Meeting fundamental human needs while preserving earth's life support systems will require an accelerated transition toward sustainability. A new field of sustainability science is emerging that seeks to understand the fundamental character of interactions between nature and society and to encourage those interactions along more sustainable trajectories. Such an integrated, place-based science will require new research strategies and institutional innovations to enable them especially in developing countries still separated by deepening divides from mainstream science. Sustainability science needs to be widely discussed in the scientific community, reconnected to the political agenda for sustainable development, and become a major focus for research. A shorter version of this paper was published in the Policy Forum section of Science on 27 April 2001 (vol. 292, pp. 641-42). The full text of the article is available free of charge to individuals with a subscription for Science Online (alternatively, members of the Harvard University community can access Science Online through HOLLIS Plus). Individuals who do not have a subscription for Science Online and are not affiliated with Harvard can find a link to the full text of this article on the Forum on Science and Technology for Sustainability web site.
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For more information about the emerging field of sustainability science, visit the Forum on Science and Technology for Sustainability.