Operationalizing Sustainability

1Toward a Sustainability Science

The concepts of sustainability have experienced much success for several decades and they are quoted in many projects and programs conducted by public institutions, corporations and academies worldwide.

1.1. Introduction

Now, we can discuss the emergence of a “science of sustainability”. A science of sustainability requires the involvement of many people geographically spread all around the world in many collaboration fields to bridge the existing gap between theory, practice and policy. For the same reasons, this science needs for skills coming from various disciplines such as social, biological, life, physical, theoretical and applied sciences to answer a lot of fundamental questions.

Here, it is interesting to show the graph issued by E. Bettencourt et al. [BET 11], which gives a highlight of the sources of proceedings related to sustainability science.

Figure 1.1. Developments and literature in sustainability sciences [BET 11]

In Figure 1.1, we can see that the largest contributions come from the social sciences, from biology and chemical, mechanical and civil engineering, and then medicine, etc.

This pattern conveys the universality of the concerns related to sustainability in so many activity sectors. But, what is most important is knowing whether they are subject to the same underlying mechanisms: this is a key question. Indeed, since many ...