Abstract:Science and technology are already helping to reconcile society's developmental goals with the planet's environmental limits over the long term. The authors refer to the resulting research and applications programs that have emerged as "sustainability science." Sustainability science is not yet an autonomous field or discipline, but rather a vibrant arena that is bringing together scholarship and practice, global and local perspectives from north and south, and disciplines across the natural and social sciences, engineering and medicine. Its scope of core questions, criteria for quality control, and membership are consequently in substantial flux, and may be expected to remain so for some time. Nonetheless, as the papers included in this Special Feature are meant to suggest, something different is surely "in the air" - something that is intellectually exciting, practically compelling, and might as well be called "sustainability science." |