What is sustainability science?
Sustainability science is an interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on addressing complex environmental, social, and economic challenges facing society. It seeks to understand the interactions between human and natural systems and develop practical solutions to ensure a sustainable future. It encompasses a wide range of topics, including climate change, biodiversity conservation, energy and resource management, social equity, and sustainable urban development.
Sustainability science seeks for solutions to interconnected environmental, social and economic challenges.
Sustainability science emerged as a way of knowing after the research community identified the problems and challenges associated with sustainable development and was interpreted as “the science of sustainable development” (National Research Council 1999). According to Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientific progress, sustainability science has become a paradigm which integrates and unifies science produced in diverse fields of research to provide solutions to solve the conflicts between humans’ needs and nature’s capacity.
Practices of sustainability science
Sustainability science has become increasingly accepted and practiced in recent years. Many universities now offer degree programs in sustainability science or related fields, and there are numerous research institutes and organizations dedicated to advancing sustainability science.
In practice, sustainability science is used to inform policy and decision-making in a wide range of contexts, including agriculture, energy, transportation, urban planning, and natural resource management. Sustainability scientists work with stakeholders from diverse sectors to develop solutions that are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable.
Here are some practices of sustainability science:
- Renewable energy: generation of energy from renewable sources like solar, wind, and geothermal power, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Five major types of renewable energy (from highest global electricity generation to lowest): hydro, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal.
- Green infrastructure: green infrastructure projects like green roofs and permeable pavement to manage stormwater runoff and improve air quality in urban areas.
Green infrastructure includes “an array of multi-functional, eco-friendly support systems (including open and green spaces) that deliver numerous environmental, social, and economic benefits”.
- Sustainable agriculture: agricultural ways to increase crop productivity while reducing environmental impacts, such as soil erosion and water pollution.
Diverse components of sustainable agriculture all contribute to soil and environmental health.
- Sustainable supply chains: improvement in the sustainability of supply chains by reducing waste, increasing efficiency, and promoting fair labor practices.
Sustainable supply chains require collaboration and coordination between all stakeholders, including suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers. They may involve implementing sustainable practices such as using renewable energy sources, reducing packaging waste, and promoting the use of environmentally-friendly materials.
- Conservation biology: protection to endangered species and their habitats, developing strategies to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Conservation biology seeks to address the ongoing loss of biodiversity and the threat of extinction facing many species, often due to human activities such as habitat destruction, over-harvesting, pollution, and climate change.
Current criticism on sustainability science
While sustainability science has made significant strides in addressing environmental and social challenges, its development has reached a point where “anomalies” that are unable to be solved based on the current framework appear, indicating that sustainability science itself is facing the “paradigm crisis”.
Firstly, sustainability science attempts to bridge the ridge between the natural and social sciences by adopting inter- or multidisciplinary approaches as a valuable source of innovative thinking (Iván & Toledo 2020). This strategy actually overemphasizes the importance of innovations in science and technology and overlooks the primary necessity to transform institutions and social goals for sustainability. The innovations are evaluated by their practical problem-solving power, which is still growth-oriented and further exacerbates the unequal distribution of global wealth.
Also, implementation of the solutions provided by sustainability science can be hindered by various reasons. Sustainability solutions often require long-term investment and political support, which may be challenging to secure. Short-term political cycles usually incentivize politicians to make decisions for the best interests of dominant groups to gain power and support, neglecting the suffering of marginalized groups. Implementation also requires coordination and collaboration across different institutions, which may not have the necessary capacity or mandate to support implementation.
Most importantly, although sustainability science has served to shift the human-nature relationship from complete separation to interconnectedness in a holistic system, the tendency to identify and classify each component based on instinctual ontology remains (West, Harder, Stålhammar & Woroniecki 2020), which can be demonstrated by the different levels and key interactions of the Anthropocene system in a synthesized review of sustainability science. Seeing the false systematic dichotomies, researchers are now calling for a relational turn for sustainability science. The relational approaches transform the dualistic human-nature connectedness to the non-essentialist view that humans are nature and vice versa, and redefines entities as “temporary nodes, stabilization or patterns of relations, produced within dynamic intersecting processes” (DeLanda M 2006). The non-essentialism and experiential dynamics in relational thinking is definitely a promising pathway for sustainability science, since they facilitate reconstruction of values and embracement of cultural diversity.
Paradigm shift of sustainability science
To effectively achieve sustainability goals, it is crucial to incorporate elements of justice and inclusion into the knowledge and practice of sustainability science. Firstly, sustainability science should engage with diverse stakeholders, including individuals from underrepresented and marginalized groups, in the decision-making process. This ensures that the voices of those who are disproportionately affected by environmental problems are heard and considered. To promote equity and fairness, sustainability science needs to identify and address the unequal distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across communities. This requires analyzing how decisions about resource allocation and environmental policies affect different communities and ensuring that these decisions are made in a fair and equitable manner.
Most importantly, sustainability science must address social inequalities by identifying and understanding the root causes of these inequities, which further requires a shift away from Western colonialism and neoliberalism. It can be achieved by incorporating cultural perspectives by recognizing and respecting the diverse ways that different communities understand and interact with their environments. This involves incorporating traditional indigenous knowledge and understanding the cultural values and practices that are passed from generation to generation by indigenous people. Other alternative knowledge systems are deep ecology, ecofeminism, and decolonialism.
DeLanda M. (2006). A new philosophy of society: assemblage theory and social complexity. London: Continuum.
González-Márquez, Iván, and Víctor M. Toledo. (2020). “Sustainability Science: A Paradigm in Crisis?” Sustainability 12 (7): 2802. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072802.
Kloor, Keith. (2017). Conservation biology, ideology and the dangers of censorship. Genetic Literacy Project. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/08/22/conservation-biology-ideology-dangers-censorship/
National Research Council. (1999). “Our Common Journey: A Transition toward Sustainability” National Academy Press: Washington, DC, USA.
Simon West, L. Jamila Haider, Sanna Stålhammar & Stephen Woroniecki. (2020). “A relational turn for sustainability science? Relational thinking, leverage points and transformations, Ecosystems and People”, 16:1, 304-325, DOI: 10.1080/26395916.2020.1814417
Suman, Jarupula, Amitava Rakshit, Siva Devika Ogireddy, Sonam Singh, Chinmay Gupta, and J. Chandrakala. (2022). “Microbiome as a Key Player in Sustainable Agriculture and Human Health.” Frontiers in Soil Science 2. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoil.2022.821589.