrates the origin of the actual economic crisis, focussing on the motivations for which the solution appears to be particularly complex, and successively explains how one has arrived at the proposal of sustainable development. Chapter 2 concentrates on the participative processes, presenting them as one of the possible winning modalities in order actualize sustainable development. Finally, through chapter 3 some conclusive considerations are proposed.