If continuing and unsustainable growth in the global human population is accepted as the principal cause of accelerating environmental/natural resource degradation, what is keeping the global science community from more forcefully engaging the key political establishments to educate and drive the radical changes required, to lead the world towards a level of reasonable sustainability? How can we get them to take on such a role?

Without leadership and urgent government action, to date sadly lacking, we are likely to reach crisis point, leading to global catastrophe. Continual waffle and ‘feel good’ measures such as ‘cap & trade’ legislation are unlikely to achieve any real positive/timely result.

Given that political administrations tend to be driven by poling statistics/insuring incumbency, it would seem that the general public must somehow become engaged in a grassroots driven campaign to give voice to the very real issues raised by the global science community. Without a sense of urgency we will reach a point of ‘no return’ and, ‘too little too late’ to achieve any meaningful result.

Given boundary conditions (e.g. budget constraints; human kind’s need for food and shelter; present state, pace and length of physical processes, etc.), what is, from an economic (but not only) point of view the right mix of mitigation/prevention and adaptation actions and policies to deal with (and cope with the consequences of) natural resource (land, water, climate, biodiversity, etc.) and sustainability problems?

Policy makers have to make real life choices which include accepting that some/most impacts of human activities on nature are unavoidable. The question is what is the most efficient way to deal with them: mitigation or adaptation, or more likely which combination of the two.

Analysis to arrive at answers will be complicated not in the least because of its interdisciplinary nature.

What are the main constraints to successful Earth System governance and what are our options for addressing these constraints in a timely, effective and accountable manner?

The failure to make adequate, or any progress on Earth System issues such as poverty, ecosystem degradation or greenhouse gas emissions are related to society’s inability to fully grasp the gravity of the situation, to envision acceptable outcomes, and to create a system of incentives, disincentives and accountability mechanisms that would make ignoring these as priorities by a wide range of social actors hard if not impossible.

We need to understand much more clearly what are the formal and informal barriers and biases in our policy mechanisms, public and private institutions (down to the role and interests of the individual decision-maker) that help prolong unsustainable patterns of practices and behaviour. We must also identify and tackle the barriers to introducing the necessary alternatives that often work at the pilot level already into the mainstream. This includes but should go beyond the study and reinvention of global environmental governance. Governance and policies that promote essentially unsustainable forms of behaviour are found in domains where other paradigms, such as economic growth dominate.

While the social sciences have come to grips with the analysis of governance, this has not generated enough momentum to integrate Earth System sustainability as a priority into mainstream development plans and strategies, witness the haste with which national governments were prepared to indebt future generations just to return to a path of GDP growth and increasing resource consumption.

There are many obstacles, ranging from the availability of longitudinal data on governance to political or cultural sensitivities. There are also strong vested interests in the status quo, but the momentum generated by the series of recent global crises represents an opportunity that mustn’t be missed.