This paper is an attempt to develop a holarchical paradigm for regional sustainability assessment based on a critic of the epistemology of sustainability, seen as between two polar opposites that make up a unified system. On the one hand we find what can be described as a representationalist view, for which sustainability is the result of juxtaposing certain economic, social and environmental aspects of reality. However, complexity and uncertainty are the most relevant epistemological results of trying to define sustainability as an "objective" entity derived from an analytical perspective. On the other hand, complexity and uncertainty lead to the conclusion that sustainability cannot be expressed and, therefore, the problem of what to do does not depend so much on the description of the object we want to act on, but on how we decide what to do. This is the procedural epistemology of sustainability. The methodological and epistemological proposal that has guided the development of the Sustainable Development Strategy for the Region of Murcia, for instance, is equidistant from these two options. It is based on the belief that it is necessary and possible to constitute sustainability as an analytically coherent (i.e. non-arbitrary) object of knowledge, which is at the same time autonomous from the analytical–fragmentary descriptions that comprise standard scientific knowledge. In the centre of this epistemology is a systemic understanding of "reality" that tries to grasp the hierarchical inter-existence of the outer world, and focuses primarily on contingent management from a dynamic viewpoint rather than that of certainty. This epistemological dual perspective has many implications for evaluation practice, both in the framing of technical analysis, and in the management of social participation.
Limits and targets for a regional sustainability assessment: an interdisciplinary exploration of the threshold concept
