The fully updated second edition of this innovative textbook provides a system analysis approach to sustainability for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. To an extent unparalleled in other textbooks, the latest scientific data and insights are integrated into a broad and deep transdisciplinary framework. Readers are encouraged to explore and engage with sustainability issues through the lenses of a cultural and methodological pluralism which promotes dialogue and alliances in the search for a (more) sustainable future. Ideal for students and their teachers in sustainable development, environmental science and policy, ecology, conservation, natural resources and geopolitics, the book will also appeal to interested citizens, activists, and policymakers, exposing them to the variety of perspectives on sustainability issues. Review questions and exercises provide the opportunity for consolidation and reflection. Online resources include appendices with more advanced mathematical material, model answers, and a wealth of recommended additional sources.
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About the Textbook

This second edition of Sustainability Science builds upon the conviction that offering (young) people a genuinely holistic and transdisciplinary outlook on how we can create a more humane and sustainable world is worth the effort of me and many others. The book is based on three personal convictions. The first one is that humanity faces a transition period in which many ideas, habits and expectations will be challenged and scientists should, therefore, offer an integrating perspective on how developments are connected and may unfold. It implies that all scientific disciplines can and should contribute to the content of sustainability science. Secondly, the conceptualization of sustainable development as a guiding principle for the 21st century is still fragmented, and this should change. We need a new science, one that uncovers the unity of science, mobilizes understanding and offers context. One that uses the novel ways to access information (Internet, platforms, Wikipedia etc.) and engages in the real world (stories, simulation games etc.). I follow others in using the term sustainability science to summarize this new science and the efforts to develop it. A third conviction is that sustainable development can best be defined in terms of quality of life and that the pluralism in people’s values and ideas about what quality of life is for them should be acknowledged explicitly. It implies the framing of sustainable development as a global challenge within local diversity, capacity and contingency.

This textbook book provides a transdisciplinary approach to sustainability for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. The latest scientific data and insights are integrated into a broad and deep transdisciplinary framework. Readers are encouraged to explore and engage with sustainability issues through the lenses of a cultural and methodological pluralism, which promotes dialogue and alliances in the search for a (more) sustainable future. Ideal for students and their teachers in sustainable development, environmental science and policy, ecology, conservation, natural resources and geopolitics, the book will also appeal to interested citizens, activists, and policymakers, exposing them to the variety of perspectives on sustainability issues. Review questions and exercises provide the opportunity for consolidation and reflection. Online resources include appendices with more advanced mathematical material and recommended additional sources.

Three threads are essential and complementary:

  • historical knowledge: what is the state we’re in and how did we arrive there?
  • cultural pluralism: appreciating diversity in values and beliefs and how to handle them; and
  • disciplined thinking: what are the rules about acquiring and sharing knowledge?

Although there is not a single historical account, it is important as part of education to construct a mindmap of major past events and the various perspectives on and narratives about them. This facilitates acquiring an appreciation for pluralism in values and beliefs (which I refer to as worldviews). This in no way exempts us from the duty to use the capacity for logic and disciplined thinking and to communicate the scientific knowledge resulting from it. Moreover, because sustainability science is in its very essence inter/transdisciplinary, the gaps between the scientific disciplines have to be diminished by introducing methods and concepts within as well as connecting scientific disciplines. The three threads are addressed in PARTS II-IV of this second edition.