This report argues innovation should be at the core of environmental sustainability. 

Key findings:

• There is little sign of a growing cohesion and centrality for sustainability policy in government. Instead there are specialised domains scattered between sustainable consumption and production, climate change, waste management, and biodiversity.

• The challenge within environmental sustainability is to frame effective short, medium and long-term innovation targets in the pursuit of a transition to a low-carbon economy.

• A sustainability-oriented innovation policy needs to catalyse the creation of new sociotechnical networks. 

Over the past decade, awareness of climate change has brought diffuse concerns over our planet's environmental limits into sharp reality.

The solution is a commitment to innovation for environmental sustainability as an overarching goal of national policy.

This new sustainability-oriented innovation policy must draw on the lessons of other national mobilisations in pursuit of big societal goals.

Author:
Fred Steward