Prologue: Building Sustainable Coastal Landscapes

Today’s 5 billion+ Homo sapiens divert a substantial por-tion of the world’s biological and geological resources totheir direct use, while indirectly and continuously creatingnew and undesirable equilibria for natural systems acrossthe continuum from local to global scales. These trajecto-ries of long-term change must be addressed effectively—and soon—before further declines in the quality of lifebecome permanent and before the decline in critical livingresources reaches crisis thresholds, perhaps within 50 years.As the current rate of environmental degradation continues,or even accelerates, there will be fewer and less effectiveopportunities to set the world on a corrective course.

Our cultural attitudes and behaviors can and must evolveto successfully turn this huge global juggernaut of consump-tion and use away from unsustainable trajectories andtoward sustainable relationships between humans and thenatural world. We do not believe that the existing set of in-stitutions and behaviors can or will create the appropriateincentives for stakeholders to protect the intrinsic value ofecosystems. New institutions and behaviors are required tocreate and sustain the fundamental contributions necessaryto make informed policy and management decisions thataddress urgent social needs, including sustainability.

The emerging field of sustainability science attempts toovercome the present global management shortcomingsby developing sustainable approaches to natural resourceconservation, preservation, management, and restoration.A focus on transdisciplinary research illuminates the fun-damental interactions between nature and society and ad-dresses society’s capacity to guide these interactions alongsustainable trajectories (Kates et al. 2001). Adopting sus-tainability science as a means to develop science-basedpolicy worldwide requires at least three steps (Kaufman &Cleveland 1995):

(1) identifying the nonsustainable aspects of society;(2) quantifying their impacts on natural and social sys-

tems; and(3) quantifying the impacts of corrective actions.

To be fully successful, sustainability science should alsoadopt performance goals including quantitative criteriacodified in formal agreements or international guidelinesor policies.

We recognize, therefore, that science-based knowledgeis crucial to advancing sustainable development goals (fos-tering adaptive capabilities while creating opportunities,sensu Holling 2000). However, science will be most help-ful when it is acceptable (credible), relevant to decision-makers (salient), and balanced in its approach to the issues

(legitimate). In other words, making progress requiresmore than a science-based road map. Indeed, stakeholdersand scientists must include human dimensions in their as-sessments and move toward integrated ecosocietal goalsor norms to achieve sustainable development. A ‘‘socialcontract’’ for science (Lubchenco 1998) recognizes thisscience–society integration by presupposing that a sustain-able biosphere is not only ecologically sound but also eco-nomically feasible and socially just.

Recognition of mutual interests on the part of stakehold-ers, restoration scientists, practitioners, decision-makers,and the public is advocated. Ultimately, communicationamong disciplines and between scientists, engineers, practi-tioners, the general public and its decision-makers is crucialto optimizing ‘‘technology transfer’’ to the stakeholders.Communication is also critical for public acceptance andlong-term success.

We are warned, however, that a major hurdle to inte-grating science and technology into sustainable develop-ment practices will be to support agenda setting atappropriate local scales (‘‘place-based’’) rather than onlyat the global or national level. This framework not onlyaddresses the important question, what does each regionhave to teach the rest of the world? but also contributes tospecific targets and strategies for place-based restorationand includes fundamental knowledge and insights linkingscience and technology in support of sustainability.

The emerging world view on sustainability and globalcarrying capacity increasingly recognizes the need for in-tegrating knowledge gained from ecology, economics,technology, and the social sciences into a successful man-agement scheme designed to keep human impacts at sus-tainable levels and prevent ecocatastrophes (Dailey et al.1996). To ‘‘win the game’’ requires the elucidation of theplaying rules (by natural scientists), the best strategies forwinning (economists), the best tactics for winning (tech-nologists, including engineers), and ultimately the bestmethods for getting people and nations to play the game(political and behavioral scientists, and the law). Similarly,nations must invest in institutional reforms that compelprivate users of natural resources to account for the socialcosts of their actions and to adopt appropriate indicatorsof environmental change that will create thresholds foraction (Arrow et al. 1996). Finding the political will todevelop, adopt, and sustain these institutions will notbe easy.

The papers in this special section of Restoration Ecol-ogy arose from a Special Symposium, SustainabilityScience and Estuarine Habitat Restoration: Integrating

152 Restoration Ecology Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 152–153 MARCH 2005

Ecology and the Social Sciences, presented at the BiennialEstuarine Research Federation Conference, 14–18 Sep-tember 2003, in Seattle, Washington (U.S.A.). The sympo-sium was organized around an international theme ofsustainable restoration practices from perspectives thatincluded interests in ecological fidelity and nature–humaninteractions. The papers implicitly, if not explicitly, tacklethe theme of how the social and natural sciences interact toproduce successful restoration projects. These papers are,perhaps ambitiously so, focused on the serious business ofdeveloping sustainable societies. The ideas and opinionsexpressed with the papers in this volume are those of theindividual authors, may vary among authors, and are per-haps contradictory or even provocative. But they also aresquarely aimed at favorably pushing and prodding thequality of the discussion and energy and conclusionsreached to sustain movement along a higher-quality pathleading toward sustainable and healthy relationshipsbetween humans and the natural world.

We thank the authors, reviewers, editors of RestorationEcology, meeting sponsors, the Society for EcologicalRestoration, and the International Estuarine ResearchFederation for being constructively involved in the pro-cess leading to the publication of these papers. Now it is

up to the readers to see if these papers make sense tothem, to winnow some ideas and to improve upon others,and to be engaged in whatever way to make this a betterworld.

Michael P. WeinsteinR. Eugene Turner

Denise J. Reed

LITERATURE CITED

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Dailey, G. C., P. R. Ehrlich, and M. Alberti. 1996. Managing Earth’s life

support systems: the game, the players and getting everyone to play.

Ecological Applications 6:19–21.

Holling, C. S. 2000. Theories for sustainable futures. Conservation Ecol-

ogy 4:7 available from: http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss2/art7) .

Kates, R. W., W. C. Clark, R. Corell, J. M. Hall, C. C. Jaeger, I. Lowe,

et al. 2001. Sustainability science. Science 292:641–642.

Kaufman, R. K., and C. J. Cleveland. 1995. Measuring sustainability:

needed an interdisciplinary approach to an interdisciplinary con-

cept. Ecological Economics 15:109–112.

Lubchenco, J. 1998. Entering the century of the environment: a new social

contract for science. Science 279:491–497.

Prologue: Building Sustainable Coastal Landscapes

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