"Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability"

Read the online book by the Board on Sustainable Development of the National Research Council (1999).

From the Executive Summary: "This study, conducted by the National Research Council's Board on Sustainable Development, is an attempt to reinvigorate the essential strategic connections between scientific research, technological development, and societies' efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable improvements in human well-being. To that end, the Board seeks to illuminate critical challenges and opportunities that might be encountered in serious efforts to pursue goals of sustainable development......in our judgment, it is over the next two generations that many of the stresses between human development and the environment will become acute. It is over this period that serious progress in a transition toward sustainability will need to take place if interactions between the earth's human population and life support systems are not to significantly damage both. Additionally, two generations is a realistic time frame for scientific and technological analysis that can provide direction, assess plausible futures, measure success—or the lack of it—along the way, and identify levers for changing course.....In the Board's judgment, the primary goals of a transition toward sustainability over the next two generations should be to meet the needs of a much larger but stabilizing human population, to sustain the life support systems of the planet, and to substantially reduce hunger and poverty......Certain current trends of population and habitation, wealth and consumption, technology and work, connectedness and diversity, and environmental change are likely to persist well into the coming century and could significantly undermine the prospects for sustainability. If they do persist, many human needs will not be met, life support systems will be dangerously degraded, and the numbers of hungry and poor will increase.......based on our analysis of persistent trends and plausible futures, the Board believes that a successful transition toward sustainability is possible over the next two generations. This transition could be achieved without miraculous technologies or drastic transformations of human societies. What will be required, however, are significant advances in basic knowledge, in the social capacity and technological capabilities to utilize it, and in the political will to turn this knowledge and know-how into action......Priorities for action include the following: • Accelerate current trends in fertility reduction......• Accommodate an expected doubling to tripling of the urban system in a habitable, efficient, and environmentally friendly manner.......• Reverse declining trends in agricultural production in Africa; sustain historic trends elsewhere."