The period between World War Ⅱ and the Western financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009 has been called the Great Acceleration.Although the development paradigm of the Great Acceleration has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and improved the quality of life of many more it is very probably unable to lead to a sustainable development.There are at present four main groups of unsustainability drivers.The first group includes the increasing inequalities in wealth,hunger and extreme poverty;the second regards the present global unsustainability of the energy systems;the third is climate change and the fourth includes the increasing food insecurity in many regions, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity and, more generally, the increasing scarcity of natural resources.All these four groups are strongly interconnected and to address them requires an integrated approach.We are facing a systemic challenge to our human development model.If we fail to implement at the global level a new development paradigm the likelihood of recurrent financial,economic and environmental crisis will increase.Instead of being forced into an unknown path of de-growth by multiple crises we should implement a new development model based on the principles of social equity, poverty eradication, a green economy and an environmental protection policy that respects the planetary boundaries.This program requires an agreed timetable to eliminate poverty,to tackle global inequality, to produce national green economy roadmaps, to develop relevant metrics to measure societal and environmental wealth, beyond GDP and macroeconomics, to mainstream ecosystem values into financial institutions, national planning and corporate accounting, to improve energy efficiency and increase the share of renewable energy globally.