Sustainability Science

A quick observation on sustainability science.  What is it? Well in parallel to discussions about the  form and function of a sustainable development  academic debates  have centred around sustainable development as a catalyst for a new way of understanding the world. This is borne from the realisation that the problems faced by the world today are themselves complex, uncertain, and non-linear and do not fit neatly into the division of academic disciplines within educational institutional frameworks we have today. As Sachs points out (2008) the problems simply refuse to arrive in the neat little packages of academic departments. Climate change is an exemplar of this point described as a wicked problem (Hulme 2009).  In particular, sustainable development has been described as an orchestration of the science with the rapid progress of perspectives that centre around   interdisciplinary and   trans disciplinarily as well as coalescing ideas around complexity and systems thinking. 

So from an evolution of sustainable development as a concept from an environmental perspective to a three pillars approach (environment, society and economy) what has now emerged is a new perspective on science (Bettencourt and Kaur 2011; Kates 2011). So if I use again, and apologies for doing so because it is overused, a venn diagram to illustrate where sustainability science might be positioned.

 

Discuss at length if you were so inclined, about th absense of the economic dimenions and the  lack of power dynamics that exist in this interpretation. Nevertheless, it is a usefull visualisation.  But if its definitions you are looking for as I often am then you could do a lot worse than Kates interpretation.

According to Kates Sustainabiliy Science is described as ‘an emerging field of research dealing with the interaftions between natural and social systems and with how those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability’ (Kates 2011:19449).

References

Bettencourt, L., and Kaur J., (2011) Evolution and Sructure of Sustainability Science PNAS 108:49:19540-19545

Hulme, M., (2009) Why we Disagree about climate Change, Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunities, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Kates, R., (2011) What kind of science is sustainability science? PNAS 108(49):19449-19450

Sachs, (2008) Common Wealth, Economics for a Crowded Planet, New York, Penguin Press