Presentation

Our society is to prepare, as soon as possible, to confront the challenges the future has in store for us, re-orientating its thinking and actions, its attitudes and habits in a sustainable manner.

The success of our initiatives will greatly depend on the capacity we may have to adapt to the probable tendencies we expect, on reducing the level of uncertainties we may have and in knowing how to anticipate to possible ruptures that we may anticipate in the medium and long runs.

Investing on a society based on sustainability-related values is becoming a maximum-priority objective for the various actors in our society, amongst which Eusko Ikaskuntza is also to be included.

We are not starting from scratch. During the previous decades we have consolidated important advances and the time has come for us to update with other contents and new forms of thinking, acting and being, reinforcing and amplifying our signs of identity with new elements of social, economic and cultural progress, in terms of sustainability. New signs and new structural elements which allow us to exercise our sovereign options, in favour of our present and future citizenry, and for the benefit of the sustainability of the planet as a whole.

We are starting form the focus point that we are mature enough to correct our current and unsustainable social and economic development model, that devours resources, and with this purpose in mind, Eusko Ikaskuntza is now placing its stakes on collaborating to the construction of a better future, a better quality of life, using its credibility, its scientific rigour, its apolitical character and its relations with the various public administrations within the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, the Statutory Community of Navarre and in Iparralde.

As the line of work for the first contribution of Eusko Ikaskuntza to Sustainable Development, a Special Multidisciplinary Project of strategic reflection on Sustainable Development, SMP(SD).

The SMP(SD) project provides a social platform on which the various actors within our society participate in a process of reflection and debate on Sustainable Development within Eusko Ikaskuntza’s radius of action.

The main objective of the Project is that Sustainable Development is considered a central strategic framework of and for all decisions and activities generated within the Basque Country as a whole.

The Departments of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Land Planning and Environment, and Transport and Public Works of the Basque Government and the collaboration of the Council of Industrial Engineers of the Basque Country sponsor this project.