Literature review on fundamental concepts and definitions, objectives and policy goals as well as instruments relevant for socio-ecological transition

The research project WWWforEurope undertakes to lie the theoretical and empirical foundations for the embarkment on a new socio-ecological growth path in Europe. The new path underlines the need to guarantee Welfare as a broad universal principle for its population, assuring economic and social prosperity. The new path stresses the value of achieving - what we call - Wealth, a value in which material and immaterial resources are combined with the goal to enrich people‘s lives and to preserve natural resources, nature and bio-diversity. Both cannot be achieved without Work: Europe needs to enable its population to achieve their life satisfaction at the highest level possible and Work is one of the most - if not, the most - fundamental precondition for this. In short, the overarching question the WWWforEurope project attempts to answer is what kind of new European growth and development strategy is necessary and feasible, enabling a socio-ecological transition to high levels of employment, well-being of its citizens, social inclusion, resilience of ecological systems and a significant contribution to the global common goods like climate stability. Thus the project's central goals are to identify the forces and challenges necessitating deliberations on a new growth path, to define socio-ecological transition, key actors and main obstacles, and to find out how the process of a socio-ecological transition can be initiated, monitored, and accelerated on an institutional level (EU, national and regional level). A central prerequisite to successfully accomplish these central goals is to establish a common understanding of the central questions raised by this undertaking and to create awareness for the project's systemic and interdisciplinary approach. To this behalf, this paper presents fundamental concepts, terms and definitions relevant for socio-ecological transition. Hereby the paper focuses on the concepts of sustainability, growth, innovation, welfare and well-being, wealth and work. We also look at the various dimensions and definitions of transition/transformation which can be found in the literature, trying to concretise the concept of a socio-ecological transition forming the context and starting point of the WWWforEurope project. The necessity to accomplish a socio-ecological transition represents the starting point and the background against which the concepts and terms addressed in this paper gain their relevance. [...]