Global sustainability in the 21st century seems to be an elusive goal. There are too many issues, too many problems—and, increasingly, too many people—to make the major changes required in the time various experts tell us we have left before it’s too late.

To create a sustainable future, we need to change the game itself. We cannot simply try to solve our problems one at a time. Instead, we need to reimagine sustainability in all its dimensions—social, cultural, environmental and economic—to create a global system that reflects how we should be living together, one that generates both hope and possibility.

In this thought-provoking work, Peter Denton argues that the attitudes and values associated with the economics of exchange are in part to blame for our current situation. We need to rediscover what it means to live in a universe of relations, not merely in one that can be counted and measured. The more we are able to replace an economy based on transactions with an ecology based on gifts, the more likely a sustainable future becomes for all of Earth’s children.

Peter Denton is the author of Gift Ecology (RMB, 2012) and Technology and Sustainability (RMB, 2014). He has been teaching interdisciplinary variations on the theme of technology, ethics and sustainability across Canada for 30 years. He is an activist, writer, editor, speaker and consultant, as well as an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada. He is involved in several volunteer roles with the United Nations Environment Programme, both as a civil society representative and as a contributor to UNEP’s latest Global Environmental Outlook, GEO 6. Peter chairs the policy committee of the Green Action Centre in Winnipeg. He lives in rural Manitoba.

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