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What are the levels of sustainable development within each country and can these levels be quantified and compared to other countries?
Posted on August 5th, 2009Categorized as Biodiversity, Earth System, Interdisciplinary, Social Science Tagged as catalyze action, education, sustainability, sustainability index
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Although complex, a standardized sustainability index per country, comparable to other countries, should be researched and presented. This would indicate levels of sustainability within countries, taking population growth/age, natural resources, pollution levels, etc. into account. Based on this, areas for education/action can be identified. This is both a earth system & social science topic combined, and the final outcome should be to raise awareness within these problem sectors.
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How can the perceived imperative in market-economies for continuous open-ended economic growth, be reconciled with the need from a natural science perspective for the collective human impact on the biophysical Earth system to be stabilized or decreased in order to sustain human well-being indefinitely?
Posted on August 6th, 2009Categorized as Biodiversity, Earth System, Human Health, Interdisciplinary, Social Science, Social-Ecological Systems Tagged as catalyze action, economic growth, market system, policy
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The conflict between economic and natural science perspectives addressed by this question is the ultimate driver behind the biophysical Earth System issues that are of concern and have led to the emergence of the idea of Earth System Science. Over the coming decade we can confidently expect socio-economic aspects to become much more strongly expressed in Earth System models. The reason that we expect ESS to attract community support is that we think it will help formulation of relevant actions & policies to address the ES issues. Unless the conflict between the socio-economic drivers of national and international policy can be reconciled with biophysical (environmental) drivers of policy, solutions to earth system probems at the whole-system level are doomed to failure. It will take a long time for the two world views to become reconciled into a single workable approach. So the sooner ESS starts addressing the issue the better.
