Distinguished Environmental Lecture - Design for the Real World: Ideas for Achieving Sustainable Development

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Conceptually, sustainable development has great appeal. Bringing together environmental, economic and social considerations promises greatly improved decisions. However, as the global community assesses progress in preparation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the painful reality of the challenges of translating a concept into action are becoming obvious. National and international experiences would suggest that much more creative energy needs to be directed to understanding attitudinal and behavioral change, both of individuals and institutions. How government policy makers harness the real potential of science, as well as how academic institutions communicate their knowledge, depends both on the intentions of those involved and on their proximity to the knowledge generation process. Civil society makes a meaningful contribution on a parallel basis. Attention to the actors and settings in which knowledge is generated, articulated and redirected can help to begin defining the characteristics of a system of effective global governance in a rapidly-changing and interdependent world.