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Botswana was ranked second poorest country at independence from Britain in 1966. The country has seen a steady movement from a state of poverty to be among the most developed in the sub-Saharan region and earned the upper middle-income countries title in the past 54 years. This has been due to so many factors but mostly due to steady democracy that has seen 12 undisturbed elections, good fiscal policy and mostly the modest approach to life by the population. The infrastructure development has been seen, education, health systems and other developments. Despite all these, Botswana still experiences the poor countries issues such as high unemployment, high poverty incidences, illnesses such as HIV and AIDS, malnutrition among the under 5s and teenage pregnancies. This has led the government of Botswana to come up with strong social security programmes in Botswana which Kalusupa and Letsile (2012) believe is the strongest in Africa. These programmes include among others, public works (Ipelegeng), old age pension, school feeding, and destitute programmes. This paper is looking at the sustainability of these programmes considering that Botswana is a mono-economy country that takes most of its revenue from diamonds.

Social innovation is concerned with social mobilization and impact, and is increasingly seen as an option to address sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, the concept of social innovation is quite open in character and requires empirical accommodation to establish how it differs from other types of innovation in this setting. This article contributes empirically to the concept of social innovation as it reviews categories of success factors of social innovation against those of five other innovation types (product, service, governmental, organizational, system) in 202 innovation cases that focus on climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. Statistical analysis with contingency tables is applied to examine the distribution of five kinds of success factors across the innovation types: economic, environmental, political, social, and technological. The results confirm empirically that social innovation is indeed a distinct type of innovation. There are statistically significant differences in the distribution of categories of success factors between social innovation on the one hand and product, service and governance innovation on the other. In addition to the prevalence of social success factors, social innovation is characterized by a lesser emphasis on political and technological success factors. ; Peer reviewed

A growing number of educational programs in sustainability science has paralleled the rise of the field itself. The educational approach of these programs follows the problem-driven, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary nature of the field itself. However, its effectiveness has yet to be systematically evaluated. Similarly, while ad-hoc evaluation schemes have attempted to monitor the quality of the educational programs, there is no standard method that accounts for the particularities of sustainability science programs. This study thus addresses the need for an assessment of the problem-driven approach of educational programs in sustainability science. We have conducted student self-assessments of field courses in the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science (GPSS-GLI) at The University of Tokyo, which positions its field courses at the center of its curriculum. The self-assessments were based on five key competencies identified as particularly important for sustainability professionals. Workshops and questionnaires engaged students in a reflection of the six field courses and of their own personal development through the activities offered. Our questionnaire results indicate that the majority of participants were satisfied with how the courses furthered their personal development. While some participants expressed frustration at being unable to sufficiently address the respective field's sustainability challenges due to time constraints, students generally recognized the five key competencies as important for addressing sustainability issues after participating in the courses. Moreover, participants attributed much of their learning to their active engagement in planned field research activities, rather than to passive learning. Variations in results across different course units provide material for further analysis and development of the curriculum. This study is an initial attempt at assessment, with room for ongoing improvement and further research to address additional requirements for fostering the next generation of sustainability professionals.

This book addresses distributive justice across generations and includes original theories from distinguished economists on intergenerational equity, efficiency and rationality, which discuss policies on social security, pensions, and environmental degradation, as examples of policies of the present generation which impact upon future generations