What Sustainability (Science) is About
This is Note 3 of the Sustainability Essentials Notebook, my series of notes on essentials of sustainability knowledge
Just before we start: I introduce the Sustainability Essentials Notebook as a tool for learning and sharing those learnings with the community of sustainability professionals. Want to know more? Follow me here on Medium, or subscribe for more content at my Bridge to Beyond newsletter, that will launch soon.
What is the science of sustainability? We start by exploring what it is about. Clarifying theobject of sustainability helps us to educate or train people to know, study and report about specific elements and aspects of sustainability.
Point of departure
The US Academy of Sciences offers a clear point of departure and defines Sustainability Science as “an emerging field of research dealing with the interactions between natural and social systems, and with how those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability: meeting the needs of present and future generations while substantially reducing poverty and conserving the planet’s life support systems.” [1].
This definition has been in use at least since 2011, as Robert Kates mentions the same PNAS definition in his 2011 article “What Kind of Science is Sustainability Science?” [2].
