RESUMO
The challenge of meeting human development needs while protecting the earth's life support systems confronts scientists, technologists, policy makers, and communities from local to global levels. Many believe that science and technology (S&T) must play a more central role in sustainable development, yet little systematic scholarship exists on how to create institutions that effectively harness S&T for sustainability. This study suggests that efforts to mobilize S&T for sustainability are more likely to be effective when they manage boundaries between knowledge and action in ways that simultaneously enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of the information they produce. Effective systems apply a variety of institutional mechanisms that facilitate communication, translation and mediation across boundaries.
Assuntos
Conservação dos Recursos Naturais , Disseminação de Informação , Conhecimento , Agricultura/métodos , Poluição do Ar/prevenção & controle , Animais , Comunicação , Conflito Psicológico , Tomada de Decisões , Pesqueiros , Humanos , Relações Interinstitucionais , Cooperação Internacional , Oceanos e Mares , Política Pública , Pesquisa , Transferência de Tecnologia , Abastecimento de Água , Tempo (Meteorologia)RESUMO
The vulnerability framework of the Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability Program explicitly recognizes the coupled human-environment system and accounts for interactions in the coupling affecting the system's responses to hazards and its vulnerability. This paper illustrates the usefulness of the vulnerability framework through three case studies: the tropical southern Yucatán, the arid Yaqui Valley of northwest Mexico, and the pan-Arctic. Together, these examples illustrate the role of external forces in reshaping the systems in question and their vulnerability to environmental hazards, as well as the different capacities of stakeholders, based on their access to social and biophysical capital, to respond to the changes and hazards. The framework proves useful in directing attention to the interacting parts of the coupled system and helps identify gaps in information and understanding relevant to reducing vulnerability in the systems as a whole.
Assuntos
Conservação dos Recursos Naturais , Meio Ambiente , Agricultura/economia , Agricultura/legislação & jurisprudência , Agricultura/métodos , Criação de Animais Domésticos/economia , Criação de Animais Domésticos/métodos , Animais , Regiões Árticas , Países em Desenvolvimento , Desastres , Economia , Ecossistema , Poluição Ambiental , Efeito Estufa , Groenlândia , Humanos , México , Modelos Teóricos , Noruega , Gestão da Segurança , Árvores , Abastecimento de ÁguaRESUMO
Global environmental change and sustainability science increasingly recognize the need to address the consequences of changes taking place in the structure and function of the biosphere. These changes raise questions such as: Who and what are vulnerable to the multiple environmental changes underway, and where? Research demonstrates that vulnerability is registered not by exposure to hazards (perturbations and stresses) alone but also resides in the sensitivity and resilience of the system experiencing such hazards. This recognition requires revisions and enlargements in the basic design of vulnerability assessments, including the capacity to treat coupled human-environment systems and those linkages within and without the systems that affect their vulnerability. A vulnerability framework for the assessment of coupled human-environment systems is presented.
