 |
 ven without miraculous technologies or drastic transformations
of whole societies, human needs over the next two generations
can be met while sustaining the Earth if the political will exists
to turn new knowledge gained through science and technology into
action, says a new report from the National Research Council
of the National Academies. Scientific research, private actions,
and public policies must be increasingly linked to promote a
transition to sustainability in which people can meet their needs
while simultaneously nurturing and restoring the environment.
 The
report argues that societies should approach sustainable development
not as a destination, but as an ongoing, adaptive learning process.
To that end, the report proposes an approach for monitoring progress
in the transition to sustainability and a set of institutional
reforms to facilitate the needed research, innovation, and social
learning. It sets forth a new research agenda for sustainability
science.
"A transition
is under way to a world in which human populations are more crowded,
more consuming, more connected, and in many parts more diverse
than at any time in history," says Robert W. Kates, cochair
of the study, and professor emeritus, Brown University, Providence,
R.I. "Meeting the most basic needs of these populations
implies greater production and consumption of goods and services,
increased demand for land, energy, and materials, and intensified
pressures on the environment and living resources."
"Actions
to accelerate progress in a transition toward sustainability
over the next 50 years must be undertaken now to avoid significant
damage to the Earth's human population and its life-support systems,"
says William C. Clark, cochair of the study, and professor, Harvard
University, Cambridge, Mass. "This transition must involve
harnessing science and technology to provide direction, examine
alternative pathways, measure success -- or the lack of it --
along the way, and produce information and incentives for changing
course."
Most population
growth will be concentrated in the developing countries of Africa,
Asia, and Latin America, where efforts to reduce poverty without
harming the environment must go hand in hand, the report says.
Pressures on the environment and on natural resources will continue
to be compounded by the heavy consumption of resources that support
life-styles in industrialized nations and are sought after by
others.
The report
documents large-scale social and environmental change and explores
tools for "what if" analysis of possible future developments
and their implications for sustainability. It also identifies
the greatest threats to sustainability and outlines several priorities
for action in five key areas aimed at using what is already known
to achieve a successful transition to sustainability. Priorities
for action include:
- Overpopulation. Achieving
a 10 percent reduction in the population of 9 billion now projected
for 2050 is a desirable and attainable goal, the report says.
Having nearly 1 billion fewer people on the planet would ease
the transition toward sustainability. This can be done by meeting
the widespread need for contraceptives globally, by helping women
to postpone childbearing through education and job opportunities
and to reduce family size overall, and by encouraging society
to increase the care and education of smaller numbers of children.
- Urban systems.
It should be possible to accommodate the projected massive growth
of urban areas in a habitable, efficient, and environmentally
friendly manner. Cities are faced with meeting the needs for
housing, nurturing, educating, and employing the 4 billion more
people expected to be living in urban areas by 2050, while providing
them with adequate water, sanitation, and clean air. These cities
should be able to meet human needs and preserve the environment
by building modern facilities and developing systems for delivering
services more efficiently.
- Agricultural production. An achievable goal is to reverse declining trends
in agricultural production in Africa while sustaining historic
trends elsewhere. The most critical near-term step is to reverse
the decline in sub-Saharan Africa, the only region where population
growth has outpaced growth in agricultural production. A collaborative
effort involving governments, the scientific community, farmers,
and nongovernment organizations will be needed in Africa. At
the same time, meeting the challenge of feeding the burgeoning
world population as a whole and reducing hunger while sustaining
life-support systems will require dramatic overall advances in
food production, distribution, and access over the next two generations.
Sustainable increases in output per hectare of two to three times
present levels will be required by 2050. Productivity must be
increased on farmlands, reduced on fragile land areas, and restored
to degraded terrain.
- Energy and materials. Efficiency in energy and materials use, including
reductions in the amount of carbon produced by unit of energy
and the amount of energy used per unit of product, should be
accelerated to at least double the current rate of improvement.
Research and development should continue on the many efforts
under way to lower household energy use, build low-polluting
and energy-efficient automobiles, and reduce waste, as well as
to minimize the consumption of energy and materials for industrial
processes through reuse, recycling, and the substitution of services
for products.
- Living resources.
Many ecosystems are being degraded by the demands and stresses
of human use. The goal should be to work toward restoring and
maintaining their function and integrity so that their services
and human uses can be sustained over the long term. Greater understanding
is needed of how biological systems work, how to stem the continued
loss of habitats, and how ecosystems can be restored and managed
at the local or regional scale. This will require knowledge of
the socioeconomic aspects of overexploitation, the appropriate
valuation of ecosystem services, and sustainable management and
harvesting techniques. Ecosystems still not degraded by human
activities represent the last reserves of the Earth's biodiversity.
For these systems the goal should be to protect and conserve
biological diversity, both by dramatically reducing current rates
of land conversion and by planning for conservation.
Achievements
in one of the areas outlined above, however, do not imply improvements
in other or all sectors, the report cautions. For example, efforts
to preserve natural ecosystems for the goods and services they
provide to humans may ultimately fail if they do not account
for the longer-term changes likely to be introduced by atmospheric
pollution, climate change, water shortages, or human population
encroachment. Understanding interactions among human activities
and their multiple environmental consequences requires complementing
current research programs with a new research agenda for sustainability
science.
The report
proposes such an agenda, emphasizing integrated approaches to
research and actions at the regional scale related to water,
atmosphere and climate, and species and ecosystems. It stresses
the need to develop both a thorough understanding of the most
critical interactions at particular places where people live,
work, and govern, and an integrated strategy for planning and
management. This will require evaluation of ongoing experiments
in integrative research, a more focused effort on such research
at all levels and dimensions, and new frameworks for improving
collaborations among partners in industry, academia, foundations,
and other national and international organizations.
The complexity
of the earth system and society's interactions with it guarantee
that surprises will emerge and policies will not work out entirely
as planned. Central to a sober strategy for a transition to sustainability
is therefore knowledge about how the system is performing, and
what the effects of management efforts have actually been. The
report also discusses what indicators of change -- from children's
birth weights to atmospheric chemistry -- will be most needed
in navigating a transition to sustainability.
There is no
precedent for the ambitious enterprise of mobilizing science
and technology to ensure a transition to sustainability, the
report says. This effort is inherently international, requiring
enhanced cooperation of scientific and political communities
around the world. The United States, having robust scientific
and technological capacities as well as being a major consumer
of global resources, is particularly obligated to join, and help
guide, the journey.
The study
was funded by grants from Mitchell Energy and Development Corp.,
the George and Cynthia Mitchell Foundation, and the National
Academy of Sciences. The National Research Council is the principal
operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National
Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit organization
that provides advice on science and technology under a congressional
charter. 
|
