Sustainable Development is a relatively new academic discipline that aims to understand how human societies interact with the environmental structures. Whereas this topic is fundamental and can be approached from multiple disciplines, it has been quite challenging to define a unit of study that describes the scientific interest in the dynamics between the social and environmental systems. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to promote the concept of “region” as the most appropriate unit of study for the Sustainable Development Science. In the beginning, this word was coined to identify a space. However, given the influence of System’s Theory, many geographers, such as Vallega, modified the concept of region as the interaction of social and environmental systems that take place in a given space and that are in constant interaction among themselves and with other regions. This concept provides two important elements for the development of a Sustainable Development Science: 1) it provides a unit of analysis that shares the same elements as the new science, and 2) it supplies a set of tools from System’s Theory that enhances the research on this area. In order to prove the usefulness of this concept, this paper summarizes a series of seminal cases of study and highlight in each one of them how the concept of the region helps the researcher to have a better understanding of the development problem and which are the properties of a region, based on the System’s Theory approach, that can help understand it in an integral way. In particular, this paper analyses and illustrates six basic properties of a region: 1) bimodularity (the existence of social and environmental systems that are in constant interaction), 2) openness (the fact that a region is not a close unit of analysis but it is in constant interaction with other regions creating horizontal and vertical structures), 3) objectiveness (regions shape themselves around explicit or implicit objectives), 4) evolution (regions are constantly changing based on the interactions among themselves), 5) system dynamics (due to its spatio-temporal behaviour, understanding the time dynamics are fundamental in the concept of sustainability and evolution of a region), and 6) emergence and self-organization (as complex systems, the interactions within and between regions induce synergies that shape the organization of the social and environmental structures on them). From the review of the cases of study, this paper argues not only the relevance of this concept but also how it allows that multiple disciplines have an active role in the study of each of these elements. Hence, by analyzing the concept of a region under a System’s Theory perspective, this paper promotes the usage of a unit of study that is ontologically consistent with the object of study of Sustainable Development and which provides an adequate framework to host multiple academic disciplines in the framework covered by this emerging science.
Keywords: System's Theory, Region, System Dynamics, Complexity
1a Sustainable development science: fundamental concepts (definitions, fundamental concept
