Geographic perspectives on sustainability: Towards a conceptual framework

Understanding sustainability poses conceptual and practical challenges due to its myriad interpretations. Geographers have endeavored to refine the concept from various perspectives by drawing from their environmental research tradition. However, a comprehensive examination of geographical contributions to the sustainability discourse remains elusive. This article fills this gap by scrutinizing how sustainability has been conceptualized across diverse geographic epistemologies over the past two decades through a literature review. Furthermore, it proposes a novel multiscale conceptual framework for land use change dynamics. The review underscores geography's reliance on external theories to grapple with sustainability and advocates for a robust conceptual framework to deepen comprehension. This framework elucidates the relative significance and intricate interplay among sustainability dimensions within the complex nexus of social and environmental subsystems, which could help with territorial management.