Citation:
Abstract:
This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities facing efforts to shape a transition toward more sustainable relations between humans and their planet. It begins with a review of international goals for human development and environmental conservation, past trends in interactions between the earth’s social and natural systems that set the stage for contemporary efforts to meet those goals, and some of the foreseeable problems that will have to be addressed in the years ahead. Arguing that the successful strategies for navigating a sustainability transition will necessarily be knowledge intensive, the paper discusses strategies for social learning about sustainability. It closes with a review of the institutional reforms that will be necessary to implement such strategies.