|
The international Initiative on Science
and Technology for Sustainability (ISTS) seeks to enhance the contribution
of knowledge to environmentally sustainable human development around the world.
The Initiative is based on an evolving vision of "science and
technology for sustainability" that is:
- anchored in concerns for the
human condition, seeking knowledge and know-how that will help feed,
nurture, house, educate and employ the world’s slowing but still growing human
population while conserving its basic life support systems and biodiversity;
- essentially integrative,
bridging efforts across the natural, social and engineering sciences, the
environment and development communities, multiple sectors of human activity,
geographic and temporal scales and, more generally, the worlds of knowledge and
action;
- regional and place-based,
focusing at intermediate scales where multiple stresses intersect, where
complexity is comprehensible, where integration is possible, where innovation
and management happen, and where significant transitions toward sustainability
have begun; and
- fundamental in
character, addressing the unity of the nature-society system, asking how that
interactive system is evolving and can be consciously, if imperfectly, steered
through the reflective mobilization and application of appropriate knowledge and
know-how.
The Initiative aims to make
significant progress toward three broad and interrelated goals:
- expanding and deepening the
research and development agenda of science and technology for
sustainability;
- strengthening the
infrastructure and capacity for
conducting and applying science and technology for sustainability; and
- connecting science and
policy more effectively in pursuit
of a transition toward sustainability.
The Initiative is an open-ended network. Policy is set by an international
Steering Group, coordinated by two Co-Conveners (Robert Kates and
Akin Mabogunje).
The tasks of the Secretariat of the Initiative are shared between
Harvard University (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, United States) and TWAS, the
Academy of Sciences for the Developing World
(Trieste, Italy). To date,
major funding has come from the David and Lucile Packard
Foundation,
the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Office
of Global Programs, and numerous regional institutions.
The Initiative’s web-based Forum: Science and
Innovation for Sustainable Development facilitates information exchange and
engagement with the larger community involved with science and technology for
sustainability. It provides access to the
Network for Science and
Technology for Sustainability, the Initiative's effort to help build a
virtual community linking
disparate scholars, managers, and decision makers, and to promote the sharing of
knowledge, ideas, and goals among a community working on science and technology
for sustainability.
For more information visit http://sustainabilityscience.org/ists
or contact
Nancy
Dickson.
|