Is Our Future Sustainable? William C. Clark Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

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Is Our Future Sustainable? William C.
ClarkKennedy School of Government, Harvard
University

• Opening Plenary Address at the
• International Conference on Science and
  Technology for Sustainability 2003
• Energy and Sustainability Science
• Science Council of Japan
• Tokyo, 16-19 December 2003

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The talk in overview

• I. The Problem
• Unsustainable development
• II. The Opportunity
• Promoting a transition toward sustainability
• III. Whats to be Done?
• Harnessing science and technology for a
  sustainability transition

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I. The Problem Unsustainable Development

• The idea of sustainability is only the most
  recent conceptual focus linking collective
  aspirations of worlds peoples for
• Peace and freedom (Palme Commission)
• Improved well-being (Brandt Commission)
• Healthy environment (Brundtland Commission)
• Human rights (Sen / Ogata Commission)
• As with these other aspirations, the question
  about sustainability is not whether its
  possible, but rather what we can do to make
  progress toward it.

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Evolution of sustainable development

• Early conservation movements
• conserving the South for the North
• Stockholm Conference (UNCHE 1972)
• environment must be sustained for all
• World Conservation Strategy (1980)
• environment and development linked
• Brundtland and Rio (UNCED 1992)
• sustainability onto the world agenda
• Johannesburg (WSSD 2002)
• toward implementation?

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Sustainable development today

• Agreement Reconciling societys development
  goals with environmental constraints over the
  long term
• to ensure that humanity meets the needs of the
  present without compromising the ability of
  future generations to meet their own needs
  Brundtland
• to meet human needs, while preserving the
  earths life support systems and reducing hunger
  and poverty World Academies of Science, Tokyo
• Debate What is to be developed? What is to be
  sustained? Over what period? How to do it?
• The challenge in perspective

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Substantial improvements in well-being achieved
in last half century

• Life expectancy at birth up 50 ? 64 y
• Infant mortality down 13 ? 6
• Access to safe drinking water lt35 ? 65
• Literacy rate up lt50 ? 70
• GDP/cap (developing only) 900 ? 2900
• gt 3 billion people improve living standards.

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But success remains uneven, incomplete,
reversible

• Persistent hunger of gt800 million
• Resurgence of disease epidemics (eg. HIV)
• Growing urban homelessness gt 600 million
• Growing disparities between rich, poor
• doubled ratio of incomes richest poorest fifth
• Growing number of poor ? 1.3 billion
• Losing ground in Africa, elsewhere.

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And development has dramatically altered basic
biosphere processes...

• Outgoing longwave radiation down gt1
• Fixation of nitrogen up gt 2x
• Invasion by exotic organisms up gt 3x
• Sediment loads in rivers up gt 5x
• Release of lead up gt 20x
• Extinction of species up gt 100-1000x

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Transforming the face of the earth

• Increasing atmospheric CO2 by 30
• Intercepting gt 40 of terrestrial production
• Using gt 50 freshwater runoff
• Fully/overexploiting gt 60 marine fisheries
• Increasing atmospheric CH4 by gt140
• Introducing gt70,000 synthetic chemicals

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In an accelerating pattern
Rates since 1950 ? 50 all change reached by 1900 50 all change reached since 1900
Rates decelerating Animal diversity Pb, S releases Sea mammal diversity Human population
Rates accelerating Forest area C,N,P releases Floral diversity Sediment flows Water withdrawals
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With implications for a future of human
development in which

• Environmental stresses are multiple, interactive
• Responses are abrupt, not gradual
• Scales are multiple, but especially regional
• Managing syndromes of regional degradation
  becomes a central challenge
• Overdevelopment syndromes (Aral Sea, Grand Banks)
• Urbanization syndromes (Mexico City, Bangkok)
• Sink syndromes (Black Triangle, Hanford
  Reservation).

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Looking to the future, darkly

• Current trends including population, habitation,
  wealth, consumption, connectedness are likely to
  persist well into 21st century, and could
  significantly undermine prospects for
  sustainability.
• Individual environmental problems unlikely to
  prevent substantial progress over next two
  generations. More troubling are threats arising
  from multiple, cumulative, interactive stresses,
  driven by a variety of human activities.

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and more brightly

• A successful transition toward sustainability is
  nonetheless possible without miraculous
  technology or drastic social transformation.
• Needed are significant advances in basic
  knowledge, increases in the capacity to utilize
  that knowledge, and the political will to
  transform knowledge into action.

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II. The Opportunity Promoting a Transition
toward sustainability

• The complexity of human-environment interactions,
  and the changing character of social goals, mean
  that no path to sustainability can be plotted in
  advance
• The need is therefore for social capacity to
  guide development away from its present
  unsustainable trajectories toward more
  sustainable ones

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Transitions toward Sustainability Whats new?

• The idea of a transition toward sustainability
  had already been posed at the Tokyo 2000
  Symposium by the World Academies of Science on
  Transition toward Sustainability in the 21st
  Century
• Whats new since then?

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Sustainability has emerged on the high table of
the global agenda

• Freedom from want, freedom from fear, and the
  freedom of future generations to sustain their
  lives on this planet are the 3 grand global
  challenges for the 21st Century
• UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in his
  Millennium Report to the General Assembly

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Governance has become a thoroughly
multistakeholder activity
Private sector Government Civil Society
Global Multi-nationals Intergovtl. organization Internatl. NGOs
National National business THE STATE National NGOs
Local Local business Local government Local action
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It has become accepted that knowledge matters for
development

• Development "is built not merely through the
  accumulation of physical capital and human skill,
  but on a foundation of information, learning and
  adaptation
• World Bank, 2000. World Development Report
  Knowledge for development.

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Knowledge matters (cont.)

• The 20th centurys unprecedented gains in
  advancing human development and eradicating
  poverty came largely from technological
  breakthroughs (eg. antibiotics, vaccines,
  high-yield crops) Technology is a tool, not just
  a reward, for growth and development
• UNDP. 2001 Human development report Making new
  technologies work for human development.

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We are learning that usable knowledge is more
than good ST

• Produced through joint action of producers and
  users (not sent through the mail)
• Knowledge may be universal, but usable knowledge
  is place / context specific (retail)
• Need to bridge gap between most knowledge
  producers, who remain focused on identifying
  problems, and most knowledge users who want a
  focus on solutions for sustainability.

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III. Whats to be Done? Harnessing science,
technology for a sustainability transition

• ISTS/TWAS/ICSU dialogues reveal need to better
  harness ST for sustainability through
• Solution-focused campaigns to meet targets of the
  highest priority goals for sustainable
  development by applying what is known
• Programs of fundamental RD on the underlying
  questions of sustainability science
• Capacity building through nurturing knowledge
  systems for sustainable development

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Solution-focused campaigns

• Highest priority goals of sustainability
  defined, denominated in targets at global scale
  by international conferences, UN Millennium
  Project
• For human needs, a hierarchy
• Children, people in disasters
• Feeding and nurturing
• Education, housing, employment ?
• For life support systems
• Goals are fewer, more modest, more contested
• Preoccupied with human health, not ecosystems

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Candidate Global Action Campaigns to better apply
what is known

• Accelerate trends in fertility reduction (-1B)
• Reverse declining trends in agricultural
  production in Africa, sustain elsewhere
• Restore degraded ecosystems, while conserving
  biodiversity elsewhere.
• Accommodate 2-3x increase of todays urban
  population in sustainable manner
• Accelerate improvements in use of energy and
  materials (double historical rates?)

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Candidate Global RD Priorities on underlying
questions

• Drivers of nature/society interactions
• large/long trends and transitions
• production/consumption systems
• Impacts of nature/society interactions
• determinants of vulnerability and resilience
• responses to multiple stresses (social, natural)
• thresholds, critical loads and limits
• Measures of nature / human well-being

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But this global consensus masks profound regional
differences
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Need Knowledge Systems for Sustainable
Development that

• Link long term RD to social goals as articulated
  by users at all scales, especially regional
• Integrate local/ regional/ global nodes into
  effective research/ decision support systems
• Join academia, private sector, and government in
  dynamic knowledge-action collaboratives.

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Present systems of priority-setting, funding and
publication encourage (good) research

• anchored in single (or neighboring) disciplines
• either problem-driven or fundamental
• focused at single scales
• not directly connected to assessment operations,
  or decision-support
• And therefore necessary but insufficient to
  advance goals of a sustainability transition.

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Needed is additional capacity to

• Target ST on most pressing problems as
  prioritized by local stakeholders in development
• avoiding pitfall of scientists guessing user
  needs
• Integrate appropriate mixes of disciplines,
  expertise and public/private sector in support of
  such problem-driven RD
• avoiding pitfalls of disciplinary hammers, and
  of undervaluing informal, practical expertise

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Needed is additional capacity to...

• Link expertise and application across scales,
  from local to global
• avoiding bias for universal over place-specific
  knowledge
• Integrate research planning, observations,
  assessment operational decision support
• avoiding pitfall of island empires.

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Examples of research systems that have been
(relatively) effective in meeting such goals

• Development Int. agricultural research syst.
• Envir ENSO research/applications progs
• Health WHO malaria campaigns
• Commons Stratospheric ozone protection

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Components of effective knowledge systems for
sustainability

• Sustained strength in the core disciplines
• Focused research programs on fundamental
  questions of sustainability science
• -eg. vulnerability of nature/society systems
• Focused problem-solving programs where we know
  enough to begin
• -eg. sustainable cities, carbon management
• Enhanced regional capacity for integration

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Challenge for the 21st CenturyRegional Centers
to integrate knowledge and action for a
transition toward sustainability

• Providing useful integration of sectoral
  expertise, disciplinary science, technical
  know-how, and informal knowledge in response to
  priorities of development stakeholders is a
  complex process
• often left to local decision makers and managers
  who make do but with limited skill.
• Needed are Regional Centers to help with such
  integration, by building experienced teams in
  trusted institutions, networked to global system.

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Joint the continuing dialogue

• Forum on Science and Technology for
  Sustainability
• http//sustainabilityscience.org