Our Common Journey A Transition Toward Sustainability (1999) / Chapter Skim
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6 Integrating Knowledge and Action
6 Integrating Knowledge and Action
Pages 275-332
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From page 275... ...
In conducting its work, the Board has focused its efforts on the next two generations, when many of the stresses between environment and development will be most acute and when a transition toward sustainability will need to take place if the earth's human population and life support systems are not to significantly damage both. This next halfcentury, like any future, is not knowable and will provide at least its share of surprises.
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From page 276... ...
Though often aggravated by global changes, they are shaped by the physical, ecological, and social interactions at particular places, that is, locales or regions. Developing an integrated and placebased understanding of such threats and the options for dealing with them is a central challenge for the development of a useful "sustainability science" for promoting a transition toward sustainability.
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From page 277... ...
As discussed in Chapter 1, some are well under way. Our intention here is to sketch elements of one such strategy: a strategy for mobilizing scientific knowledge in programs of purposive social learning and adaptive management committed to the promotion of a sustainability transition.
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From page 278... ...
This tension has been addressed in the recent NRC "Pathways" report on research priorities for understanding global environmental changed Broadly based programs are desirable in light of the frequency with which important insights in one area emerge from research trying to investigate something else.4 Moreover, they are needed to allow for the likelihood of surprising and unexpected developments in the interactions between the environment and developments On the other hand, in fields as complex and multifaceted as those bearing on global change, much less the still broader field of sustainable development, there is a widespread consensus among the scientific community that much of the progress that has been achieved has come through research programs focused on "critical scientific issues and the unresolved questions that are most relevant to pressing national policy issues." 6 A second tension exists between integrative, problem-driven research and research firmly grounded in particular disciplines. It has been recognized for more than a decade that many of the central challenges to sustainability involve multiple, interactive environmental stresses arising from multiple, overlapping human development activities.7 Unfortunately, our collective ability to create reliable scientific knowledge about such integrated problems remains limited due to the inadequacies of observational data, the immaturity of relevant theory, and the underdevelopment of an appropriate professional community to provide meaningful criticism and peer review.
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From page 279... ...
We expand on these priorities in the sections that follow. A Research Framework for Sustainability Science Meeting the demands of a sustainability transition will require a substantial expansion in the capacity of the world's system for discovering new things.
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Precisely because of the breadth of the needed endeavor, however, a framework is also necessary to identify what the NRC "Pathways" report has called "the coherent domains of research that are likely to provide efficient and productive progress for science..." while still encompassing the range of issues that concern us.~° What sort of research framework might be appropriate for "sustainability science"? Intellectual Foundations The fundamental knowledge needed to support our common journey is rooted in the core sciences of nature and society and has been nurtured in the interdisciplinary soil of scholarship and engineering practice concerned with the interactions between environment and development.
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brace the social dimensions of resource use with the report Caring for the Earth, and now supports the international DIVERSITAS program on biodiversity and sustainable use of the earth's biotic resources. Within the United States, recent offshoots of this branch of research include the Sustainable Biosphere Initiative of the Ecological Society of America and the Teeming with Life initiative of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.~3 A second branch of research relevant to sustainability has been essentially geophysical, emphasizing the interconnections among the earth's climate and biogeochemical cycles, including their response to perturbation by human activities.
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From page 282... ...
Interdisciplinary studies seeking to integrate these disparate strands became widespread in the 1970s, especially in the area of natural resource management, and were drawn into early efforts to understand global issues such as climate change.~5 By the mid1980s, a wide variety of social science programs had begun to address issues of global environmental change. A comprehensive international effort was launched in 1990, and today is moving forward as the International Human Dimensions Program.~7 Recent reviews of the content and concerns of this line of research are available.
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From page 283... ...
We do know, however, from the material reviewed in Chapter 4 and elsewhere24 that many of the most problematic threats to people and their life support systems arise from multiple, cumulative, and interactive stresses resulting from a variety of human activities. Sustainability science will therefore have to be above all else integrative science science committed to bridging barriers that separate traditional modes of inquiry.
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From page 284... ...
As a result, the scientific community now knows much about what emissions cause various global environmental changes, but too little about what drives those emissions, what impacts they will have on people and other species, and what to do about them. Likewise, although integrated forest ecosystem management programs have progressed to the point of including people in the ecosystem at a local scale, there is much less progress in planning and assessment at broader regional scales, where issues such as air and water pollution and determinants of human population migration and density distribution begin to exert tremendous control.
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From page 285... ...
Understanding the links between macroscale and microscale phenomena is one of the great querries of our age in a wide array of sciences.30 The pursuit of such understanding will also be a central task of sustainability science. Whatever spatial scales turn out to be most appropriate for examining particular sustainability issues, however, there remains the task of classifying the "kinds" of pressures and stresses that occur at those scales.
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(B) Place-based, integrative approach to sustainability science.
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Overexploitation of natural ecosystems: Overexploitation Syndrome 3. Environmental degradation through abandonment of traditional agricultural practices: Rura/ Exodus Syndrome 4.
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Focused Research Programs It would be premature here to suggest a comprehensive research agenda for a still-nascent sustainability science. The potentially vast scope of such an agenda was explored in ICSU's conference on "An Agenda of Science for Environment and Development into the 21St Century," conducted in 1991 as part of the preparations for the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de laniero.35 The chapter on "Science for Sustainable Development" in "Agenda 21" carried forward this broad conception of research needs, and has served as a template for subsequent progress reports by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.
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From page 289... ...
Independent of the reasons for current neglect, we set these seven issues forward as candidates for focused research programs in sustainability science. Critical Loads and Carrying Capacities To pursue the goal of "preserving the basic life support systems of the planet" is, among other things, to look for limits beyond which those systems should not be pushed.
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Finally, a good case can be made that the viability of ecosystems depends less on critical levels that may be exceeded during particular episodes of stress than on the longer term regime of stresses that includes, but cannot be reduced to, such single-valued characteristics.45 We encountered all these difficulties in the present study, as we failed in our effort to develop criteria that could provide a "bright line" test for significant degradation of regional ecosystems and their life-support functions (see Chapter 4~. Though we had no trouble identifying cases in which life support systems had been degraded or even destroyed, we were unable to turn the concepts of "critical loads," "carrying capacities," and their cousins into useful tools for navigating the transition toward sustainability.
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Improving that documentation and understanding, especially for those transitions that transcend the normal disciplinary boundaries of scholarship, should be a priority objective for sustainability science (see Chapter 5 on indicators)
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Many new products and capabilities that will contribute to a successful sustainability transition from efficient heat pump technology to systems for recycling aluminum cans are already being widely adopted as a result of success in the marketplace. Markets, however, do not always produce the desirable products and processes, or the desirable solutions to social allocation problems.
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From page 293... ...
on intellectual property rights. These bills and agreements are of great concern to the international scientific and technical communities because they could give database producers perpetual and exclusive rights to the contents of their databases, without regard to fair use exceptions such as research and education.53 A concerted research program on the kinds of incentives, market and otherwise, needed to promote technological innovations for a sustainability transition, on the options for providing such incentives in a highly uncertain, multi-actor, globalizing world, and on their actual performance in that world is surely worth pursuing.
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We know even less about the factors determining their effectiveness in promoting a sustainability transition, though issues of participation, credibility, capacity, and linkage immediately come to the fore. Nonetheless, recent work has begun to sketch the outlines of what a long-term research program on institutions for a sustainability transition might include.57 Central to this emerging agenda is the need for a better understanding of when enlightened self interest provides sufficient grounds for state and nonstate actors to engage in behaviors promoting a sustainability transition, when various forms of collective action are also necessary, and how such collective action can be promoted.58 A focused effort to develop and pursue this emerging institutional agenda is needed.
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First, the international development of a set of reference scenarios could play a significant role in developing a common understanding of a sustainability transition, just as has been done in the narrower case of stratospheric ozone depletion. The focus of such scenario efforts should be on the interactions among the needs of future generations, and the impacts on life support systems of satisfying these needs through technologies and institutions of the future.
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But empirical data on the conditions under which, and the degree to which, remote engagement can replace face-to-face interaction in legitimacy-building participation efforts remains almost nonexistent.64 Integrative methods that bring a variety of disciplinary perspectives into the formulation of assessment questions and strategies must also be developed. Fortunately, there is substantial activity on this front, with truly integrative approaches replacing earlier models that simply used the social sciences to supplement assessments framed primarily by the natural sciences.65 Finally, much of the knowledge and decision making necessary for navigating a transition toward sustainability is, as we have noted, tied to particular places and circumstances.
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From page 297... ...
Programs to do something with this realization nonetheless remain largely inadequate.69 As we discuss below, the successful production and application of the knowledge needed for a sustainability transition will require significant strengthening of institutional capacity in at least four areas: linking longterm research programs to societal goals; coupling global, national, and local institutions into effective research systems; linking academia, gov
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From page 298... ...
, and certain knowhow lacking near-term prospects of generating competitive returns on investment. To create and disseminate such knowledge, society needs the institutional capacity to design and sustain the full array of long-term monitoring, research, and development programs that are required to attain sustainability goals.
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Nonetheless, the following elements seem almost certain to play a role and merit serious attention. At the international level, sustainability science would benefit from a set of international research institutes somewhat analogous to the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research)
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One such CGIAR-derived approach has in fact been recommended.76 The new efforts could well be based in or affiliated with the regionally oriented START centers of the IGBP, WCRP, and IHDP, or related institutions such as the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. Mandates for each institute should almost certainly include research responsibility for one or more sustainability science issues of particular relevance to the region in which it is located, and responsibility for global leadership on an issue particularly relevant to its region, but with clear relevance to a larger community.
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However successful informal partnerships of these sorts may be, the need will remain to foster more structured cross-sectoral partnerships to promote sustainability science. Although national governments have a role to play in such endeavors, it seems likely that an important locus for integration may be at the subnational level, where organizational arrangements can be more readily tailored to specific needs and opportunities.
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A priority for enhancing institutional capacity to foster sustainability science is therefore the design of an SET policy system that puts control of more research funds in the hands of place-based institutions with a mission of promoting integrative, policy-driven knowledge and know-how. Some precedent for such an approach exists in the old land-grant agricultural colleges and in a variety of novel regional partnerships of academia, government, and industry that have emerged in areas of high technology R&D.
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From page 303... ...
Human population: Accelerate current trends in fertility reduction "Giving people the means to choose the size of their families is not just a method of keeping population in balance with resources; it is a way of assuring especially for women the basic human right of self-determination. The extent to which facilities for exercising such choices are made available is itself a measure of a nation's development." WCED, 1987 By the middle of the next century, in just 50 years, global population is currently projected to be about 9 billion in the UN mid-range forecast, with much higher and somewhat lower populations within the current range of projections.
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Know/edge As noted in Chapter 4, the three major sources of high fertility and continued rapid population growth are the unmet need for contraception, the still high desired family size, and the large number of young people entering reproductive age. Improving access to contraceptive services, and linking these to reproductive and child health services can over the next decade reduce the unmet needs for contraception.
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All these actions require a level of collaboration not usually found bringing together initiatives in family planning, reproductive health, education, women's rights, adolescent pregnancy, and employment to accelerate fertility reduction. Cities: Accommodate an expected doubling to tripling of the urban system in a habitable, efficient, and environmentally friendly manner "In many developing countries, cities have thus grown far beyond anything imagined only a few decades ago and at speeds without historic precedent...
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An extensive literature related to each is available.86 Lacking, however, is the knowledge and know-how for sustainable cities that brings these goals together to drive research and development programs to better meet urban residents' needs, reduce hunger and poverty, and lessen stresses on life support systems. For example, not enough is known about the tradeoffs among sustainability goals as cities grow to different sizes, in different configurations, or at different rates.
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Agricultural production: Reverse the declining trends in agricultural production in Africa; sustain historic trends elsewhere "Global food security depends not only on raising global food production, but on reducing distortions in the structure of the world food market and on shifting the focus of food production to food-deficit countries, regions and households." WCED, 1 987 The last 50 years have seen an increase in agricultural production that has outpaced population growth, reduced hunger, and improved diets almost everywhere around the world. The great failure has been Africa, where per capita production has generally been declining over the last several decades.
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Yet the past 15 years have seen stagnation in real spending on international agricultural research and increasing indications that societies' capabilities for rising food production are inadequate worldwide, with a special problem in Africa.87 Goals An achievable goal is to reverse declining trends in agricultural production in Africa while sustaining historic trends elsewhere. The most critical near-term aspect of this goal is to reverse the decline in agricultural production capability in Sub-Saharan Africa, the only region where population growth has outpaced growth in agricultural production.
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Substantial progress has been made by developing countries in Asia and Latin America in establishing the institutional capacity to achieve these objectives. In addition, food production and food quality improvements have been introduced in many regions through biotechnology, agricultural runoff prevention from minimum tillage practices, efficient water use by targeted application, and reduction of farm inputs from precision applications based on computer analysis.
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The energy system has been moving toward improved end-use efficiency and declining emissions of carbon dioxide per unit of energy production, but rapid rates of population and economic growth have outstripped these trends of increasing efficiency and decarbonization. Goals An achievable goal is to accelerate efficiency improvements in the use of energy and materials.
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Much, if not enough, is known about the kinds of research partnerships and incentives that will most effectively and efficiently move such promising developments into the "pre-competitive" stage of product demonstration. Still more is understood about the factors influencing the rate and pattern of adoption of new technologies once they become competitive in open markets.
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Living resources: Restore degraded ecosystems while conserving diversity elsewhere "The challenge facing nations today is no longer deciding whether conservation (of living natural resources) is a good idea, but rather how it can be implemented in the national interest and within the means available in each country....
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Goals An achievable goal is to restore degraded systems while conserving diversity elsewhere. For the human-dominated ecosystems undergoing degradation from multiple demands and stresses, the goal should be to work toward restoring and maintaining their function and integrity so that their services and use for humans may be sustained over long time frames.
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In the realm of fundamental understanding of how biological systems work, better knowledge is needed of both the dynamics of population processes and the seasonal and interannual variations in ecosystem processes. We also need an increased understanding of the roles of genes, species, and functional groups in ecosystem processes; the response of ecosystems, species, and population dynamics to multiple and interacting anthropogenic changes; and an assessment of what kinds of species and ecosystems are distributed worldwide and how they can be best used and valued by people.96 A second general area of needed information addresses how ecosystems can best be managed at the landscape or regional scale, while accommodating human needs and activities (sometimes termed "ecosystem managements.
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Resolution of these and related issues will require a better integration of the biological and social sciences, including better understanding of the beliefs, attitudes, and needs of local communities, the private sector, and governments. The restoration of degraded systems will require focusing on better management of human-dominated systems, including using ecological knowledge in decision making and removing incentives that encourage exploitation of systems and replacing them with incentives that sustain the systems.
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From page 316... ...
Achievements in each of the sectors toward the specified goals will improve our chances of attaining the overall goals of a sustainability transition. But it is clear that achievements in one sector do not imply improvements in others, and that the interactions among the sectors also must be taken into account in terms of the resources they require and the environmental effects to which they contribute.
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Know/edge An integrative strategy for the sustainability transition is one that views, studies, and manages the world as a dynamic, interacting system. Such a strategy is already under development and application, albeit in its very early steps.
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Third, new frameworks for interactions among industry, academia, foundations, and other nongovernmental organizations must be developed in which all partners contribute to the analysis of sustainability at local to regional scales. TOWARD A SUSTAINABILITY TRANSITION The challenge of mobilizing science and technology for a transition toward sustainability is daunting.
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What this study has suggested is that the magnitude of the challenges to science posed by sustainability concerns in the 2lSt century may well be as great as the challenges posed by food, health, and security concerns in the 20th century. It is therefore past time to begin thinking about the institutional capacity for funding and promoting sustainability science in terms that are commensurate with the magnitude of the task ahead.
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1998a. Financing agricultural research: International investment patterns and policy perspectives.
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http://esa.sdsc.edu/ sbi.htm ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Global Environmental Change Programme (UK)
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1. Bonn: International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change.
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Stockholm: IGBP. IHDP (International Human Dimensions Program)
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1998. Stakeholder participation in the US national assessment of possible consequences of climate variability and change.
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1998a. Overview: Global environmental change: Research pathways for the next decade.
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Boston: Stockholm Environment Institute. Rasmussen, P.E., K.W.T.
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1998. The third system review of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
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Nairobi: UNEP. USGCRP (United States Global Change Research Program)
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Insights from the study of culture and ecology have led to a new vision of how humans can feed themselves with lower impacts on life support systems vital to the well-being of a rural society (see Lansing 1991~. 29 Houghton et al.
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; See http://www.nacc.usgcrp.gov. 63 As an example of such work, see Interactive Social Science: Environmental Research, the report of a workshop sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council's Global Environmental Change Programme (UK)
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, patterned after the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to Integrate Environmental Science. Carnegie Commission (1992, pp.
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332 98 U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Forest Service, http://www.usfs.gov.
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