Science and Technology for Sustainable Development
2002 International Council for Science, Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability, and Third World Academy of Sciences.
This paper presents the consensus conclusions of the Mexico City Synthesis Workshop on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development. The Workshop brought together leaders of, (more)...

Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems
2005 Carl Folke, ­ Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and ­ Jon Norberg
We explore the social dimension that enables adaptive ecosystem-based management. The review concentrates on experiences of adaptive governance of social-ecological systems during periods of abrupt change (crisis) and investigates social sources of renewal and reorganization. Such (more)...

Geography and macroeconomics: New data and new findings
2006 William D. Nordhaus
The linkage between economic activity and geography is obvious: Populations cluster mainly on coasts and rarely on ice sheets. Past studies of the relationships between economic activity and geography have been hampered by limited spatial data on economic activity. The (more)...

Progress towards sustainability? What the conceptual framework of material and energy flow accounting (MEFA) can offer
2004 Haberl, H.; Fischer-Kowalski, M.; Krausmann, F.; Weisz, H.; Winiwarter, V.
Sustainability science analyses society-nature interaction on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. By explaining the link between sustainability and socio-economic material and energy flows (more)...

Characterizing a Sustainability Transition: Goals, Targets, Trends, and Driving Forces
2003 Kates, Robert W., and Thomas M. Parris.
Sustainable development exhibits broad political appeal but has proven difficult to define in precise terms. Recent scholarship has focused on the nature of a sustainability transition, described by the National Research Council as meeting the needs of a stabilizing future world population while reducing (more)...

Core Questions of Science and Technology for Sustainability
2000 B. Bolin, W. Clark, R. Corell, N. Dickson, S. Faucheux, G. Gallopín, A. Gruebler, M. Hall, B. Huntley, J. Jäger, C. Jaeger, N. Jodha, R. Kasperson, R. Kates, I. Lowe, A. Mabogunje, P. Matson, J. McCarthy, H. Mooney, B. Moore, T. O'Riordan, J. Schellnhuber, U. Svedin.
Sustainability science focuses on the dynamic interactions between nature and society. Substantial understanding of those interactions has been gained in recent decades through work in environmental science that includes human action on the environment and environmental impacts on humans, work (more)...

Sustainable development: epistemological challenges to science and technology
2005 Gilberto C. Gallopín and Cecilie Modvar
The meeting was initiated by a discussion about the role and meaning of knowledge in society. Potential changes that could be made in order to better adapt scientific knowledge to political agendas of global problems were (more)...

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Reports
2006 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA)
Overview The first set of products presenting the findings of the assessment consists of one over-arching synthesis and 5 others that interpret the Millennium Ecosystem (more)...

Conditions for sustainability of human-environment systems: Information, motivation, and capacity
2005 Eric F. Lambin, Department of Geography, University of Louvain
Managing a transition toward a more sustainable development path at a global scale is one of the great challenges facing humanity for the decades to come. Sustainable resource use refers to the use of environmental resources to produce goods and (more)...

Frontiers of a Great Transition: GTI Paper Series
October 2006 Great Transition Initiative
The Great Transition Initiative (GTI) is a collective endeavor of scholars and activists to imagine and advance a great transition to a global future of enriched lives, human solidarity, and a healthy planet. It aims to give texture to the (more)...

Science on Sustainability 2006
2005 Research on the Scientific Basis for Sustainability. 
RSBS is a five-month project (May 2005-October 2005) to investigate the scientific status in seven fields relating to environmental sustainability. Based on an extensive review of global literature, interviews and questionnaires with some 170 leading experts and scholars in Japan, (more)...

Scale and Cross-Scale Dynamics: Governance and Information in a Multilevel World
2006 David W. Cash, W. Neil Adger, Fikret Berkes, Po Garden, Louis Lebel, Per Olsson, Lowell Pritchard and Oran Young
The empirical evidence in the papers in this special issue identifies pervasive and difficult cross-scale and cross-level interactions in managing the environment. The complexity of these interactions and the fact that both scholarship and management have only (more)...

Science and Engineering Research That Values the Planet
2005 Arne Jacobson and Daniel M. Kammen
The recognition that human activity is transforming the planet, both in intended and dramatically unintended ways, has led to the development of a new field of research—sustainability science. Widely discussed essays, special issues of premier journals, and extensive websites are now devoted to defining sustainability (more)...

Reinventing African Economies: Technological Innovation and the Sustainability Transition
April 2006 Calestous Juma
No abstract available.

Re-emphasizing Sustainable Development: The Concept of 'Evolutionability'
2005 Marco Keiner
The principle of sustainable development is now 15-years old. There are a lot of definitions and models for its explanation — ranging from triangles and prisms to eggs — but still its sense is diffuse. Moreover, important aspects like equity (more)...

Linking Knowledge and Action for Sustainable Development
2006 Lorrae van Kerkhoff and ­ Louis Lebel
It is now commonplace to assert that actions toward sustainable development require a mix of scientific, economic, social and political knowledge, and judgments. The role of research-based knowledge in this complex setting is ambiguous and diverse, and (more)...

Grand Challenges in Sustainability Science Symposium Presentations
2007 Organized by Pamela Matson,  Robert Kates , and Vaughan Turekian; Moderated by William Clark; Presenters:  Pam Matson, Robert Kates, John Schellnhuber, Ed Miles, Bill Turner, Elinor Ostrom, and John Holdren
Sustainability science is an emerging field of research, which integrates the physical, biological, and social sciences as well as medicine and engineering. Core questions will be explored through problem- and place-specific studies presented in this session. How (more)...

Going beyond panaceas
2007 Elinor Ostrom, Marco A. Janssen, and John M. Anderies
In the context of governance of human–environment interactions, a panacea refers to a blueprint for a single type of governance system (e.g., government ownership, privatization, community property) that is applied to all environmental problems. The aim of this special feature (more)...

A Survey of University-Based Sustainability Science Programs
2007 Sarah Banas, AAAS
Policy makers at all levels of governance increasingly look to scientists and engineers to provide guidance in creating sustainable societies.  In response, the science and engineering communities are undertaking practical, place-based research to provide decision-support for addressing (more)...

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being
2008 John P. Holdren
This article is adapted from the Presidential Address he delivered at the AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco on 15 February 2007.The speech begins with an exploration of that theme "Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being" with some premises and definitions relating (more)...