Thaddeus R. Miller

The future of sustainability science: a solutions-oriented research agenda

Over the last decade, sustainability science has been at the leading edge of widespread efforts from the social and natural sciences to produce use-inspired research. Yet, how knowledge generated by sustainability science and allied fields will contribute to transitions toward sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. This article explores the limitations of sustainability science research to move the field beyond the analysis of problems in coupled systems to interrogate the social, political and technological dimensions of linking knowledge and action. Over the next decade, sustainability science can strengthen its empirical, theoretical and practical contributions by developing along four research pathways focused on the role of values in science and decision-making for sustainability: how communities at various scales envision and pursue sustainable futures; how socio-technical change can be fostered at multiple scales; the promotion of social and institutional learning for sustainable development.

Constructing sustainability science: emerging perspectives and research trajectories

Over the last decade, sustainability science has emerged as an interdisciplinary and innovative field attempting to conduct problem-driven research that links knowledge to action. As the institutional dimensions of sustainability science continue to gain momentum, this article provides an analysis of emerging research agendas in sustainability science and an opportunity for reflection on future pathways for the field. Based on in-depth interviews with leading researchers in the field and a content analysis of the relevant literature, this article examines how sustainability scientists bound the social, political and normative dimensions of sustainability as they construct research agendas and look to link knowledge to social action. Many scientists position sustainability science as serving universal values related to sustainability and providing knowledge that is crucial to societal decision-making. The implications of these findings are discussed with an eye towards creating a space for a more democratic and reflexive research agenda for sustainability.

Transforming Knowledge for Sustainability: Towards Adaptive Academic Institutions.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that the types of and ways in which academic institutions produce knowledge are insufficient to contribute to a transition to sustainability.Design/methodology/approach – Reflecting on experiences at the School of Sustainability, the authors contend that a different kind of knowledge is needed, what we call sustainability knowledge. A conceptual approach is taken wherein the authors propose several characteristics of sustainability knowledge and offer some proposals on how academic institutions must be structured to produce it.Findings – Sustainability knowledge has several characteristics including social robustness, recognition of system complexity and uncertainty, acknowledgement of multiple ways of knowing and the incorporation of normative and ethical premises. In order to produce sustainability knowledge, the knowledge production process itself must be changed to be more adaptive and engaged with society. Two organizing characteristics for institutions...

The Economic Impact of Early Life Environmental Tobacco Smoke Exposure: Early Intervention for Developmental Delay

Background and Objectives Early-life exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) can result in developmental delay as well as childhood asthma and increased risk of cancer. The high cost of childhood asthma related to ETS exposure has been widely recognized; however, the economic impact of ETS-related developmental delay has been less well understood. Methods and Results The Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) has reported adverse effects of prenatal ETS exposure on child development in a cohort of minority women and children in New York City (odds ratio of developmental delay = 2.36; 95% confidence interval 1.22–4.58). Using the environmentally attributable fraction (EAF) approach, we estimated the annual cost of one aspect of ETS-related developmental delay: Early Intervention Services. The estimated cost of these services per year due to ETS exposure is >

Infrastructures as socio-eco-technical systems: Five considerations for interdisciplinary dialogue

50 million per year for New York City Medicaid births and

The Technosphere and Earth Stewardship

99 million per year for all New York City births. Conclusion The high annual cost of just one aspect of developmental delay due to prenatal exposure to ETS provides further impetus for increased prevention efforts such as educational programs to promote smoke-free homes, additional cigarette taxes, and subsidizing of smoking cessation programs.

STIRring the grid: engaging energy systems design and planning in the context of urban sociotechnical imaginaries

Infrastructure plays a key role in 21st century sustainability challenges related to burgeoning populations, increasing material and energy demand, environmental change, and shifts in social values. Social and political controversy over infrastructure decision making will continue to intensify without robust interdisciplinary and intersectoral dialogue over national-scale and local-scale infrastructure trajectories. Alongside large investments in physical and social systems, the infrastructure community—including planners, engineers, public works specialists, financiers, and sustainability scientists—needs to articulate a 21st century vision addressing the interrelated technological, social, and environmental dimensions of infrastructure systems. Such a vision needs to address existing systems in the industrialized world and new systems in countries seeking to improve human welfare through infrastructure development. Infrastructure systems—discussed here as primarily those integrating the built environment (Jones et al. 2001; Pulselli et al. 2007), transportation (Greene and Wegener 1997), power generation and distribution (Jacobson and Delucchi 2009), food production and processing (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2011), manufacturing (Jovane et al. 2008), water delivery (Gleick 2003; Muller et al. 2015; Palmer et al. 2015), and waste treatment (Melosi 2008)—underpin the unprecedented material wealth of contemporary human society. These technological systems have developed alongside extensive social infrastructure including specialized knowledge and expertise housed in institutions, informal knowledge systems of operation and maintenance, and a broader system of governance and regulatory politics setting budgetary priorities, policy directions, and regulatory certainty. In combination with these policy processes, user behavior and demographic change influence the demand and maintenance costs for infrastructure services, both of which have an identified overall investment need of

The politics of urban sustainability transitions

3.6 trillion (ASCE 2013),

The new conservation debate: The view from practical ethics

2 trillion of which is needed by 2027 (ASCE 2017). Because infrastructure relies on environmental inputs to function, channels and protects society from environmental forces, and impacts environmental systems, attitudes about technology and appropriate human–nature relationships set the goals for long-term infrastructure sustainability. They do so through both a social willingness to pay for infrastructure systems and a social consciousness of and desire for specific types of systems. Shifting environmental conditions, including climatic changes and dispersed atmospheric pollutants, are exacerbated by the externalities of present infrastructure systems and the technologies they support. The extent of these shifts is rarely apparent until systems become overwhelmed (Gross 2010; Perrow 1999). For example, in the case of Hurricane Sandy, siloed system management created unforeseen vulnerabilities propagating through critical infrastructure systems (Klinenberg 2013, Comes and Van de Walle 2014), serving as an example of cascading failure (Rinaldi et al. 2001), as well as affecting system restoration (Sharkey et al. 2015). At the same time, infrastructure systems and the technologies and behaviors they enable serve as sources of risks and costs to public and environmental health; 8 of 10 people now live in urban areas with excessive air pollution primarily due to transport, manufacturing, and energy generation (WHO 2016). How has contemporary infrastructure practice come to this point? The modern infrastructure ideal of large, networked systems such as power generation, information technology, and transport (Dueñas-Osorio et al. 2007; Haimes and Jiang 2001;

The New Conservation Debate: Ethical Foundations, Strategic Trade-offs, and Policy Opportunities

Scientists develop conceptual frameworks in an effort to better understand and manage the world around them. The dominant framework for most authors in this book and others concerned with Earth Stewardship is a coupled human-natural systems framework. This framework continues to provide new insights and promising management strategies. However, we argue that the addition of a third major domain, infrastructure/technology would more accurately reflect the key dynamics in today’s world and allow more sustainable outcomes. Further we argue that scientists associated with each of these domains adhere to overlapping, but distinct sets of rules and fundamental assumptions that inhibit successful interdisciplinary collaboration. Rectifying this misalignment should be a cornerstone of future Earth Stewardship.