Sustainability definitions and communications

Discussions of risk and uncertainty, such as climate change, pose significant and interrelated communications challenges for both scientists and decision-makers.   Clark identified one of the key challenges to sustainability as the problem of incomprehension between scientists and decision-makers in his lecture on linking knowledge with action for sustainability.  In communicating about possibilities such as the loss of biodiversity due to climate change, the situation is characterized by our capability and knowledge to consider a threat that, though it has very wide uncertainty bands, also has such serious implications.

Are there examples of past challenges  to sustainability in which a policy intervention has successfully preempted the threat, leading to the absence of what was feared?  If so, what can we learn from these experiences about communications strategies between scientists, decision makers, and the general public?

Especially when many have questioned the ability of democracies to take on difficult challenges on the part of society, what  definition of sustainability is best for communication about core problems to sustainability?