Miller - Reconstructing Sustainability Science: Knowledge and Action for a Sustainable Future

Reconstructing Sustainability Science

The growing urgency, complexity and wickedness of sustainability problems from climate change and biodiversity loss to ecosystem degradation and persistent poverty and inequality present fundamental challenges to the production and use of scientific knowledge. While there is little doubt that science has a crucial role to play in our ability to pursue sustainability goals, critical questions remain as to how to organize research most effectively and connect it to actions that advance social and natural well-being.

Drawing on interviews with leading sustainability scientists, this book examines how researchers in the emerging, interdisciplinary field of sustainability science are attempting to define sustainability, establish research agendas and link the knowledge they produce to societal action. Pairing these insights with case studies of innovative sustainability research centres, the book reformulates the sustainability science research agenda and its relationship to decision-making and social action. It repositions the field as a science of design that aims to enrich public reasoning and deliberation while also working to generate social and technological innovations for a more sustainable future.

This timely book gives students, researchers and practitioners a valuable and unique analysis of the emergence of sustainability science, and both the opportunities and barriers faced by scientific efforts to contribute to a more sustainable world.

Thaddeus R. Miller is Assistant Professor at the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University, USA. He is also an affiliate of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University, USA. His research explores the social, ethical and political dimensions of science, technology and sustainability.

Science in Society Series
Series Editor: Steve Rayner

Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford

Editorial Board: Jason Blackstock, Bjorn Ola Linner, Susan Owens, Timothy ORiordan, Arthur Peterson, Nick Pidgeon, Dan Sarewitz, Andy Sterling, Chris Tyler, Andrew Webster, Steve Yearley

The Earthscan Science in Society Series aims to publish new high-quality research, teaching, practical and policy- related books on topics that address the complex and vitally important interface between science and society.

Vaccine Anxieties:

Global science, child health and society

Melissa Leach and James Fairhead

Democratizing Technology

Risk, responsibility and the regulation of chemicals

Anne Chapman

Genomics and Society

Legal, ethical and social dimensions

Edited by George Gaskell and Martin W. Bauer

A Web of Prevention

Biological weapons, life sciences and the governance of research

Edited by Brian Rappert and Caitrona McLeish

Nanotechnology

Risk, ethics and law

Edited by Geoffrey Hunt and Michael Mehta

Unnatural Selection

The challenges of engineering tomorrows people

Edited by Peter Healey and Steve Rayner

Debating Climate Change

Pathways through argument to agreement

Elizabeth L. Malone

Business Planning for Turbulent Times

New methods for applying scenarios

Edited by Rafael Ramrez, John W. Selsky and Kees van der Heijden

Influenza and Public Health

Learning from past pandemics

Tamara Giles-Vernick, Susan Craddock and Jennifer Gunn

Animals as Biotechnology

Ethics, sustainability and critical animal studies

Richard Twine

Uncertainty in Policy Making

Values and evidence in complex decisions

Michael Heazle

The Limits to Scarcity

Contesting the politics of allocation

Lyla Mehta

Rationality and Ritual

Participation and exclusion in nuclear decision making, 2nd edn

Brian Wynne

Integrating Science and Policy

Vulnerability and resilience in global environmental change

Edited by Roger E. Kasperson and Mimi Berberian

Dynamics of Disaster

Lessons on risk response and recovery

Rachel A. Dowty Beech and Barbara Allen

The Social Dynamics of Carbon Capture and Storage

Understanding CCS representations, governance and innovation

Edited by Nils Markusson, Simon Shackley and Benjamin Evar

Science and Public Reason

Sheila Jasanoff

Marginalized Reproduction

Ethnicity, infertility and reproductive technologies

Edited by Lorraine Culley, Nicky Hudson and Floor van Rooij

Resolving Messy Policy Problems

Handling conflict in environmental, transport, health and ageing policy

Steven Ney

The Hartwell Approach to Climate Policy

Edited by Steve Rayner and Mark Caine

Reconstructing Sustainability Science

Knowledge and action for a sustainable future

Thaddeus R. Miller

RECONSTRUCTING SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE

Knowledge and action for a sustainable future

Thaddeus R. Miller

First published 2015

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2015 Thaddeus R. Miller

The right of Thaddeus R. Miller to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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A catalog record for this book has been requested.

ISBN: 978-0-415-63261-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-63262-1 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-38390-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Fish Books

To Britt and Zadie

A new generation of students and scholars has embraced sustainability as a concept and is eager to explore more thoughtful, more integrative and better scientifically grounded ways to approach it. Thad Millers new book is just what they are looking for.

Paul B. Thompson, Michigan State University, USA

Thad Millers book presents a sophisticated, nuanced and insightful analysis of the emerging field of sustainability science. Particularly welcome is his analysis of the normative, ethical and epistemological underpinnings of different approaches to sustainability. His proposal for an explicitly normative solutions-oriented approach to sustainability is exactly right.

John Robinson, University of British Columbia, Canada