Crisis or Opportunity?

The mature human brain weighs, on average, a mere 1.4 kilos (three pounds), yet it contains a phenomenal 100 billion nerve cells (neurons) plus 10 to 50 times that number of cells in a supportive network of nourishing tissue and fibers (National Research Council 1989).

Your nerves transmit messages to and fromyour brain at speeds about 200 miles per hour!

Your body grows another 40 yards of hair every 24 hours. Your body is about 70% water? And you’ll urinate about 12,000 gallons of urine in yourLifetime.

From Ivory Towers to

Ivory Gardens

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with nearly 128 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, 5 million music items and 57 million manuscripts.The Library receives some 22,000 items each working day and adds approximately 10,000 items to the collections daily.http://www.loc.gov/homepage/fascinate.html

The UCSD Library has over 3 million volumes on its shelves.

What does the academic knowledge tell us? How is it produced, organized, shared, integrated and made useful?

Schools & Divisions at UCSD

•Arts and Humanities Division•Biological Sciences Division •Engineering, Jacobs School

•International Relations & Pacific Studies•Jacobs School of Engineering

•Physical Sciences•School of Management

•School of Medicine•School of Pharmacy

•Scripps Institution of Oceanography•Social Sciences•UCSD Extension

Conceptual Map of the Sustainable Development Literature

Four Integrated Challenges of Regional Ecology

1. Wise stewardship of ecosystems and natural capital (environment)

2. Adaptable political organization and government that fosters social learning and innovation (legal-institutional terrain).

3. Social justice and equity (socio-cultural milieu)

4. Efficiency in systems of production, distribution and exchange (economy and technology)

Regional Ecology

Space local regional global

Tim

e

pr

esen

t

d

ecad

es

cen

turie

s

m

illen

nia

Identifiesfour interlocked, components of sustainability science

Highlights the REGION as the most amenable geographic scale for integrating theory and practice

Source: National Research Council (1999) Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability.

Sustainability Science –science committed to bridging barriers that separate traditional modes of inquiry.

The National AcademiesNational Academy of SciencesNational Academy of EngineeringInstitute of MedicineNational Research Council

“The major threats and opportunities of the sustainability transition are not only multiple, cumulative, and interactive, but also place-based. In other words, it is in specific regions with distinctive social, and ecological attributes that the critical threats to sustainability emerge, and where a successful transition will need to be based.”

(National Research Council 1999: 285)

The triangle of conflicting goals for planning and the three associated conflicts

Social Justice,Economic Opportunity,Income Equality

Environmental Protection

Overall Economic Growth and Efficiency

Property Conflict

Development Conflict

ResourceConflict

Green, Profitable,

Fair Sustainable Development

This diagram is adapted from Campbell (1999, figure 12.1). Campbell notes: “Planners define themselves, implicitly, by where they stand on the triangle. The illusive ideal of sustainable devleopment leads one to the center” (p. 253)

IndustrialEcology

CommunityDevelopment

Three E’s &

governance Integrative discourses

Equity Economic efficiency

Environmental stewardship

Governance

Info and comm technology

Urban & Regional Planning

(New Regionalism/

Institutionalism)

Sustainability Science

Humanities(Ethics, Aesthetics,History, Wisdom Traditions

Local

Global

Conceptual Matrix to Enable Integrative Views and Knowledge Sharing

WatershedManagement

Planning & Decision-support

Regional

San Diego-Tijuana City Region

D.Scott Slocombe (2001) Integration of Physical, Biological, and Socioeconomic Information. In A Guidebook to Integrated Ecological Assesments, edited by Jensen and Bourgeron

Schools & Divisions at UCSD

•Arts and Humanities Division•Biological Sciences Division •Engineering, Jacobs School

•International Relations & Pacific Studies•Jacobs School of Engineering

•Physical Sciences•School of Management

•School of Medicine•School of Pharmacy

•Scripps Institution of Oceanography•Social Sciences•UCSD Extension

Source of Transdisciplinary diagramTress, Bärbel, Gunther Tress, Gary Fry and Paul Opdam. 2006. From landscape research to landscape planning : aspects of integration, education and application. Dordrecht: Springer. Chap. 2, p. 16.

From Ivory Towers to Ivory Gardens