Sustainability SciencePresentation for the

SDRN/RICS Lectures onSustainable Development and the Quality of Life

William C. Clark, Harvard UniversityJuly 25, 2005

Sustainability Science

How can science and technology contribute more effectively to achieving society’s goals of sustainable development?

• Perspectives from an international dialog…– What kind of knowledge is needed?– What kinds of institutions can produce it?– What should be the next steps?

Sustainable Development emerges as a Global Challenge

• IUCN’s World Conservation Strategy (1980)• Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future (1987)• UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992)• Kofi Annan’s Millennium Report to the UN GA (2000)

– “Freedom from want, freedom from fear, and the freedom of future generations to sustain their lives on this planet” as the grand global challenges facing the international community at the dawn of the 21st Century

Rapidly expanding post-Rio discourse on how science can help meet the challenge

• S&T initiatives from South (from mid-90s)– TWNSO, COMSATS, South Center, …

• Earth System Analysis : Integrating Science for Sustainability (Schellnhuber & Wenzel, 1998)

• EU 5th Framework Programme (1998)

• Special Issue on “Sustainability Science” (1999) International Journal of Sustainable Development

• Our common journey: a transition toward sustainability (US NAS, 1999)

…continuing into the new Millennium

• World Academies of Science Conference– TWAS, Africa, Brazil, UK, USA, others…

• Global Science Assessments– IPCC, Millennium Ecosystem, ...

• International ICSU/Earth System Science Partnership studies – Food Security, Carbon Management, Water, Health…

• Regional S&T for Sustainability workshops– Friibergh, Abuja, Bonn, Chiang-Mai, Ottawa, Santiago, Trieste,

Cambridge, Dubai, Mexico City, Johannesburg Summit• National and local roundtables / dialogues

– UK/SDRN, most of the civilized world, even US/NAS…

GlobalIssues

LocalIssues

old rich millionsaffluence

“global people”resource surpluses

causes of climate changetechnological knowledge

theory driven researchpoor, young billions

poverty“local people”

resource shortagesimpacts of climate change

traditional knowledgeaction driven researchDi

gita

l and

cap

acity

divi

des

Reveal profound differences in problems and perspectives…

But also broad agreement on the need for more science dedicated to sustainability..

• What kind of science would ‘sustainability science’ be?

• Consider analogies to other use-inspired sciences…– Agricultural science?– Health science?– Military science?

Stokes’ Quadrant Model of Scientific Research

Use-inspired basic research

(Pasteur)

Pure basic research (Bohr)

Pure applied research (Edison)

Exploratory Probing/Poking

(All)Quest for fundamental understanding?

Considerations of use?Yes

Yes

No

NoResearch inspired by…

(redrawn from Stokes, 1997)

Sustainability Science: ‘Use-inspired’ research for what purpose?

What’s to be sustained? • Nature

– Earth, biodiversity, ecosystems

• Life support– Ecosystem services,

resources, environment

• Community– Cultures, groups, places

What’s to be developed?• People

– Child survival, life expectancy, education, equity, opportunity

• Economy– Wealth, productive sectors,

consumption

• Society– Institutions, social capital,

states, regions

Sustainability Science for Whom?

• Sustainability science is about creating knowledge that will change peoples’ behaviours…

• Those people therefore become stakeholders in sustainability science

• Relative to conventional science, sustainability science therefore needs less emphasis on elite researchers discovering answers for users…

• And more on empowering stakeholders to increase their options, make informed choices among them

Science for stakeholders: The ‘ASB Matrix’ How land use options perform against criteria

of different stakeholders in Sumatra

After CGIAR/ Tomich et al., 2001

What sources of sustainability science knowledge?

• Conventional disciplinary research, applied engineering and health sciences…

• But also learning-by-doing (participatory research / adaptive management)

• And various forms of ‘tacit’ knowledge– Of practice (eg. Running an oil refinery, farm)– Embedded in technologies, institutions, culture

• The essence is integration of multiple forms of knowing… But where to learn? Who to teach?

What core questions?

• Processes and causation– Driving forces for sustainability transitions (eg.

Consumption, dematerialization, urbanization)– Impact questions relating to vulnerability and resilience

of coupled human-environment systems– Guidance questions relating to institutions and

incentives (perverse incentives, managing the commons, effective assessments; value/behaviour gaps)

Core questions (cont.)

• Methods and models– Connecting the ecological, economic, political

(eg. Valuing ecosystem services; greening income accounts, participatory approaches)

– Integrative methods for place-based analysis (eg. Tyndall ‘syndromes’; landscape scale models; cross-scale embedding)

– Complex adaptive systems (eg. Agent-based approaches, facilitating social learning, etc.)

Core questions (concl.)

• Observations– Indicators and monitoring (sustainability indicators and

their scaling; monitoring methods for global public goods)

– Case comparisons: generating comparable cases; role of ‘success stories’; meta-analysis

– Large data sets: generating and making usable for stakeholders, eg. remote sensing, endemic biotic wealth inventories, GIS+…

• And so on…

Sustainability Science

• What kind of knowledge is needed to advance sustainability?

• What kinds of institutions can produce such knowledge?

• What should be the next steps

The Institutional Challenge: Closing the persistent gap between knowledge and action

• Dialogues reveal that a gap persists between what decision makers, development workers want from S&T and what S&T is producing for them; Moreover, available knowledge is often not put to use, resulting in loss of political support for research

• Egs: Persistence of morbidity due to indoor air pollution from cook stoves, of high waste production rates from pharmaceutical production

• ⇒ Need to understand why this gap persists and what changes in institutions, procedures, and program design can help to close it… from both sides

• ⇒ Need institutional designs of ‘knowledge systems’ for sustainability

Knowledge Systems?• There exist substantial bodies of work bearing on

the knowledge-action “gap”:– R&D policy; Innovation systems– Technology transfer– Use of indigenous knowledge

• Lacking has been a system perspective spanning R&D agenda setting through innovation and application, including resource mobilization, learning-by-doing, etc…

• Dialogue suggests which kinds of knowledge systems might serve as models on which to build institutional foundations for sustainability science

What kind of Systems? Project management orientation

• Successful efforts to link knowledge and action– generally adopt a “project” orientation (eg. “We need a widget of

<5kg for <$10…”)… rather than searching for general understanding;

– require dynamic leaders accountable for achieving such use-driven goals and targets;

– avoid pitfall of letting “study of the problem” displace “creation of solutions” as program goal.

– Egs. Disease campaigns, high yield crops, acoustic torpedoes…• This finding tends to pose serious challenges for the

traditional homes of ‘curiosity driven basic research’, eg. academia, Research Councils, GPG parts of World Bank…

What kind of Systems?End-to-end systems linking knowledge & action

• Successful projects, though anchored in use (rather than general understanding), foster end-to-end, integrated systems connecting use back to basic scientific predictions or observations.

⇒ Need “supply chain” perspectives on the design of decision support systems that assure no missing or mismatched links, avoiding pernicious ‘basic’ vs. ‘applied’ distinctions

• Eg: International Agricultural Research System lessons in need to foster national research capacity; not NASA…

What kind of systems?Ones recognizing the value – and vulnerability – of

bridging or boundary-spanning organizations• User-producer dialogues can be strained along the

supply chain from basic research to decision making

• Dialogues within science-based organizations often do not mesh with dialogues within operations or policy contexts

⇒ Need for boundary-spanning organizations and individuals to promote effective dialogues, with recognition of their value and vulnerability

⇒ Eg: the best of the GCIAR system-wide programs; the International Research Institute’s ENSO-apps program;

What kind of Systems? Ones providing appropriate goals,

outcomes, targets, metrics1. Successfully targeting and sustaining programs linking

knowledge to action for sustainability generally require a clear and readily understood statement of the beneficial outcomes that successful completion of the project would deliver

2. ⇒ Need a methodology that specifies goals, outcomes, deliverables and metrics, while encouraging – rather than suppressing -- the sort of innovative, experimental, high risk work that is central to mobilizing S&T for sustainability.

3. Eg: Problems of US Federal Government GRPA and PART Evaluations when applied to interagency progs.; Similar difficulties in World Bank development programs; UK Research Councils? Solved in Industry?

Do Exemplar Institutions for Sustainability Science Exist?

• Best CGIAR system wide programs?• UK’s Tyndall Centre, Arizona State Univ.? • International Institute for Applied Systems

Analysis (which the UK helped found, but then dismissed – temporarily? – as too much Pasteur and too little Bohr…)

• Need for comparative analysis and nurture

Next steps?

• Many, including much of what is going on at SDRN, my own NAS Roundtable on S&T for Sustainability…

• International Dialogue on Science and Practice in Sustainable Development: Linking Knowledge with Action (Chiang Mai, January 2007)

• Suggestions from this group?

Additional Information• International Dialogue on Science and Practice in

Sustainable Development: Linking Knowledge with Action– www.sustdialog.org

• International Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability (ISTS)– http://sustainabilityscience.org

• Science, Environment and Development Group (SED) at Harvard– http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/sed/

• Me …– william_clark@harvard.edu