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Practicing
Sustainability:
Adaptive Learning for Sustainable Futures
New management
systems require the integration of social and ecological research
within an interdisciplinary planning and policy framework. It
also requires a capacity to handle complexity and uncertainty
and the application of different methods of analysis and different
approaches to governance and community engagement. The concept
of sustainability has grown in popularity in recent decades as
a new way of thinking about our relationship to the planet and
to each other.
Sustainability
has been widely discussed in the fields of ecology, economics,
and conservation, yet the challenge of sustainability goes beyond
how we use natural resources to questions of social justice and
human health as well. Therefore, the notion of sustainability
is related to the quality of life in a community, it includes
the economic, social, and political systems as well as the natural
systems on which life depends.The challenge
of sustainability encompasses all aspects of human life, yet it
is primarily a social issue. One must ask the question, what do
we want to sustain? What current and future needs are we working
to meet? Therefore setting goals for the sustainable management
of ecosystems is a question of values, and one which will require
active, interdisciplinary participation for the creation of a
new planetary ethic.
Current sustainability
research in the WSS Lab explores new approaches needed to better understand and transform the behavior of societies and individuals interacting with and depending upon their environment.
Our primary research focus is on the capacity of watersheds to
sustain societal development. Drawing on systems thinking, complexity theory, and collaborative approaches, our research focuses on i) understanding resilience of coupled social-ecological
systems in human-impacted watersheds and ii) developing management
systems for building adaptive capacity and sustainable use of
watershed services. |
