In June 2012, 20 years after the 1992 Earth Summit, delegates from countries around the world met again in Rio de Janeiro. They went for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or, in short, Rio +20. Two decades ago, three conventions on different aspects of the protection of the global environment — climate change1, biodiversity2 and desertification3 — had been signed. The 1992 Summit had raised hopes for decisive action. But implementation of the conventions proved difficult and fell short of the original goals.

Thus, Rio +20 had a difficult starting point, and the outcome of the conference reflects this situation: few (if any) binding commitments were achieved that are comparable to the conventions initiated during the 1992 Earth Summit. About 700 voluntary 'bottom-up' pledges to action were made this June by individual governments, along with a commitment of the UN to formulate and implement a set of Sustainable Development Goals. In principle, this process can be used to renew unfulfilled earlier pledges and to seriously tackle critical issues. However, it is not clear if all parties involved are more willing now to change the ways we think of and act on impending threats to the environment.

At this point, the science community — more specifically, the Earth science community — needs to tackle the question of how best to inject scientific insights into the debate about a sustainable future. For example, finding out whether the Earth system's capacity is large enough to provide the resources needed to sustain the projected world population — without causing irreparable harm — requires the expertise of Earth scientists, but not exclusively. Here we argue that Earth scientists can only help in a meaningful way with solving the challenges of the twenty-first century if they collaborate closely with scientists from the more applied sciences, such as engineering, as well as the life sciences, social sciences and humanities.

Room for improvement

Humans are changing vital functions of our planet. The question of how large a burden the Earth can bear is not new. It has been pondered for a long time, but more intensely in the wake of publications such as Silent Spring4 and The Limits to Growth5 in the 1960s and 1970s. In the past decade, the combined impact of human activities — global warming, droughts and floods, biodiversity loss, degradation of water quality and the depletion of fish stocks and minerals, to name but a few — have led to the suggestion that we have entered a new geological era that is dominated by humans, the Anthropocene6,7,8.

In response to these challenges, the Earth science community has initiated or carried out a number of programmes and activities9,10,11,12 since about 1980. These activities build on basic Earth science research but aim to provide information of immediate value to stakeholders and decision makers. These efforts at gathering Earth science knowledge for a sustainable future, and communicating it to decision makers, are laudable, but they do not go far enough. For example, academia is the principal institution for production of knowledge and yet is still operating in a mode with a strong affinity to disciplinary, reductionist research — largely disconnected from engaging directly in practice.

Despite some efforts to encourage interdisciplinary work, there is no serious movement towards research specifically for the benefit of humanity, nor are appropriate rewards and award systems in place for conducting such research. Modern universities have to adjust to these needs much more rapidly than they are willing to do at present, if they do not want to be left out of the debate about the future of our planet. We need more capacity and flexible support targeted towards not just asking questions, but actually solving real-world problems.

Credit: © ISTOCKPHOTO / THINKSTOCK
Credit: © ISTOCKPHOTO / THINKSTOCK

Rio +20 closed with a document13, “The Future We Want”, which invites academia to participate in defining and implementing the pathway towards a sustainable future. Working out sustainable development goals for the UN, and ultimately global society, requires scientific input. The Earth sciences are called on to provide basic knowledge of the Earth system: its carrying capacity and long-term availability of both renewable and non-renewable resources.

Ways forward

In essence, Earth scientists must accept that they have to expand their outlook if they are to play a direct and active role in the debate on a sustainable future (Fig. 1). Of course, efforts in basic research and discovery have to continue, but they need to be supplemented by applications of Earth science knowledge and techniques to solve practical problems. For example, Earth scientists are needed to help find solutions to pressing environmental problems, evaluate mitigation and adaptation options, inform efforts at stewardship of our planet, and develop scenarios for possible future states of the Earth. During the past three decades, traditional goals of studying the Earth's components separately have been augmented by Earth system science. This expansion of our discipline from curiosity-driven science to a broader spectrum that includes solution-oriented research has to accelerate.

Figure 1: Towards sustainable development.
figure 1

The Earth sciences (central oval) have progressed towards Earth system science, which includes interactions of the physical components of Earth with the ecosystem. They must be broadened further to encompass the human domain to inform decisions on sustainable development.

Full size image

Along with Earth scientists' goals, their approaches also need to evolve. To work on practical problems, Earth scientists will have to take on the role as participants in a broader team of researchers, rather than as observers or advisors, as is currently more familiar. Collaboration with the social sciences, humanities and stakeholders will be at the centre of successful ways forward. Direct involvement of the public through crowd-sourcing, as well as conflict resolution between multiple stakeholders — academic, business, community and government — can help build the two-way communication that is necessary for progress14.

Finally, the scope of Earth science education and communication must be broadened. Earth science educators were at the forefront of helping people view the individual components of Earth holistically as they embraced Earth system science in the 1980s. The next step — integrating Earth science into sustainable development — requires incorporating practical problems as a legitimate goal. For many Earth scientists trained in a discipline themselves, this can be outside their core expertise and would therefore require new coalitions with other fields. It is important to note that not all Earth scientists need to engage in this way; but it is critical that enough people with the capacity to understand the Earth step up to the challenge of informing the design of 'the future we want'. This means taking responsibility for transferring their knowledge into action, learning to engage with stakeholders, facilitate discussion and resolve conflicts about scientific questions, as well as manage projects involving multiple perspectives and roles.

The impacts of human activities on the planet are still largely not combatted. It would be naïve to think that Earth scientists alone can turn around the development to ever larger environmental exploitation. But by fully integrating themselves in the efforts from all corners of global society towards a sustainable future, Earth scientists can — and should — play an essential part.