Sustainability Science
Science v292 27apr01

Robert W. Kates¹, William C. Clark,²* Robert Corell³, J. Michael Hall⁴, Carlo C. Jaeger⁵, Ian Lowe⁶, James J. McCarthy⁷, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber⁵, Bert Bolin⁸, Nancy M. Dickson², Sylvie Faucheux⁹, Gilberto C. Gallopin¹⁰, Arnulf Grübler¹¹, Brian Huntley¹², Jill Jäger¹³, Narpat S. Jodha¹⁴, Roger E. Kasperson¹⁵, Akin Mabogunje¹⁶, Pamela Matson¹⁷, Harold Mooney¹⁷, Berrien Moore III¹⁸, Timothy O'Riordan¹⁹, Uno Svedin²⁰

¹33 Popple Point, Trenton, ME 04605, USA. ²Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. ³American Meteorological Society, Washington, DC 20005, USA. ⁴National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA. ⁵Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam D-14412, Germany. ⁶Griffith University, Nathan 4111, Australia. ⁷Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. ⁸Stockholm University, Stockholm S-18451, Sweden. ⁹Centre d'Economie et d'éthique pour l'Environment et le Développment, Université de Versailles, Guyancourt 78047, France. ¹⁰Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago, Chile. ¹¹International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna A-2361, Austria. ¹²National Botanical Institute, Cape Town 7735, South Africa. ¹³International Human Dimension Programme on Global Environmental Change, Bonn D53113, Germany. ¹⁴International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Katmandu, Nepal. ¹⁵Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm 103 14, Sweden. ¹⁶Development Policy Centre, Ibadan, Nigeria. ¹⁷Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. ¹⁸Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA. ¹⁹Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. ²⁰Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research (FRN), Stockholm S-10387, Sweden.

*To whom correspondence should be sent. E-mail: william_clark@harvard.edu 

Meeting fundamental human needs while preserving the life-support systems of planet Earth is the essence of sustainable development, an idea that emerged in the early 1980s from scientific perspectives on the relation between nature and society (1). During the late '80s and early '90s. however, much of the science and technology community became increasingly estranged from the preponderantly societal and political processes that were shaping the sustainable development agenda. This is now changing as efforts to promote a sustainability transition emerge from international scientific programs. the world's scientific academies, and independent networks of scientists (2).

Core Questions

A lieu field of Sustainability science is emerging that seeks to understand the fundamental character of interactions between nature and society. Such an understanding must encompass the interaction of global processes with the ecological and social characteristics of particular places and sectors (3). The regional character of much of what sustainability science is trying to explain means that relevant research will have to integrate the effects of key processes across the full range of scales from local to global (4). It will also require fundamental advances in our ability to address such issues as the behavior of complex self-organizing systems as well as the responses, some irreversible, of the nature-society system to multiple and interacting stresses. Combining different ways of knowing and learning will permit different social actors to work in concert, even with much uncertainty and limited information.

With a view toward promoting the research necessary to achieve such advances, we propose an initial set of core questions for sustainability science (see [box below]). These are meant to focus research attention on both the fundamental character of interactions between nature and society and on society's capacity to guide those interactions along more sustainable trajectories.

Research Strategies

The sustainability science that is necessary to address these questions differs to a considerable degree in structure, methods, and content from science as we know it. In particular, sustainability science will need to do the following: (i) span the range of spatial scales between such diverse phenomena as economic globalization and local farming practices, (ii) account for both the temporal inertia and urgency of processes like ozone depletion, (iii) deal with functional complexity such as is evident in recent analyses of environmental degradation resulting from multiple stresses; and

(iv) recognize the wide range of outlooks regarding what makes knowledge usable within both science and society. Pertinent actions are not ordered linearly in the familiar sequence of scientific inquiry, where action lies outside the research domain. In areas like climate change, scientific exploration, and practical application must occur simultaneously. They tend to influence and become entangled with each other ( 5),

In each phase of Sustainability science research, novel schemes and techniques have to be used, extended, or invented. These include observational methods that blend remote sensing with fieldwork in conceptually rigorous ways, integrated place-based models that arc based on semiqualitative representations of entire classes of dynamic behavior, and inverse approaches that start from outcomes to be avoided and work backwards to identify relatively safe corridors for a sustainability transition. New methodological approaches for decisions under a wide range of uncertainties in natural and socioeconomic systems arc becoming available and need to be more widely exploited, as does the systematic use of networks for the utilization of expertise and the promotion of social learning (6). Finally, in a world put at risk by the unintended consequences of scientific progress, participatory procedures involving scientists, stakeholders, advocates, active citizens, and users of knowledge arc critically needed (7).

Institutions and Infrastructure

Progress in sustainability science will require fostering problem-driven, interdisciplinary research; building capacity for this research; creating coherent systems of research planning, operational monitoring, assessment, and application; and providing reliable, long-term financial support. Institutions for sustainability science must foster the development of capacities ranging from rapid appraisal of knowledge and experience needs in specific field situations, through global operational observation and reporting systems, to long-term integrated research on nature-society interactions in key places and regions of the world.

Generating adequate scientific capacity and institutional support in developing countries is particularly urgent as they are most  vulnerable to the multiple stresses that arise from rapid, simultaneous changes in social and environmental systems. Efforts to increase scientific capacity will take place within a context of very different funding patterns (involving philanthropic foundations, businesses, and governmental and intergovernmental bodies). environmental concerns, and research orientations. The difficulties of the situation are aggravated by resource and knowledge differences and a deepening digital divide (see the figure on page 641). However, the opportunity to bridge this information gap rapidly and to share knowledge and new technologies with even the frost remote and disadvantaged communities may be realized in the next few decades.

Some of the new infrastructure needs can be met with Internet-oriented systems that link interdisciplinary research teams across regions and users of scientific information with the scientists who provide it. A few institutions with wide-ranging global capabilities arc needed as well. However, a comprehensive approach to capacity building will have to nurture these global institutions in tandem with locally focused, trusted. and stable institutions that can integrate work situated in particular places and grounded in particular cultural traditions with the global knowledge system. Examples of such arrangements are few, but our experience includes such diverse examples as global ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) forecasting and decision support systems in Africa, scientific support for the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution in Europe, the Yaqui Valley study of land-use change in Mexico, the Sustainable Cities Ph.D. program with its focus on Los Angeles, and mountain development in the Himalayas. In the Himalayan study, for example, local institutional teams including natural and social scientists from five countries (China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) plus the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) focus on the effects of globalization on the fragile ecosystems and economies of their common mountain region. In particular, they have been identifying the coping strategies to meet the challenges and harness the opportunities offered by the globalization process (8).

Next Steps

In the coming years, Sustainability science needs to move forward along three pathways. First, there should be wide discussion within tile scientific community--North and South--regarding key questions, appropriate methodologies, and institutional needs. Second science must be connected to the political agenda for sustainable development, using in particular the forthcoming "Rio + 10" conference: The World Summit on Sustainable Development that will be held in South Africa in 2002. Third (and most important), research itself must be focused on the character of nature-society interactions, on our ability to guide those interactions along sustainable trajectories, and on ways of promoting the social learning that will be necessary to navigate the transition to sustainability. It is along this pathway--in the field, in the simulation laboratory, in the users' meeting, and in the quirt study that Sustainability science has already begun to flourish (9).

References and Notes

1. K. A. Annan, We, the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century (United Nations, New York, 2000), www.un.org/millennium/sg/report/full.htm ; National Research Council, Board on Sustainable Development, Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1999), www.nap.edu/catalog/9690.html; R. Watson, J. A. Dixon, S. P. Hamburg, A. C. Janetos, R. H. Moss, Protecting Our Planet, Securing Our Future (United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, 1998), www.esd.wortdbank.org/ptanet 

2. Information regarding some leading international scientific programs can be found at www.igbp.kva.se/index.html ; www.uni-bonn.de/ihdp; www.wmo.ch/web/wcrp; www.icsu.org/DIVERSITAS : and www.start.org . Efforts of the world's scientific academies are reported in Transition to Sustainability in the 21st Century (Tokyo Summit of May 2000), http://interacademies.net/intracad/tokyo2000.nsf/all/home. Independent networks include the Resilience Alliance, www.resaltiance.org, the Global Scenario Group, www.gsg.org, and the Sustainability Science Initiative, http://sustainabilityscience.org .

3. German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), World in Transition: The Research Challenge (Annual Report 1996, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1997), www.wbgu.de/wbgu_publications.html; National Research Council, Committee on Global Change Research, The Science of Regional and Global Change: Putting Knowledge to Work (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2000), http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10048.html.

4. D. W. Cash, S. C. Moser, Global Environ. Change 10, 109 (2000); C. Gibson, E. Ostrom, T. Ahn, Ecol. Econ. 32, 217 (2000); T. J. Wilbanks, R. W. Kates, Clim. Change 43, 601 (1998).

5. B. Bolin, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in UNEP Encyclopedia on the Global Environment (United Nations, Nairobi, 2000).

6. H. J. Schellnhuber, Nature 402, C19 (1999); G. Petschel-Held et al., Environ. Monit. Assess. 4, 295 (1999); G. Petschel-Held, H. J. Schellnhuber, T. Bruckner, F. L. Toth, K. Hasselmann, Clim. Change 41, 303 (1999); O. Varis, Clim. Change 37, 539 (1997); J. Jäger, Ed., "The EFIEA Workshop on Uncertainty" (European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment, Baden-bei-aWien, July 1999), www.vu.nl/english/o_o/instituten/IVM/research/efiea/badenrep.pdf; A. Grübler, N. Nakicenovic, D. G. Victor, Annu. Rev. Energy Environ. 24, 845 (i999); c. H. Parson, W C Clark, in Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions, L. H. Gunderson, C. S. Holling, S. S. Light, Eds. (Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1995), pp. 428-460; R. Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988).

7. S. Faucheux, C. Hue, Nat. Sci. Soc. 8, 31 (2000); S. Faucheux, M. O'Connor, Futuribles 251, 29 (2000); G. Gallopin, S. Funtowicz, M. O'Connor, J. Ravetz, Int. Soc. Sci. J., in press.

8. N. S. Jodha, in Linking Social and Ecological Systems, F. Berkes, C. Folke, Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1998); A. Patt, http://environment.harvard.edu/gea/pubs/2000-19.html; W. Tuinstra, L. Hordijk, M. Amann, Environment 41, 32 (1999); P. Matson, R. Naylor, I. Ortiz-Monasterio, Science 280, 112 (1998); Sustainable Cities Program, Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Engineering, University of Southern California, www.usc.edu/dept/geography/ESPE.

9. For additional information, see the Sustainability Science Forum at http://sustainabilityscience.org.

10. Supplementary material is available on Science Online at www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fult/292/5517/641/DC1 .

11. We gratefully acknowledge support from the Swedish FRN, NOAA, Packard Foundation, and NSF.