Towards a systemic perspective of the sustainable development goals through the Brazilian case

Schwaninger (2015) argues that the viability of humanity in the long term depends upon its ability to organize for sustainability. He further proposes that “that every viable system is sustainable, but that a sustainable system is not necessarily viable”. Beer carefully explains that the recursive logic, which the viable system is based on, consists of a process that runs through all levels of organization and admits no limits. Managers must thus be extremely wary of cutting short that process by just saying, for instance, “my responsibility ends here”. Such attitude on the part of managers at all levels of recursion explains why there are, as Beer adds, “dust bowls, pollution, city decay, starvation, violence, social revolution, and international warfare” (1979, p. 312).