Geography and
the Emergence of
Sustainability Science:
Missed Opportunities and
Enduring Possibilities
Drew E. Bennett
Geography Program
College of Earth, Ocean, & Atmospheric
Sciences
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
The dawn of the 21 st century saw the
emergence of the newly declared field of
“sustainability science.” The new field’s research agenda focuses on meeting human
needs while simultaneously sustaining the
life support systems of the planet. The field
works to merge the natural and social sciences with analyses conducted from global to
local scales. Sustainability science resembles
the long-standing human-environment tradition in geography, yet geography was not
widely recognized as a fundamental discipline during the emergence of sustainability
science. The failure of geography to exert
itself in the birth of sustainability science
is the latest failure by geography to take its
place as a discipline essential to solving pressing environmental problems. Opportunities
remain for geography to take a central role
in the advancement of sustainability science
by leveraging its diversity of perspectives to
provide a needed and uniquely geographical
contribution.
Key Words: sustainability science, humanenvironment, history of geography, identity
INTRODUCTION
The dawn of the 21st century provided an
opportunity to take stock of the state of the
planet and to focus attention on the pressing social and environmental problems facing
society in the new millennium. In response to
growing awareness of the world’s sustainability crisis, scholars announced the emergence
of the new field of sustainability science
with a research agenda focused on “meeting
fundamental human needs while preserving the life support systems of the planet”
(Kates et al. 2000, 1). This young field now
boasts several scholarly journals such as Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy and
Sustainability Science and special sections in
well-established publications including the
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciThe Geographical Bulletin 54: 99-112
©2013 by Gamma Theta Upsilon
99
Drew E. Bennett
ences (PNAS). Many of its proponents argue
that it is a novel approach that merges natural
and social sciences as well as global and local
perspectives. This is despite over a century of
geographers studying human-environment
relations at multiple scales.
In this paper, I examine the emergence
of sustainability science and its relationship
with geography, and argue that sustainability
science does not represent a “new” field but
a continuation of a longstanding tradition
within geography. I also argue that, although
several geographers feature prominently in
the emergence of sustainability science, their
contributions occurred in venues outside the
discipline of geography, and so went largely
unnoticed by the geography community at
large. As a result, geography did not establish itself as a leading discipline within the
emerging field. I suggest that internal divisions within geography have also fragmented
geographic discourse and subsequently obscured geography’s contributions to sustainability science in the literature. I contend
that these divergent perspectives are not
weaknesses of the discipline but important
assets that, through increased dialogue and
internal debate, could provide geography’s
most meaningful contributions to sustainability science.
THE EMERGENCE OF
SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE
The influence of the concept of sustainability on modern scholarship largely dates
to the Brundtland Commission report on
sustainable development published in 1987
by the World Commission on Environment
and Development (see Table 1 for a chronology of important events in the emergence
of sustainability science)(Komiyama and
Takeuchi 2006). This report explicitly
linked environmental and social agendas
and argued that solutions to environmental
degradation and poverty need to be pursued together (WCED 1987). The United
Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro
in 1992 also brought the concept of sustainable development to the forefront of
international policy with the issuance of
the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21, which
outlined strategies and plans to achieve the
promise of sustainable development in the
21st century (Chhetri and Chhetri 2010).
In 1997, the UN issued a report detailing
the lack of progress towards sustainable
development in the decade following the
Brundtland Commision report. The US National Research Council (NRC) published a
study, titled Our Common Journey, to deduce
the previous decade’s failings and outline
a research agenda and strategy to achieve
sustainability (NRC 1999). According to
Chhetri and Chhetri (2010), the report was
significant in that it highlighted the need to
adopt “a more holistic approach for addressing sustainability challenges by taking into
account the dynamic and complex interactions among human-environment systems.”
As the 20th century ended, many scholars
recognized the complexity of the task at
hand, and the need for the advancement of
theoretical frameworks to understand and
address the growing sustainability crisis.
Table 1. Significant events in the emergence of sustainability science
Event
Year
Brundtland Report
1987
Rio Conference
1992
Our Common Journey
1999
Friibergh workshop and Kates et al. Science paper
2000-01
PNAS section and Sustainability and Sustainability Science founded
2005-06
100
Geography and the Emergence of Sustainability Science: Missed Opportunities and Enduring Possibilities
In 2000, a group of prominent scholars
convened the Friibergh workshop on sustainability science in Örsundsbro, Sweden to
analyze current efforts and identify research
gaps in early sustainability studies. The group
concluded that fulfilling the promise of sustainability “requires the emergence and conduct of the new field of sustainability science”
(SISD 2009). The outcomes of the workshop
were published in a report and subsequent
article in the journal Science and established a
research agenda for moving the field forward
(Kates et al. 2000; Kates et al. 2001). The
high-profile publication brought sustainability science to the forefront of academia
and helped establish the field as a legitimate
field of inquiry.
Two years after the Science publication,
Clark and Dickson (2003) took stock of
the emerging field in the introduction to a
special feature on sustainability science in
PNAS. They note that the term “sustainability science” is controversial since some
have interpreted it as meaning a “mature
discipline with shared conceptual and theoretical components that most certainly does
not exist” (Clark and Dickson 2003, 8059).
Instead, they argue that sustainability science is more of an interdisciplinary “arena”
with a shared common purpose of understanding and providing for society’s needs
within the limited environmental resources
provided by the planet. Their explanation
also explicitly recognized the importance of
applied aspects of the science and the need
for the coproduction of knowledge between
scholars and practitioners. In introducing the
accompanying articles of the special feature,
Clark and Dickson state that although the
efforts underway do not represent a uniform
field, “something different is surely ‘in the
air,’ something that is intellectually exciting,
practically compelling, and might as well be
called ‘sustainability science’”(Clark and
Dickson 2003, 8060).
In 2005 the outgoing and incoming presidents of the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) decided to create a separate section
for sustainability science in the PNAS (Clark
2007). NAS offered two primary reasons for
giving sustainability science “a room of its
own” in its principal scholarly publication.
The first was to build off of the leadership
the NAS and its members provided in advancing sustainability science. The second
reason was in response to a NAS analysis that
demonstrated that publications relevant to
the field of sustainability science were rapidly increasing by 15-20% annually and
were increasingly fragmented into single or
paired discipline journals (e.g., ecological
economics) or journals of narrowly focused
topics (e.g., agriculture or energy). The NAS
analysis determined that no single journal accounted for more than 5% of the important
papers in the field. In response, NAS decided
to provide a “high-profile, high-quality, interdisciplinary venue for publication of the
best work produced in the field” (Clark 2007,
1738). Receiving its own section within the
PNAS was a nod to the legitimacy of sustainability science as a worthy research arena and
represented the institutionalization of the
field within a prestigious science academy.
The NAS action to create a separate section in the PNAS was accompanied almost
simultaneously by the founding of two journals dedicated to sustainability science: Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy and
Sustainability Science. The eminent biologist
E. O. Wilson provided the opening editorial in the first issue of Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy (Wilson 2005). The
editorial states the goal of the publication is
“to establish a forum for cross-disciplinary
discussion of natural and social sciences,
practices, and policies related to sustainability” (Wilson 2005, 1). The editorial also
acknowledges that the term “sustainability”
is difficult to define and only through debate
and dialogue among its practitioners will it
grow into a coherent discipline. Similarly,
Komiyama and Tekeuchi (2006) introduced
the first edition of the journal Sustainability
Science by explaining the rationale for its
establishment.
Echoing similar reasoning to that of the
NAS, Komiyama and Tekeuchi (2006) as101
Drew E. Bennett
serted that the field of sustainability science
was diverse and its practitioners often came
from numerous disparate disciplines. Critical
research relevant to the sustainability agenda
was fragmented across a vast number of disciplinary journals making it nearly impossible
for individual scholars to access and incorporate all the new information. Sustainability
Science therefore sought to provide a venue
for synthesizing knowledge from individual
disciplines and integrating them into a
“transdisciplinary” effort. Komiyama and
Tekeuchi (2006) also outlined their vision
for the field of sustainability science, which
they saw as the study of the global, social, and
human systems and their interconnections.
Komiyama and Tekeuchi (2006) asserted
that the current sustainability crisis could be
understood, and thus confronted, by breaking down these systems and examining their
linkages. While individual disciplines engage
in research on these separate systems, it is
the task of sustainability science to synthesize
this research and disseminate it as actionable
knowledge to inform decision making that
advances sustainability objectives through,
for example, the public policy process.
By the end of the first decade of the
21st century, sustainability science clearly
established itself as legitimate field of high
research priority both within and external
to the academy. Prominent associations and
academies (e.g., AAAS and NAS) recognized
the emerging field and scholars active in sustainability science provided research foci and
objectives. For example, Kates et al. (2001,
641) stated that:
A new field of sustainability science
is emerging that seeks to understand
the fundamental character of interactions between nature and society. Such
an understanding must encompass the
interaction of global processes with the
ecological and social characteristics
of particular places and sectors. The
regional character of much of what
sustainability science is trying to explain
means that relevant research will have
102
to integrate the effects of key processes
across the full range of scales from local
to global.
To many trained in geography, this vision
for sustainability science looked remarkably
similar to what geographers of the humanenvironment tradition have practiced for
decades.
Since the publication of George Perkins
Marsh’s Man and Nature (Marsh 1864),
geographers have engaged in innovative
research to understand the condition of the
planet and the underlying social systems driving environmental change1. A high point in
the human-environment tradition occurred
when a leading geographer, Carl Sauer, was
invited to organize the high-profile conference, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of
the Earth,” in 1955. The conference proceedings were later published as a collection of
essays under the same name, and fifteen of
the fifty-three contributors were geographers.
According to Williams, the conference and
published essays “validated the interdisciplinary approach, heightened the environmental
consciousness of the English-speaking world,
and exerted an unprecedented influence on
the development of a unified approach to
environmental issues” (Williams 1987, 218).
Although not realized at the time, the work
anticipated the environmental concerns of
the 1970s. Geography was positioned as an
influential discipline with important insights
into the environmental condition.
However, the discipline would soon turn
its energy elsewhere in the wake of Fred
Schaefer’s “Exceptionalism in Geography:
A Methodological Examination,” which
shifted geographer’s attention to quantitative approaches (Shaefer 1953). According
to Williams:
Although the essays in “Man’s Role”
were not written exclusively by geographers … the volume has held an
important, highly visible place in the
discipline. Paradoxically its central message - the importance of the interplay
Geography and the Emergence of Sustainability Science: Missed Opportunities and Enduring Possibilities
between mankind and the environment
as a focus of study - was ignored, if
not rejected by geography during the
1950s and 1960s. Initially geographers
equated environment with the sterile
philosophical debate about determinism and possibilism, and they later were
enticed by the mysteries of the new
positivism (1987, 218).
Just as the discipline was carving out an
important place in addressing salient environmental issues, geographers turned their
attention elsewhere. Peet chastised geography
for what he calls geography’s greatest failure:
[B]ecause the discipline failed to find
a theoretical key to unlock the secrets
of its most profound (environmental)
question, it had lapsed into an embarrassed silence just as the relation between
society and nature came into a state of
contradiction and crisis during the late
1960s and the 1970s. What should
have been geography’s finest hour was,
instead, the moment of its most dismal
failure - the discipline played a minor
role in the environmental debate of the
1970s (1985, 328).
Peet’s sentiment was shared by Williams
(1987, 230), who argued that, “even a
seminal work like ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel
Carson, which showed that not all progress
was beneficial, seemed to have little influence
on geographical thought. The geographical
profession showed little awareness of the ‘environment’ and had to be informed in 1970
that it had arrived.”
Geography could have demonstrated its
value to academia and society by spearheading
initiatives to understand and address growing
environmental problems, as it had done at
the “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the
Earth” symposium. According to Peet (1985)
and Williams (1987), just as the environment
was beginning to matter to society, geographers turned their attention away. Ultimately,
other disciplines such as ecology and economics
gained this recognition at the expense of geography. Hare (1969, 53, as cited by Williams
1987, 219) succinctly summarizes geography’s
perennial problem, “sometimes I think that
geography as a science deliberately steps out of
phase with the climate of the times.”
THE ROLE OF GEOGRAPHERS
IN THE EMERGENCE OF
SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE
As the influence of the quantitative revolution waned in the 1980s (Butzer 2002), geographers of the human-environment tradition
once again were conducting research at scales
ranging from the local to the global and in locations around the world. As subfields of geography, such as political ecology and land-change
science, evolved in recent decades, geographers
have incorporated the latest geospatial technologies to understand environmental dynamics
and expanded the epistemological groundings
of their studies. In fact, geographers have long
been practicing precisely what proponents of
sustainability science called for in the “new”
and emerging field.
Due to the long tradition within geography
of studying human-environment interactions,
it is not surprising that several geographers
played prominent roles in the emergence of
sustainability science. In particular, Robert
Kates and Billie Lee Turner II led the field. It
should be noted that Kates and Turner were
not the only geographers active in sustainability science circles in the first decade of the 21st
century. For example, the Science publication
following the Friibergh workshop in 2000
included 23 authors, of which five were geographers (Kates et al. 2001). Kates and Turner,
however, stand out in the conceptualization
and promotion of sustainability science.
Widely acknowledged as one of the preeminent living geographers, Robert Kates was a
central figure in the emergence of sustainability science. As a member of the NAS, Kates
was a contributing author to Our Common
Journey in 1999. He also helped organize the
Friibergh workshop in 2000 that analyzed the
state of sustainability science and outlined a
103
Drew E. Bennett
research agenda for the field. Kates is listed
as the first author in the statement from the
workshop and the subsequent Science publication. Known for his earlier scholarship on
environmental hazards, his work in the late
1990s and early 2000s focused on sustainability. In particular, Kates has promoted the
concept of society’s need for a sustainability
transition. The concept’s central idea is the
need to adapt existing economic and social
systems in order to reduce their impacts on
environmental systems. To do so will require
demographic, technological, ecological, and
even ethical transitions within these systems
to create a civilization with the ability to meet
its needs over the long term (Kates 1995).
The idea of a sustainability transition is a
guiding concept in the field of sustainability
science and was explicitly adopted by the
authors of several seminal publications (e.g.
Kates et al. 2000; Kates et al. 2001).
Billie Lee Turner II’s career has ranged from
cultural ecology to current land-change science. Turner’s early work focused on ancient
Mayan land-use and cultivation practices and
their impacts on the environment. His recent
work within land-change science examines
the coupled social-ecological systems that
drive landscape changes. He has been at the
forefront in the application of GIS technology, including remote sensing, to model and
understand land dynamics. Turner’s contributions to sustainability science include the
development of frameworks to examine the
vulnerability and resilience of social-ecological
systems (Tuner et al. 2003; Turner et al. 2010).
Turner’s work was featured prominently in a
paper presenting a framework for vulnerability
analysis in the 2003 PNAS special feature on
sustainability science (Turner et al. 2003).
The concepts of vulnerability and resilience
represent important research foci within the
sustainability science agenda.
A MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR
GEOGRAPHY
Despite the leadership of these prominent
geographers, geography as a discipline played
104
a limited role in the emergence of sustainability science. According to Eflin, “sustainability is a hot-button topic elsewhere, yet
voices within geography have been strangely
silent on it” (2004, 339-340). In an analysis of geographers’ engagement with public
agencies and the NRC, Turner echoed Eflin’s
perspective:
[V]arious integrated environmental
and human-environment research
agendas, complete with an appreciation
for place-based approaches, continue
to unfold, many of them promoted by
the NAS and NRC in synchrony with
large, international agendas. These
events are being driven by ecologists,
spatial econometricians, and experts
from other fields as much as, or more
than, by the professional geographic
community (2005, 466).
As Turner argued, geography has struggled
to gain a prominent role in sustainability science. Part of this problem may be because
much of the discourse on sustainability science occurred in venues outside of geography.
Although many geographers conducted research relevant to sustainability science, they
communicated it in other disciplinary venues
(e.g., ecology) or multidisciplinary journals
(e.g., ecological economics). For example, a
look at the publications by Turner and the five
geographers that were authors on the Kates
et al. (2001) paper (Kates, Jager, Kasperson,
Mabogunje, and O’Riordan) showed that of
the 109 journal articles published by these
authors since 2000, only 18 (or 17%) were
in journals that the Web of Science database
classifies as geography journals.
I also conducted a simple analysis of the
use of the words “sustainable” and “sustainability”. This analysis used Web of Science
database searches to investigate the percentage of articles using the words “sustainable”
or “sustainability” in titles, abstracts, or as
keywords between 2000 and 2011 for four
geography journals and four journals from
associated disciplines. The results revealed
Geography and the Emergence of Sustainability Science: Missed Opportunities and Enduring Possibilities
that the two most prominent disciplinary
journals within geography, Annals of the
Association of American Geographers and The
Professional Geographer, utilized these words
the least. The associated discipline journals
used these words much more commonly, including 25% of articles in Ecology and Society
and 28% of articles in Ecological Economics
(Fig. 1). These differences, however, are not
entirely unexpected since the main geography
journals cover a broad range of topics while
the associated discipline journals are more
narrowly focused.
A more exhaustive study by Bettencourt
and Kaur (2011) analyzed the different disciplinary journals publishing research relevant
to sustainability science and found the social
sciences, biology, and engineering accounting
for 32%, 23%, and 22% of sustainability
science publications, respectively. A further
breakdown of the contributions from the social sciences (an excessively broad category!)
showed environmental policy accounting for
20% of the social science publications and
environmental management accounted for
15%. Political geographers contributed less
than 5% of the social science publications.
What is perhaps most revealing is that political geography was the only subdiscipline
mentioned in the study that included the
word geography and furthers the case that
geography as a discipline is not widely recognized as a major contributor to sustainability
science.
An examination of the website of geography’s principal professional association,
the Association of American Geographers
(AAG), also revealed the absence of any
reference to sustainability. The association
currently has over 60 specialty or affinity
groups, none of which refer to sustainability
or sustainability science.
That is not to say that geographers do
not engage with questions of sustainability.
Indeed, looking around the discipline today
provides a somewhat contradictory perspective, with many examples of geographers
of all stripes who are directly engaged with
research relevant to sustainability science.
Within physical geography there are many
examples coming from the subfields of hydrology (MacDonald 2010), geomorphology
(Hardin 2001), paleogeography (Turner and
Sabloff 2012), and remote sensing (Franklin
2009; Southworth and Gibbes 2010), among
others. Similar examples exist within the
human side of geography including recent
involvement with the Long Term Ecological Research areas of Baltimore and Phoenix
(e.g., Boone and Fragkias 2013; Larson et
al. 2013). Numerous critical geographers are
also engaged in sustainability-related scholarship, including those that remain skeptical
of the concept and challenge conventional
framings of sustainability (e.g., Davidson
2010a, 2010b). Efforts within political ecology are prime examples of critical geographic
perspectives on sustainability (e.g., While et
al. 2004; Pincetl and Katz 2007; Dempsey
and Robertson 2012; Macdonald and Kiel
2012).
Indeed, geographers’ engagement in
sustainability science appears to be on the
increase. Writing in The Professional Geographer, three former AAG presidents provided
a list of ten big questions for geography that
deserved increased research attention (Cutter
et al. 2002). One of these questions, “how
and why do sustainability and vulnerability
change from place to place and over time?”
(Cutter et al. 2002, 314), directs geographers
towards the sustainability science agenda.
Many have responded to the sustainability
science call and geographers paid increased
attention to the field at recent AAG Annual
Meetings. A review of the online programs of
the AAG Annual Meetings showed that only
38 abstracts from the 2005 Annual Meeting
included the words “sustainability” or “sustainable” as keywords. This number steady
increased and by the 2013 Annual Meeting
187 abstracts included at least one of these
key words (see Fig. 2)2.
These different data points suggest that
some geographers were actively engaged with
sustainability science during its emergence
but that their contributions were largely
occurring in publication venues outside of
105
Drew E. Bennett
Figure 1. Results from Web of Science database searches.
Figure 2. Number of AAG Annual Meeting abstracts using “Sustainability” or “Sustainable”
as keywords from 2005 to 2013.
106
Geography and the Emergence of Sustainability Science: Missed Opportunities and Enduring Possibilities
geography. It also suggests that many geographers have come late to sustainability science.
As a consequence, geography failed to receive
recognition as a leading discipline during
the emergence of sustainability science.
This outcome is unfortunate since this was
an opportunity to raise geography’s profile
within the academy and with the public. In
recent years, however, geographers have given
increased attention to sustainability and there
are numerous and diverse geographic voices
now contributing to the sustainability science
discussion.
FINDING GEOGRAPHY’S VOICE IN
SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE
Opportunities remain for geography to
make its mark and establish itself as a discipline critical to the young field of sustainability science. The question that remains is
this: what should geography’s contribution
be? A 2010 report by the National Research
Council, entitled Understanding the Changing
Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences and authored by leading geographers, offered one perspective by laying out
11 strategic directions for the geographical
sciences, many of which are directly relevant
to sustainability science (See Table 2) (NRC
2010). The Professional Geographer created a
special focus section of an issue in 2011 to
solicit reactions to the report from five lead-
ing geographers as well as a response from
one of the report authors. Reactions ranged
from optimism that the report and the directions it laid out would help raise the profile
of geography (Robbins 2011), to those who
felt it promoted a fragmented perspective of
the discipline (Clarke 2011; Winkler 2011),
and those who thought it lacked substance
and presented a narrow view of geography
(Barnes 2011; Johnson 2011).
What is revealed in these different reactions is that geography has historically been
and continues to be a pluralistic, “big tent”
discipline without a core identity. It is not
surprising then that the report, and its relevance to sustainability science, evoked such
divergent opinions. While the NRC report
points towards leveraging large datasets
and new geospatial technologies as the way
forward, it ignores a sizable population of
geographers conducting research relevant
to sustainability that do not fit within this
box, especially humanistic and critical geographers (e.g., While et al. 2004; Davidson
2010a, 2010b; Macdonald and Keil 2012).
Instead, I see geography’s best path forward
in leveraging its greatest asset, its remarkable diversity of research approaches. I echo
Barnes (2011, 334) in stating, “the very
strength of geography is precisely in its methodological diversity and pluralism, which in
the end will best contribute to understanding
the changing planet.” While this diversity
Table 2. 11 Strategic research questions provided in NRC (2010)
Strategic Research Questions
1. How are we changing the physical environment of the Earth’s surface?
2. How can we best preserve biological diversity and protect endangered ecosystems?
3. How are climate and other environmental changes affecting the vulnerabilities of coupled humanenvironment systems?
4. How and where will 10 billion people live on Earth?
5. How will we sustainably feed everyone in the coming decade and beyond?
6. How does where people live affect their health?
7. How is the movement of people, goods, and ideas transforming the world?
8. How is economic globalization affecting inequality?
9. How are geopolitical shifts influencing peace and sustainability?
10. How might we better observe, analyze, and visualize a changing world?
11. What are the societal implications of citizen mapping and mapping citizens?
107
Drew E. Bennett
or lack of a core identity has at times been
viewed as a weakness of the discipline (e.g.,
Smith 1987; Turner 2002), the divergent
perspectives, methodological techniques,
and varied epistemological approaches may
represent the greatest potential for geography
to make a distinct and significant contribution to sustainability science.
Geography is a uniquely positioned discipline in the academe with scholars in the
physical and social sciences as well as in the
humanities. While physical and social sciences are essential for understanding environmental changes and their consequences,
the humanities can provide valuable insights
into human perceptions, moral values, and
environmental ethics. Different epistemological perspectives can provide alternative
explanations of environmental and social
change. Geography has an opportunity to
increase dialogue and collaboration among
divergent subfields relevant to sustainability
science. Integrating these diverse perspectives is critical yet extremely difficult given
the siloed nature of much of the academe.
Broadly trained geographers are positioned to
recognize the value of this scholarly diversity
and bridge these divergent perspectives in a
mutually informative way. Contributions in
this area could focus on identifying sources
of disagreement within the sustainability
debate and clarifying whether they originate
from differences in empirical interpretation
or are rooted in distinct epistemological
perspectives or even moral values and ethics.
Dialogue could focus on assessing whether
these disagreements are intransigent or can
be reconciled through further collaboration.
Such integration is essential for addressing
complex and multifaceted sustainability
challenges and could provide a uniquely
geographical contribution to the sustainability dilemma.
Although this diversity may represent the
discipline’s strength, it also means geography
is a divided discipline with many scholars
sharing more in common with colleagues
in cognate disciplines than with fellow geographers in their own departments. Two
108
divisions within geography seem especially
relevant to the discussion on sustainability
science. The first is the longstanding division
between physical and human geographers
(Harrison et al. 2004). The other, related to
the first, is the division between positivist
and critical geography.3 The significance of
these divisions means that many geographers
engage with different literatures and use different jargon. Others go outside geography
and publish in adjacent disciplines or multidisciplinary journals. As noted by Nigel
Thrift:
[H]uman and physical geography are
based in different knowledge-producing
infrastructures. Physical geographers
face towards a highly interdisciplinary
environment, and are rewarded for
publishing in key journals which are
generally [outside of ] geography…
Human geographers exist in a highly
interdisciplinary environment but generally publish in a very narrow range
of geography journals (Harrison et al.
2004, 438-439).
Similarly, Karl Butzer has highlighted the
divisions created by subfield-specific jargon
that stifles intra-disciplinary dialogue:
Recently, young scholars who do not
match the semantics of endless neologisms drawn from ‘critical theory’ have
had trouble getting published in some
journals. Passages in articles or books often need two or three readings to make
sense, rendering our written products
more inaccessible than in the heyday
of positivist jargon (Butzer 2002, 76).
Similar criticisms could be lobbed at dense
or overly technical positivist writings. The
result of these divisions is a fractured voice
emanating from geography that dilutes the
perceived contributions to sustainability science. These voices fail to achieve a synergy
that is recognizable as a distinct geographic
contribution.
Geography and the Emergence of Sustainability Science: Missed Opportunities and Enduring Possibilities
What I believe is currently lacking is the
intra-disciplinary dialogue among geographers necessary for developing a shared
understanding and respect for the diversity
of perspectives on the important problems
plaguing the environment and society. Turner
and Robbins (2008) provide a promising example of this intra-disciplinary dialogue. This
collaboration between two prominent geographers, one a land change scientist (Turner)
and the other a political ecologist (Robbins),
considers the similarities and differences between two major subfields of geography that
are directly relevant to sustainability science.
Although land change science and political
ecology share similar research foci (e.g., land
degradation, conservation, and institutions)
they diverge with how they frame problems
and often in their analytical approaches. Land
change science largely adopts a positivist (or
postpositivist) vision of science while political ecology maintains more critical perspectives including postcolonial, poststructural,
and feminist analyses (Turner and Robbins
2008). Although these differences often lead
to divergent interpretations of the causes of
land change, they converge in their appreciation for the complexity and linkages among
numerous contextual variables. Turner and
Robbins (2008, 309) conclude that, “the
more convergent forms of [land change
science] and [political ecology] maybe so
fused in problem framing and methods that
concept of a hybrid land change or ecology
is not far-fetched”.
This collaboration between Turner and
Robbins (2008) demonstrates the increased
appreciation and mutual understanding that
can develop among separate subfields through
improved dialogue, which can point the way
towards a more integrated and geographical
understanding of sustainability. By leveraging
the multitude of voices within geography, we
can begin to more fully understand the magnitude of the sustainability challenge and the
pluralism of potential solutions. Geography
is uniquely positioned to fill this charge. I
argue that this represents geography’s unfulfilled potential within sustainability science.
“WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND
HE IS US”
The dawn of the new century could have
been geography’s finest hour again. The
discipline was well positioned to carry the
banner of sustainability science into the new
millennium. Geographers of the humanenvironment tradition have long practiced
what sustainability scientists were proposing with the new field. It was geography’s
opportunity to demonstrate its value to the
academe and society. When those outside of
geography think of disciplines associated with
sustainability science, they should think of
geography. Instead, as Turner (2005) points
out, they think of ecology, economics, and
other fields. Geography failed to exert itself
in the emergence of sustainability science,
possibly due to the fragmented nature of the
discipline and the fault lies squarely with geographers. To quote the famous line from the
comic strip Pogo, “we have met the enemy
and he is us”. Given the increasing research
attention geographers are now giving to the
field, opportunities remain for geography
to find its voice and exert itself as a leading
discipline within sustainability science.
Numerous problems plague the sustainability of the environment, the economy,
and society. Geography is well positioned
to play a prominent role in addressing them
all. Geographers are well prepared with both
the theoretical and technical tools. In sharing these views, Eflin issued a challenge to
geographers:
Kates (2002) and Turner (2002) point
geographers toward a new connection
that has been missing within geography
for some time, a connection to be made
because geography gives its practitioners
the insights and skills to synthesize and
integrate for the good of meeting human needs and maintaining their environmental resource base. But, we do not
have to await the emergence of another,
separate ‘science’ of sustainability; we
must regain our soul, our focus…The
109
Drew E. Bennett
time has come for geographers…to
come together to lend the strength of
their discipline while preserving geography’s own place – and importance – at
the tables of academe and governance
(Elfin 2004, 342-343).
Geography has the opportunity to more
strongly exert itself within sustainability
science by harnessing its diverse and often
disconnected perspectives within the humanenvironment tradition. By promoting an improved dialogue that increases understanding
between the human and physical sciences
and positivist and critical perspectives, geography can help clarify sources of disagreement about the causes and consequences of
environmental degradation and recognize
the multiplicity of potential solutions. Geography is a uniquely positioned discipline in
this regard. What is lacking is increased engagement and dialogue among these diverse
voices within geography. The fruits of this
dialogue and shared understanding will help
geography provide an important and distinct
contribution within sustainability science.
NOTES
1. A full review of the human-environment
tradition in geography is beyond the
scope of this essay and has been the
subject of extensive discussion in other
publications (e.g., Kates 1987; Price
and Lewis 1993; Zimmerer 1994; Kates
2002; Turner 2002, among many others).
2. Past programs for the AAG Annual
Meeting from 2005 onward are available online at http://www.aag.org/cs/
annualmeeting/pastprograms
3.I use the label “critical geography”
broadly to include radical, postmodernist, poststructuralist, and feminist
geography, among others (Berg 2010).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for the comments and suggestions provided by Brian Chaffin, Jacob
110
Petersen-Perlman, three anonymous reviewers, and Steven Schnell. Their insights greatly
improved this manuscript.
REFERENCES
Barnes, T. 2011. This is Like Déjà Vu All
Over Again. The Professional Geographer,
63 (3): 332-336.
Berg, L. D. 2010. Critical Human Geography. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclopedia of
Geography. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Publications, Inc., pp. 617-622.
Bettencourt, L., and J. Kaur. 2011. Evolution
and Structure of Sustainability Science.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (49): 19540-19545.
Boone, C., and M. Fragkias. 2013. Urbanization and Sustainability: Linking
Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice and
Global Environmental Change. New York:
Springer.
Butzer, K. 2002. The Rising Cost of Contestation. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, 92 (1): 75-78.
Chhetri, N., and N. Chhetri. 2010. Sustainability Science. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Geography. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE Publications, Inc., pp. 2738-2743.
Clark, W. 2007. Sustainability Science: A
Room of its Own. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (6): 1737.
Clark, W., and N. M. Dickson. 2003. Sustainability Science: The Emerging Research
Program. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100 (14): 8059-8061.
Clarke, K. 2011. Exploring the Past and
Future of our Planet: Not Bit-By-Bit But
All at Once. The Professional Geographer,
63 (3): 320-324.
Cutter, S., R. Golledge, and W. Graf. 2002.
The Big Questions in Geography. The
Professional Geographer, 54 (3): 305-317.
Davidson, M. 2010a. Sustainability as Ideological Praxis: The Acting Out of Planning’s
Master-Signifier. City, 14 (4): 390-405.
_____. 2010. Hacking Away at Sustainability: Science, Ideology and Cynical Blockage. Human Geography, 3 (2): 1-8.
Geography and the Emergence of Sustainability Science: Missed Opportunities and Enduring Possibilities
Dempsey, J., and M. Robertson. 2012. Ecosystem Services: Tensions, Impurities, and
Points of Engagement Within Neoliberalism. Progress in Human Geography, 36 (6):
758-779.
Eflin, J. 2004. Geographers and Sustainability: A Missing Connection? In D. Janelle,
B. Warf, and K. Hansen (Eds.). Worldminds: Geographical Perspectives on 100
Problems. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, pp. 339-343.
Franklin, S. 2010. Remote Sensing for Biodiversity and Wildlife Management: Synthesis
and Applications. New York: McGraw Hill
Professional.
Harden, Carol P. 2001. Soil Erosion and
Sustainable Mountain Development:
Experiments, Observations, and Recommendations From the Ecuadorian Andes.
Mountain Research and Development, 21
(1): 77-83.
Hare, F. K. 1969. Environment: Resuscitation of an Idea. Area, 1 (4): 52-55.
Harrison, S., D. Massey, K. Richards, F. Magilligan, N. Thrift, and B. Bender. 2004.
Thinking Across the Divide: Perspectives
on the Conversations Between Physical
and Human Geography. Area, 36 (4):
435-442.
Johnston, R. 2011. Promoting Geography
(Or Part of It)—Yet Again!. The Professional Geographer, 63 (3): 325-331.
Kates, R. 1987. The Human Environment:
The Road Not Taken, the Road Still Beckoning. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, 77 (4): 525-534.
Kates, R., W. Clark, R. Corell, M. Hall, C.
Jaeger, I. Lowe, J. McCarthy, et al. 2000.
“Sustainability Science.” Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability Program
Discussion Paper 2000-33. Cambridge,
MA: Environment and Natural Resources
Program, Belfer Center for Science &
International Affairs, Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University.
Kates, R., W. Clark, R. Corell, J. Hall, C.
Jaeger, I. Lowe, J. McCarthy, et al. 2001.
Sustainability Science. Science, 292 (5517):
641-642.
Kates, R. 2002. Humboldt’s Dream, Beyond
Disciplines, and Sustainability Science:
Contested Identities in a Restructuring
Academy. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 92 (1): 79-81.
Komiyama, H. and K. Takeuchi. 2006. Sustainability Science: Building a New Discipline. Sustainability Science, 1 (1): 1-6.
Larson, K, A. Wiek, and L. Keeler. 2013. A
Comprehensive Sustainability Appraisal of
Water Governance in Phoenix, AZ. Journal
of Environmental Management, 116: 58-71.
MacDonald, G. 2010. Climate Change and
Water in Southwestern North America
Special Feature: Water, Climate Change,
and Sustainability in the Southwest. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
107 (50): 21256-62.
Macdonald, S., and R. Keil. 2012. The Ontario Greenbelt: Shifting the Scales of the
Sustainability Fix? The Professional Geographer 64 (1): 125-14.
Marsh, G. P. 1864. Man and Nature; Or,
Physical Geography As Modified by Human
Action. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University, 1965.
NRC [National Research Council]. 1999.
Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward
Sustainability. Washington, DC: National
Academies Press.
_____. 2010. Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the
Geographical Sciences. Washington, DC:
National Academies Press.
Peet, R. 1985. The Social Origins of Environmental Determinism. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 75 (3):
309-333.
Pincelt, S., and B Katz. 2007. The Imperial
Valley of California: Sustainability, Water
Agriculture, and Urban Growth. In The
Sustainable Development Paradox, Urban
Political Economy in the United States and
Europe, ed. R Krueger and D Gibbs. New
York: Guilford, pp. 266-298.
Price, M., and M. Lewis. 1993. The Reinvention of Cultural Geography. Annals of
the Association of American Geographers, 83
(1): 1-17.
111
Drew E. Bennett
Robbins, P. 2011. Asking Even More From
Grand Geographic Strategy. The Professional Geographer, 63 (3): 310-313.
Schaefer, F. K. 1953. Exceptionalism in
Geography: A Methodological Examination. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, 43 (3): 226-249.
Science and Innovation for Sustainable Development Forum (SISD). 2009. American
Association for the Advancement of Science. [http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=775]. Last accessed 5
December 2011.
Smith, N. 1987. Academic War Over the
Field of Geography”: The Elimination of
Geography at Harvard, 1947--1951. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 77 (2): 155-172.
Southworth, J., and C. Gibbes. 2010. Digital
Remote Sensing Within the field of Land
Change Science: Past, Present and Future
Directions. Geography Compass, 4 (12):
1695-1712.
Turner II, B. L. 2002. Contested Identities: Human-Environment Geography
and Disciplinary Implications in a
Restructuring Academy. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 92
(1): 52-74.
_____. 2005. Geography’s Profile in Public
Debate “Inside the Beltway” and the National Academies. The Professional Geographer, 57 (3): 462-467.
_____. 2010. Vulnerability and Resilience:
Coalescing or Paralleling Approaches for
Sustainability Science? Global Environmental Change, 20 (4): 570-576.
Turner, B. L., R. Kasperson, P. Matson, J.
McCarthy, R. Corell, L. Christensen, N.
Eckley, et al. 2003. A Framework for Vulnerability Analysis in Sustainability Science. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, 100 (14): 8074-9.
Turner, B. and P. Robbins. 2008. LandChange Science and Political Ecology:
Similarities, Differences, and Implications for Sustainability Science. Annual
Review of Environment and Resources,
33:295-316.
112
Turner, B. L., and J. Sabloff. 2012. Classic Period Collapse of the Central Maya
Lowlands: Insights About Human-Environment Relationships for Sustainability.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (35): 13908-14.
United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).
1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
While, A., A. Jonas, and D. Gibbs. 2004.
The Environment and the Entrepreneurial
City: Searching for the Urban “Sustainability Fix” in Manchester and Leeds. International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 28 (3): 549-569.
Williams, M. 1987. Sauer and “Man’s Role
in Changing the Face of the Earth”. Geographical Review, 77 (2): 218-231.
Winkler, J. 2011. Geographical Sciences
Versus Geography: How and Why? The
Professional Geographer, 63 (3): 314-319.
Wilson, E. O. 2005. Editorial: Editorial on
Sustainability E-journal.
Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 1.
Zimmerer, K. 1994. Human Geography
and the “New Ecology”: The Prospect
and Promise of Integration. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 84 (1):
108-125.