Saturday, April 23, 2005

Sustainability: the Journal & the Journey

WorldChanging.com has a comprehensive post today on the new open journal titled "Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy", a much-needed forum for discussing exactly what sustainability is, and might become. The first issue features a lead editorial by E.O. Wilson, plus an article on the "Role of Local Ecological Knowledge in Sustainable Urban Planning: Perspectives from Finland".

I am glad that WorldChanging is such a sharp-eyed resource, and posted this; I am glad that the journal exists; and I am even glad that there is some sustainable urban planning going on in Finland!

At the same time, being a relatively goal-oriented person -- OK, let's admit it, absolutely goal-oriented person -- I am easily frustrated by hard-to-define problems, and achieving sustainability is probably the mother-of-all-definitional problems. It is hard not to succumb to a general feeling of panic about the state of the environment, but to maintain a useful sense of urgency, and therefore agency. Occasionally I have the fanciful wish that we could be (already) collectively engaged in the implementation of sustainability -- whatever it might be.

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