Ah, the definition should be a list if questions.

Sustaining what? For whom? For how long? Is it important that this resource be 
sustained? Why?

T



On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:58 PM, Wayne Tyson <landr...@cox.net> wrote:

> Ecolog:
> 
> "johoma," thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and 
> someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff 
> journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more 
> work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend 
> toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power 
> that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the 
> sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of 
> exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized 
> institutionalism. 
> 
> Doomed? Only if "we" persist in our comfortable delusions. 
> 
> But "sustainability" still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar 
> fate that "ecology" has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts 
> of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad 
> Av and its ilk. 
> 
> For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define 
> sustainability with clarity. 
> 
> Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?)
> 
> WT
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "johoma" <joh...@gmail.com>
> To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
> Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM
> Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the 
> practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
> 
> 
> An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview:
> 
> One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the
> front section of *PLoS Biology* <http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action> is
> to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing
> scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach
> communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled
> literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles
> without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published
> yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro
> last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable
> Development <http://www.uncsd2012.org/> to ”shape how we can reduce
> poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re
> featuring three articles and an accompanying
> podcast<http://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/>from leading ecologists
> and conservation scientists that raise absolutely
> fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should
> be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because
> sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences
> and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that
> govern life.
> 
> Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are
> constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other
> species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken
> on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to
> the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA)
> 
> The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina
> Mace<http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace>,
> one of our Editorial Board
> members<http://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.action>and Professor
> of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC
> Centre for Population Biology <http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb>. It started
> with an essay
> <http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345>submitted
> by Robbie Burger <https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/>, Jim
> Brown, <http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtml>Craig
> Allen<http://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109>and
> others from Jim
> Brown’s lab <http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml>, in which
> they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently
> take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered by
> human macroecology, which aims to understand what governs and limits human
> distribution. The very strong – and seemingly obvious – point they make is
> that ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that
> regulate every other species and population on the planet — and we have
> already surpassed the Earth’s capacity to sustain even current levels of
> human population and socioeconomic activity, let alone future trajectories
> of growth. And while we often applaud ourselves for doing something
> apparently sustainable at a local level, we ignore the fact that we
> displace the consequences of using up resources either temporally or
> spatially at larger regional or global scales. These authors provide a
> powerful set of examples that show the wider detrimental impacts of locally
> ‘sustainable’ systems, including that of Portland, Oregon – which ‘is
> hailed by the media as “the most sustainable city in America”’, and the
> Bristol Bay Salmon Fishery, also cited as a success story. (Burger et al’s
> point here echoes a call for more ecosystem-based management of fisheries
> made recently in another recent *PLoS Biology* article by Levi et
> al<http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001303>
> ).
> 
> During the editorial process, it became clear that while there was
> agreement that human ecology is a key factor for understanding sustainable
> resource use , not everyone agreed with the pessimistic and seemingly
> static outlook presented by Burger et al. We therefore commissioned John
> Matthews <http://climatechangewater.org/page2/page2.html> and Fred
> Boltz<http://www.conservation.org/FMG/Articles/Pages/conservation_in_action_fred_boltz.aspx>from
> Conservation
> International <http://www.conservation.org/Pages/default.aspx> to provide
> their more optimistic
> perspective<http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001344>.
> They argue that the world is a much more dynamic place than that set out by
> Burger et al and that human ingenuity and adaptability (both human and
> planetary) may provide creative solutions that will allow human societies
> to overcome resource limitation and continue to grow.
> *rest of the story here: **
> http://blogs.plos.org/biologue/2012/06/20/rio20-why-sustainability-must-include-ecology/
> *
> *
> *
> *
> *
> *
> *
> *Direct links
> *Georgina Mace’s overview: *The Limits to Sustainability Science:
> Ecological Constraints or Endless Innovation?
> **
> http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001343
> *
> Her podcast:
> *
> http://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/2012/06/19/plos-biology-podcast-episode-05-flirting-with-disaster/
> *
> 
> The Burger et al. piece: *The Macroecology of Sustainability
> **
> http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001345
> *
> 
> Matthews & Boltz: *The Shifting Boundaries of Sustainability Science: Are
> We Doomed Yet?
> **
> http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001344
> *

Reply via email to