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Executive Summary
Pages 1-14

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From page 1...
... These challenges will be compounded to the extent that the resource-intensive, consumptive lifestyles currently enjoyed by many in the industrialized nations are retained by them and attained by the rest of humanity. Can the transition to a stabilizing human population also be a transition to sustainability, in which the people living on earth over the next half-century meet their needs while nurturing and restoring the planet's life support systems?
From page 2...
... As a result, even when the political will necessary for sustainable development has been present, the knowledge and know-how to make some headway often have not. This study, conducted by the National Research Council's Board on Sustainable Development, is an attempt to reinvigorate the essential strategic connections between scientific research, technological development, and societies' efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable improvements in human well-being.
From page 3...
... Intelligent adjustments in view of the unfolding results of our research and policies, and of the overall course of development, can be made through the process of social learning. Such learning requires some clearly articulated goals for the journey toward sustainability, better understanding of the past and persistent trends of social and environmental change, improved tools for looking along alternative pathways, and clearer understanding of the possible environmental and social threats and opportunities ahead.
From page 4...
... International standards exist for many toxic materials, organic pollutants, and heavy metals that threaten human health, but not for ecosystem health. TREN US AN D TRANSITIONS Certain current trends of population and habitation, wealth and consumption, technology and work, connectedness and diversity, and environmental change are likely to persist well into the coming century and could significantly undermine the prospects for sustainability.
From page 5...
... EXPLORING THE FUTURE The Board evaluated various tools (integrated assessment models, scenarios, regional information systems) that could be used to explore what the future may hold and to test the likelihood of achieving the goals it set, under varied assumptions about human development and the environment.
From page 6...
... These systems harness scientific knowledge to support policy decisions affecting the long-term interactions of development and environment, and often contain elements of scenario development and integrated modeling. Experience in developing such information systems shows that a regional scale approach grounded in ecosystem knowledge and cooperative and adaptive management constitutes an infrastructure for social learning a way to lay out scientific knowledge in a form that can be accessible to nonspecialists.
From page 7...
... expert assessment of the challenges and opportunities of human activities in several developmental sectors that the Brundtland Commission identified as critical (human population and well-being, urban systems, agricultural production, industry, energy, and living resources) ; and finally, (3)
From page 8...
... Over longer time periods, unmitigated expansion of even these individual problems could certainly pose serious threats to people and the planet's life support systems. Even more troubling in the medium term, however, are the environmental threats arising from multiple, cumulative, and interactive stresses, driven by a variety of human activities.
From page 9...
... Local inventories assist conservation by capturing the effects of human settlements on environmental services and resources, and on the prospects for sustaining species, habitats, and ecosystems. To characterize the effectiveness of actions undertaken to reach the goals, at least four approaches seem promising and deserving of further study: maintaining national capital accounts; conducting policy assessments; monitoring essential trends and transitions; and surprise diagnosis.
From page 10...
... The urgent need is to design strategies and institutions that can better integrate incomplete knowledge with experimental action into programs of adaptive management and social learning. A capacity for long-term, intelligent investment in the production of relevant knowledge, know-how, and the use of both must be a component of any strategy for the transition to sustainability.
From page 11...
... For the challenges in the core sectoral areas of sustainable development identified more than a decade ago by the Brundtland Commission human population and well-being, cities, agriculture, energy and materials, and living resources the Board has identified appropriate next steps by integrating what is known about a sector with what can be done. This means integrating both the lessons learned from the last decade and the projected needs and know-how over the coming decades with both the policy actions that can move society along a positive pathway and the indicators that can monitor our progress.
From page 12...
... This number can be reduced by meeting the large unmet need for contraceptives worldwide, by postponing having children through education and job opportunities, and by reducing desired family size while increasing the care and education of smaller numbers of children. Moreover, the lack of access to family planning contributes significantly to maternal and infant mortality, an additional burden on human well-being.
From page 13...
... In designing and evaluating institutions and incentives to encourage sustainable energy technologies, it will be important to carefully examine system implications for these technologies over their full life cycles, using such strategies as material balance modeling and economic input-output analysis together with consideration of environmental loadings. Without such systematic assessment, policies that appear to promote better solutions may in the long run have serious undesirable consequences, such as creating difficult problems for the recycling and disposal of materials.
From page 14...
... Achievements in one sector do not imply improvements in other sectors or in the situation overall. For example, efforts to preserve natural ecosystems for ethical or aesthetic reasons, or for the goods and services they provide to humans, may ultimately fail if they do not account for the longer-term changes likely to be introduced by atmospheric pollution, climate change, water shortages, or human population enchroachment.


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