Title: The science of sustainability: from ecosystem services to human well-being and from landscapes to the globe
Speaker: Wu Jianguo, Distinguished Professor of School of Life Sciences & Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University,
Moderator： Qi Ye, Distinguished Professor of School of Public Policy and Management; Director of Climate Policy Institute, Tsinghua University
Time: 10:30-12:00, April 24th , 2013
Venue: Room 302, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University
Organizer: Climate Policy Institute at Tsinghua
School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University
Brief Introduction:
The future of humanity depends on whether or not we have a vision to guide our transition toward sustainability, on scales ranging from local landscapes to the planet as a whole. Sustainability science is at the core of this vision, and landscapes and regions represent a pivotal scale domain. In this presentation, I will elucidate key definitions and concepts of sustainability, including the Brundtland definition, the triple bottom line, weak and strong sustainability, resilience, human well-being, and ecosystem services, and propose a framework for developing a science of sustainability on the landscape and regional scales. Landscape sustainability is defined as the capacity of a landscape to consistently provide long-term, landscape-specific ecosystem services essential for maintaining and improving human well-being. Fundamentally, well-being is a journey, not a destination. Sustainability science is a place-based, use-inspired science of understanding and improving the dynamic relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being in changing landscapes under uncertainties arising from internal feedbacks and external disturbances. To advance sustainability science on landscape and regional scales, spatially explicit methods are essential, especially experimental approaches based on designed landscapes and multi-scaled simulation models coupling the dynamics of landscape services and human well-being.
