Offering a bold and original perspective, Leadership for Sustainability explores how leadership can drive meaningful sustainability transitions through local and regional governance. The authors introduce an interpretive framework developed around the concepts of myth, metaphor and narrative, revealing sustainability as a highly productive fiction – one that enables communities to observe their environment differently and envision and organize long-term futures. Through critical analysis of sustainability narratives and a careful dismantling of common leadership myths, this book uncovers the functions and roles of leadership within governance systems. This approach illuminates how leadership can foster new modes of observation, understanding, and organization that reconnect communities, governance, and the environment. Featuring a clear and concise overview of key issues, tools, concepts and contexts for the understanding of leadership for sustainability, this is an essential insight for scholars and practitioners working in sustainability, environmental issues, leadership studies, public policy, and administration.

‘Leadership for Sustainability is a sorely needed contribution for all decision-makers and researchers striving for sustainability and searching for the strategies that can make sustainability a reality in our world. Business as usual is no longer an option. Leaders and how they govern for sustainability will be the difference between where the world is headed and where it needs to go. Kristof Van Assche and Monica Gruezmacher illuminate the path in their brilliant book.'

Arun Agrawal - Pulte Family Professor of Development Policy; and Director, Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative, University of Notre Dame

‘A wonderful book, covering a vast intellectual landscape, pausing – but never resting – at heights of leadership, the ranges of governance, the plains of sustainability and the fascinating borderlands where they meet. More map than compass, an enjoyable narrative for thinkers and doers alike.'

Martin Kornberger - Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Visiting Professor, NHH The Norwegian School of Economics and Adjunct Professor, UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales, Australia

‘While the call for ‘political leadership' for sustainability transformations on the level of global governance is increasingly politicised and actively fought, this volume puts focus on leadership (political, economic, everyday forms of leadership) on, even if not exclusively, local and community level – and emphasises the role of storytelling, the working with metaphors, visions and narratives for leading through transformational times. It thus goes back to the foundations of communal sense-making for future.'

Anna-Katharina Hornidge - Director, German Institute of Development and Sustainability IDOS and Professor for Global Sustainable Development, University of Bonn