General discussion

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What are the limits to sustainability science? What can we know?

Matt from UMN made some interesting points about Sustainability Science encompassing a component that was goal (sustainability) oriented, which is not the conventional domain of “science”. I wonder whether it would be productive to explicitly consider “Sustainability Science” as a Science and ask: What we can know about sustainability using Science?

I think that Science puts some very severe limits on what we can know about sustainability (I’ll accede that science may not be the only valid way of viewing the world, and that science is only as objective as we are). And I do think that we are adopting the best approach, but it has limits that we should acknowledge. Sustainability, at any large-scale instance, is a hypothesis put forward by a scientist. It is a statement of how the scientist thinks the world works and how it will function in the future, and something that the scientist has developed through some empirical process. Thus it is unquestionably a science. But, the sustainability hypothesis is only testable, falsifiable, in the future and not in the present. Thus unlike a test-tube experiment we are forced to wait for validation of our critical hypothesis, that the world, or component, is sustainable in 5, 10 or 1000 years. This might be a trivial point for the sustainability of fishing in a small lake – the hypothesis that a certain level of fish extraction is sustainable is readily testable over a couple of years. But on a scale of the world and CO2 emissions, or fisheries in the Pacific, there are levels of uncertainty in the complex human-environment system that forces our future predictions to be conditional.

An example is needed. Pure theoretical science may state “CO2 emissions cause an increase in global temperature”, which is largely lacking in any applied or human goal oriented aspects. Sustainability science would include those and may loosely state “We know that our CO2 emissions cause warming, therefore we need to reduce our CO2 emissions by X to prevent an increase in global temperature which otherwise will have large human-environmental consequences on our ability to sustain our current ways of life.” In order to remain a science, sustainability science must limit its statements to predictions of of the physical world given different human outcomes. Statements of the type: “In 50 years, business as usual, the planet will be YoC warmer, or with carbon emissions reduced by X% it may be only ZoC warmer”. That is we are unable to predict the future state of the world with sustainability science, but rather we can provide rigorous scientific conditional predictions so that we know outcomes for different possible futures. This is necessary as we don’t know how humans will respond to climate change over the next 50 years, so we don’t know which scenario is reasonable. In this instance, a raw global climate model is Science, the IPCC report or the stabilization wedges idea of Pacala and Socolow (2004) are Sustainability Science as they address both the pure science issue and provide the conditional statements that relate to the goal of sustainability.

A second illustration is the range and lack of convergence of world carrying capacity estimates (Clark et al. 2004 ” Science for Global Sustainability Toward a New Paradigm” in the readings for Seminar 2). The estimates range from 1 billion to 1000 billion people! If we don’t know enough about the world to estimate a human carrying capacity then we can’t tell immediately if anything is sustainable. Which brings us to the question: of what we can know about sustainability?   

Firstly, the concept that any proposed scheme of achieving sustainability is only a future-testable hypothesis is weakened by that future including a human component. In this regard I’m drawn to the book by Karl Popper – “The Poverty of Historicism” which, despite any question of the objectivity of science, is a vital read for any scientist venturing into the realm of dealing with humans. Poppers thesis is that:  “it is impossible for us to predict the future course of history” (or I would suggest impossible to adequately test a hypothesis about the sustainability of a human-environment system). He bases this upon: 1) “The course of human history [and sustainability] is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge”, 2) “We cannot predict, by rational or scientific methods, the future growth of our scientific knowledge” – we may develop cold fusion or something more exotic, but we don’t currently know if we will, 3) “We cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history” – if we suddenly developed cold fusion it would negate the need for carbon fuels and thus allow us to bypass the whole climate change and CO2 emission issue. That is, global climate models are statements of hypothesis and can be tested, but their predictions of CO2 concentrations or temperature in 20 years will not necassarily be valid as we do not know what humans will have done in the intervening 20 years – hence the need for sustainability science to provide human-response-conditional predictions of the future, 4) “There can be no scientific theory of historical development serving as a basis for historical predictions” – we can’t use our history as a basis for whether anything will be sustainable in the future as we can’t tell what will be sustainable at this, or any point in time.

I don’t think that Popper is against us observing mistakes in history, and attempting to correct them in the present, but we can’t use this knowledge to generate a mechanistic theory of human future. Similarly, we can’t know now that a hypothesis of what is sustainable is indeed sustainable until tested in the future. And that when human-environmental systems are involved in the hypothesis of sustainability, the uncertainty of human actions and knowledge in the future, prevents us from predicting now what is sustainable in the future.

That said, I find it relatively simple to justify that we should do sustainability science, and this is likely to be the best route by which to frame and implement ways in which we can make the world more sustainable. But since we can’t predict our future, we should focus sustainability science to generate science-based conditional predictions of what may be sustainable, based upon different possible future states of the human-environment system.

These are a few thought-starter questions I have, rather than fleshed out comments.  Anyone who can share insights or suggest readings on these questions would be helpful (I have training in engineering and economics, and I know little of this discipline though I have a notion that it should be important to our discussion of sustainability science).

I am interested in the role of evolution in our understanding of sustainability.  Would we consider humanity "sustained" if sustainability occurs under very different conditions?  How has humanity changed over time, and how might we predict it will change in the future (genetically, socially, geographically, etc.)?  What can we learn from our understanding of how we have evolved?  What questions, if any, should evolutionary biology be asking in order to help us prepare for the future? How will environmental changes and disease force humanity to evolve?  Do we exclude thinking about human and disease evolution and adaption because we are focusing on "grandchildren" time scales?

Thanks!

Liz

The UMN group brought up the issue and importance of education.  I am hoping that someone from the group may elaborate on how they see education playing a role in both sustainability science and sustainable development.

Is the politico become enlightened and implementing policy that promote education of sustainability?

Is the general populace becoming education and putting pressure on the political bodies to act in the name of sustainable science?

When we speak of education are we talking K-12, post secondary, adult education, all of the above? Are we talking about education in formal, informal settings? Both?

Given all the science research and information available on the myriad of topics, what is the best way and what are the most important pieces of information to disseminate to the public and create a social awareness necessary for sustainable development?  Is there a place in this seminar to discuss this area or are we generally focused on academia?

If we do see sustainable science emerging as it's own field, would it be helpful to also begin to create the framework for how a sustainability science course could be taught in a elementary, middle, secondary or undergraduate setting?

Hopefully we can discuss some of these questions as the seminar continues.  I am particularly interested in this topic and am looking forward to hearing some of your thoughts.

Re: The Politicization of Science

 After the conclusion of the group discussion today, a question was raised in the Harvard seminar about the relationship between science and politics.  Specifically, one member voiced concern about how political involvement in science (and scientific involvement in politics) reduces the credibility of science, and questioned whether this may be a problem for conflating “sustainability science” with “sustainable development” (and sustainability policy).

 In response to this discussion, I wish to highlight the fact that concerns about the politicization of science may not be universal; rather, these concerns are far more prevalent in the developed world than they are in developing countries. In a study by the Overseas Development Institute (http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/338.pdf), surveys were used to illuminate how the views of policy makers and scientists/researchers in the global South differed form those of the global North.  ODI concluded that:

 There is also less concern about the dangers that policy engagement poses to scientific objectivity [in the global South]. Our survey showed strong support in developing countries by researchers and policy-makers alike for greater engagement of researchers with policy debates. Country studies found that policy-makers operating under multiple pressures and influences will only adopt information that is relevant to their current policy concerns; this underlined the need for engagement. This may also be linked to the importance of face-to-face contact, which was emphasised in these contexts, and the difficulties policy-makers may face in applying scientific findings to their local situation. (Jones et al., p. 36)

 Particularly because sustainability is an issue that encompasses all nations—developed and developing—and because sustainability science can (and does) bridge multiple countries, it is important for us to understand how culture affects countries’ perceptions of the role of science and policy.  While scientific involvement in the policy process may be considered taboo here in the United States, it may be the norm—or even the most effective way to link knowledge to action—in developing nations.  I propose that as we define and foster the growth of “sustainability science”, we ensure that this concept is flexible enough to adapt to the varied cultural epistemologies and knowledge systems that exist outside of OECD countries.

Can “sustainability science” be a knowledge system that attains (and retains) credibility and legitimacy in multiple ways?  Is it possible for sustainability science to be simultaneously “removed” from the political sphere in the United States while sitting squarely in the political realm in other countries?  What institutional arrangements (boundary organizations or devices) could foster this?

The science/policy question may converge with the SS/SD discussion underway in a parallel thread (called "on the theme of separation or overlap of SS/SD").  The issue raised here by Erin, that the desirable degree of overlap may be geographically dependent, is indeed a very provocative dimension of the problem.

Previously Erin Frey wrote:

Re: The Politicization of Science

 After the conclusion of the group discussion today, a question was raised...

Group comments from CIECO UNAM students: Adriana, Mariano, Lizzette, Rosa, Juan Carlos and Martin (Centro de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas, Mexico).

About sustainable development.

With respect to the slide (figure) on “What is to be sustained?” and “What is to be developed?”, while we found it would be easier to find general consensus on the answers for “What is to be sustained?” (life- support systems, ecosystems, biodiversity, cultures, etc.), the question of “What is to be developed?” was much more challenging. Defining development itself is already a challenge; one’s needs and aspirations are not necessarily the same for all people/countries. The same applies to the definition of sustainable development: do we really want just one definition? or should we leave room for several approaches?

We think a challenge to sustainable development is to recognize different visions of development and allow for discussion of these different perspectives. A consensus building process to identify the basic needs of all the different stakeholders/actors and to design strategies needs to be undertaken at all spatial scales, from the simple institutions (family), to municipality, state, county and the globe. We would need to combine top-down and bottom-up approaches for such building process. On top of all this complexity, we have to consider that needs could change over time. Permanent evaluation would be necessary to assess if strategies and needs are aligned, and thus an adaptive approach to the design of a strategy for sustainable development would be needed.

About sustainability science.

¿What type of science do we need and where do we have to focus our research efforts? As a good example we discussed the systems approach of the Visioning exercise performed at ICSU (International Council for Science; ICSU; in press; uploaded). They identified four main challenges for Global Sustainability Research:

-          Improve the usefulness of forecasts of future environmental conditions and their consequences for people.

-          Develop the observation systems needed to manage global and regional environmental change.

-          Determine how to anticipate, recognize, avoid and adapt to abrupt global environmental change.

-          Determine what institutional, economic and behavioral changes can enable effective steps toward global sustainability.

We concluded that in sustainability science, an interdisciplinary approach is essential from the very beginning of research, in order to pose the adequate questions as a group. This vision offers an alternative to the traditional process where a researcher initially works more or less isolated (with other colleagues of his/her own discipline) and once the results are produced, he/she try to integrate them with other disciplines results.  

This change of vision is being reflected in Mexico with the increasing creation/integration of our researchers in national and international network is encouraged by institutions as the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT, Mexican NSF).

 

Role of sustainability science.

As sustainability science emerges as use-inspired, we agree that one of its responsibilities is to generate a core knowledge body about human-environment interactions and to communicate this knowledge. One of the challenges would be to identify, if possible, the minimum basic knowledge we need to understand the human-environment system (from a perspective of sustainable development), and to build a strategy to reach such least minimum level of understanding.

Also, sustainability science must encourage links between knowledge generation, analysis and synthesis, scientific consensus, governments and society at large. We believe that one interesting example is the given by the links created between IPCC, the climate change research community, and the stakeholders.

Sustainability science should work on the three aspects presented by Stokes: basic science, applied research and the link between these two considering people as the center of this. Feedback between parts is fundamental and contributes to legitimize the social role of science. Yet, new and dynamic structures for scientific endeavor (research institutions, teaching institutions, reward system, funding system) to foster the constant feedback between basic science, demand-driven science, applied research, and communicating with society on all this.

We believe that sustainability science should go beyond its role of as knowledge builder. An additional function could be its contribution to building processes where needs of different stakeholders are taken into account and challenges are identified collectively. In this sense, we believe the role of scholars needs to be reformulated to widen its role in society beyond just knowledge generation and student training.

 

 

Re: 

Education and Sustainable science/ development

To your question concerning the role of education in sustainable development I can add one tiny aspect from my work experience: I had been working for one of the major science foundations in Germany fostering academic exchange between researchers from abroad who wants to come to Germany for doing research. In general our programs are open for all countries and all disciplines. Nearly 12 years ago we established a program focusing on countries form the so-called "Third World" and on research topics necessary for the development of these countries. So each researcher who wants to apply in this program needs to come from one of the third-world or emerging countries AND must focus his or her research on a topic that will improve the home country's situation. 

So far so good - but how comes sustainability into the play? 

For the 10th anniversary of the program the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation evaluated the success and asked all fellows what they did after finishing their first stay in Germany: 95% of those highly trained and educated researchers returned to their home country! So we have scientists from the different disciplines who were selected through a tough process and high competition and who spent normally 2 years doing research at a university or research institution in Germany. During these years they have access to all the equipment, methods or libraries in Germany and when they are going back they will in any case take back all the different methods they learned. Since the Humboldt Foundation also grants equipment subsidies for researchers from these countries they have the possibility to further conduct their research when coming back home. The majority of fellows are coming from the life and natural sciences and are focusing on really practical topics like how to improve the crop yield of a specific crop or how to breed varieties better resistant to a rising salinity. So besides the transfer of methods and knowledge we can observe highly relevant results for the development in the specific country. Taken together through these research stays and the possibilities of book or equipment subsidies and the everlasting ties to the host and researchers in Germany the former fellows of the Foundation will have the knowledge and opportunities to add to the sustainable development of their home countries event if they are not actually conduction research or teaching in sustainability science.

So this example might not help for the questions you rose about how to implement the results of the ongoing research in sustainability science into education at the different levels but it might be a practical example of how to use (higher) education to add to sustainability development. Here is the link to a magazine the Humboldt Foundation published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary in 2008 (it's bilingual German and English) for all of you who wants to get more information about the program and the different topics of the fellows: http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/pls/web/docs/F19318/kosmos90.pdf

Previously Matthew Aruch wrote:

Education and Sustainable science/ development

The UMN group brought up the issue and importance of education.  I am hoping that someone from the group may elaborate on how they see education playing a role in both sustainability science and sustainable development.

Is the politico become enlightened and implementing policy that promote education of sustainability?

Is the general populace becoming education and putting pressure on the political bodies to act in the name of sustainable science?

When we speak of education are we talking K-12, post secondary, adult education, all of the above? Are we talking about education in formal, informal settings? Both?

Given all the science research and information available on the myriad of topics, what is the best way and what are the most important pieces of information to disseminate to the public and create a social awareness necessary for sustainable development?  Is there a place in this seminar to discuss this area or are we generally focused on academia?

If we do see sustainable science emerging as it's own field, would it be helpful to also begin to create the framework for how a sustainability science course could be taught in a elementary, middle, secondary or undergraduate setting?

Hopefully we can discuss some of these questions as the seminar continues.  I am particularly interested in this topic and am looking forward to hearing some of your thoughts.

 

This is an interesting prod to the discussion.  Let me encourage it, but ask for some help in sorting out what our terms are going to mean...

1) Does the 'evolution' you refer to comfortably encompass the emergence of human institutions, social norms, and technologies that are more 'fit' for today's circumstances?

2) If so, would it also include the adoption of such 'traits' in advance of immediate benefits because of beliefs about how they would improve our, or our grandchildren's, prospects in the future?

3) More generally, how do you (or should we) see the difference between 'adaptation' and 'evolution'?  Between 'complex adaptive systems' and systems in which evolution is a central feature?  (Here is the abstract of a paper on CAS by Si Levin: "The study of complex adaptive systems, from cells to societies, is a study of the interplay among processes operating at diverse scales of space, time and organizational complexity. The key to such a study is an understanding of the interrelationships between microscopic processes and macroscopic patterns, and the evolutionary forces that shape systems. In particular, for ecosystems and socioeconomic systems, much interest is focused on broad scale features such as diversity and resiliency, while evolution operates most powerfully at the level of individual agents. Understanding the evolution and development of complex adaptive systems thus involves understanding how cooperation, coalitions and networks of interaction emerge from individual behaviors and feed back to influence those behaviors." [Levin, S.A. 2003, "Complex Adaptive Systems, Exploring the Known, the Unknown and the Unknowable", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 3.]

Previously Elizabeth Walker wrote:

Topic: How should evolution and evolutionary biology contribute to our understanding of sustainability?

 

 

These are a few thought-starter questions I have, rather than fleshed out comments.  Anyone who can share insights or suggest readings on these questions would be helpful (I have training in engineering and economics, and I know little of this discipline though I have a notion that it should be important to our discussion of sustainability science).

 

I am interested in the role of evolution in our understanding of sustainability.  Would we consider humanity "sustained" if sustainability occurs under very different conditions?  How has humanity changed over time, and how might we predict it will change in the future (genetically, socially, geographically, etc.)?  What can we learn from our understanding of how we have evolved?  What questions, if any, should evolutionary biology be asking in order to help us prepare for the future? How will environmental changes and disease force humanity to evolve?  Do we exclude thinking about human and disease evolution and adaption because we are focusing on "grandchildren" time scales?

 

Thanks!

Liz

 

In the literature as in the text, there is an overarching theme of equilibrium between the human and environment system and between the H-E system and the overall life support system of the planet. The question is where should this point of equilibrium lie? Should it be a low level equilibrium as in case of traditional societies with local cultures dating back to centuries where humans exploited nature only to the extent of subsistence and not more (they offered prayers to various  natural elements)or a high level equilibrium necessitated by industrialization and modernization?

Can we really replace degraded environment as the resource accountants and economists would believe? For forest destroyed in Africa, is it adequate and sufficient to grow forest cover in India? Would the earth system be the same again though the aggregate stock may remain unchanged? This may require more discussion on Pierce’s strong sustainability argument. Is this also not unfair terms of “deal” (or carbon trading etc.) between the already developed First World and the underdeveloped or developing Third World?

What about methodological issues – individualism vs. holism? This seems to be an issue particularly when SS would have strong inter-disciplinarity and many individual disciplines would have disparate methodological leanings, e.g. between mainstream economics and anthropology or ecology. Taking this further, wouldn’t this create confusion in “policy formulation” and “practice” of sustainability management?