Sustainability

10Social Engineering and Sustainability: Revisiting Popper's “Piecemeal Approach”

Neeraj Mishra

Center for Wage Employment, National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Hyderabad, India

10.1 Introduction

With rapid industrialization in developed and developing countries alike, combined with the consumerist lifestyle of the modern society, complex environmental problems have surfaced that threaten the very existence of human society, for example, global warming, climate change, depleting ozone layer, desertification and environmental degradation, among others. In today's world of rapidly depleting natural resources, nothing is more desirable than to build a society that has sustainability embedded into its everyday practices, thought and lifestyle.

It can be observed from the reports published by both national and international organizations that earlier efforts to promote sustainable development of resources have achieved sporadic and limited success. It has been widely claimed that such efforts need to be complemented with other innovative solutions to widen the reach of sustainable developmental practices. This chapter proposes that the concept of piecemeal social engineering can be usefully employed to bring about a paradigm shift in the way processes of policymaking and institutional reforms are being debated to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Following the works of Karl Popper, this chapter introduces the concept of “piecemeal social engineering,” ...