Recognizing the urgent need for sustainability, we argue that to move beyond the rhetoric and to actually realize sustainable development, it must be considered as a decision-making strategy. We demonstrate that sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators can be powerful decision-supporting tools that foster sustainable development by addressing three sustainability decision-making challenges: interpretation, information-structuring, and influence. Particularly, since the 1990s many substantial and often promising sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators efforts are made. However, better practices and a broader shared understanding are still required. We aim to contribute to that objective by adopting a theoretical perspective that frames SA and SI in the context of sustainable development as a decision-making strategy and that introduces both fields along several essential aspects in a structured and comparable manner.

At the turn of the millennium, the world’s political leadership adopted sustainable development as a leading model for societal development. However, the terms “sustainable development”, “sustainability” and “sustainable” are sometimes over- and misused despite wide consensus about the concept’s meaning among sustainability scholars and practitioners. While the concept allows various sustainability views to co-exist, random conceptualizations which do not respect the fundamental sustainability principles undermine the concept’s objective to steer action. This lack of understanding of sustainability arguably inhibits its practical realization and a proper understanding of sustainability is urgently needed. In this paper we aim to contribute to a better understanding of sustainability by adopting a bird’s eye perspective. We review the rich contemporary literature, with a specific focus on the terminology, genesis, fundamental principles, mainstream views of sustainability, and several governing aspects. Further, using the evolving body of sustainability literature, the paper provides arguments to combat common misconceptions of sustainability.

The negative impacts of climate change are experienced at the global, regional and local levels. However, rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa face additional socio-political, cultural and economic challenges in addition to climate change. Decision support tools have been developed and applied to assist rural communities to cope with and adapt to climate change. However, poorly planned participatory processes and the lack of context-specific approaches in these tools are obstacles when aiming at strengthening the resilience of these rural communities. This paper uses an integrated literature review to identify best practices for involving rural communities in climate change adaptation efforts through the application of context-specific and culturally-sensitive climate change adaptation tools. These best practices include the use of a livelihoods approach to engage communities; the explicit acknowledgement of the local cultural do’s and don’ts; the recognition of local champions appointed from within the local community; the identification and prioritisation of vulnerable stakeholders; and the implementation of a two-way climate change risk communication instead of a one-sided information sharing approach.