A transition toward sustainability

One of the greatest challenges facing humanity at the dawn of the twenty-first century is learning how to better meet human needs while restoring and nurturing the planet's life support systems. Achieving advances in specific sectors of human development such as food and energy is critically important, as is making progress in addressing individual environmental problems such as the loss of biodiversity and climate warming. This paper proposes that these individual problems are better viewed as multiple dimensions of an increasingly interdependent relationship between society and environment. It is not the individual problems alone but rather their interactions that pose the greatest threats and opportunities for the twenty-first century. Therefore, the transcendent challenge before us is to craft a vision of the future that encompasses these interactions and to develop a strategy for action that addresses them.