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Abstract

Since the beginning of the 1970s, the international community has increasingly realized the limits of continued economic growth without concerns for social and environmental objectives. It became clear that the world’s development trajectory was causing large-scale environmental degradation, irreversible loss of natural resources, social injustice between and within societies, rapid depletion of certain energy sources, and even troubling changes to the Earth’s climate. The assumption gained ground that from an economic, social and ecological point of view current development patterns could not be custained

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© 2012 Karoline Van den Brande, Hans Bruyninckx and Sander Happaerts

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Van den Brande, K., Bruyninckx, H., Happaerts, S. (2012). Introduction. In: Bruyninckx, H., Happaerts, S., Van den Brande, K. (eds) Sustainable Development and Subnational Governments. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137005427_1

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