Organizations are social systems different from ecosystems and natural resources. Using social systems theory, and employing the concepts of emergence, resilience and scale, this Perspective presents management principles for pursuing sustainability across an array of organizational contexts.

Corporations are an important source of GHG emissions and an important climate-mitigation actor. An assessment of corporate climate action and systematic benchmarking against international targets is conducted for 138 companies in high-emitting sectors.

Meeting emissions targets requires limiting use of fossil fuel reserves. For the largest investor- and state-owned producers allowable extraction varies dependent on the approach to calculate burnable fossil fuel allowance.

A country’s metal footprint increases by 2% for every 1% increase in gross capital formation, according to a metal footprint quantification and panel analysis of 43 economies during 1995–2013.