Since United Nations adopted the global Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) for the next15 years(2016-2030), sustainable development will further become a core concept and main principle to guide global and national e...Since United Nations adopted the global Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) for the next15 years(2016-2030), sustainable development will further become a core concept and main principle to guide global and national economic and social development. According to this background, strengthening the integrative research on the theories and methodologies of sustainable development has been a strategically important mission. This article provided an analytic framework for sustainability science, named the object-subject-process(OSP) framework for examining the key issues encountered during the theoretical research and policy analysis. This study emphasized that, on the object dimension, sustainable development means to seek for economic and social development within biophysical limits of the earth and the relationship of environment, society, and economy should be containing and complementary rather than parallel and substitute; on the process dimension, sustainable development should adopt both the responsive and proactive strategies for the whole process management which employing pressure-state-response(PRS) model rather than dealing with one part of them; on the subject dimension, sustainable development research should involve the key stakeholders who are kind of collaborate governance rather than separate each other. From the perspective of sustainability science, green economy was utilized as a case study to explore the issues of object, process and subject and also the significance of green economy was discussed in this study.展开更多
This brief conceptual paper contributes a sustainability theoretic perspective of an urbanization paradigm known as Compact City. Compact City is an urban planning and development concept which promotes relatively hig...This brief conceptual paper contributes a sustainability theoretic perspective of an urbanization paradigm known as Compact City. Compact City is an urban planning and development concept which promotes relatively high population density associated with an integrated and mixed-use land district. It is enabled by transit-oriented development and results in low transport-related energy consumption and reduced the GHG (Greenhouse Gases) pollution. Compact City conserves the natural capital of land mass and subscribes to the strong sustainability ethics. ICT (Information and Communications Technology) could be deployed to optimize the Compact City operations by first tackling some of the development problems associated with Compact City and also unleashing new urban innovations and functionalities to achieve sustainable urbanization. The paper suggests and elucidates several general systemic synergies archetypes such as co-benefits, cascading, ICT infrastructure reuse, etc., which could be leveraged to facilitate the emergence of compact green smart and resilient city. These archetypes are solutions to the Compact City paradigm thus conductive to the development ofa Sustainability Science of Compact City.展开更多
Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seem...Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seems to be a very positive signal for the future development of sustainability science in this region. However,studyes show that there are still some major gaps there. One is the problem of how to build up the regional research capacity of sustainability science among northeast Asian research institutes across different disciplines as well as different political systems. Another is how to shift the conceptual frameworks of sustainability science into the operational policy frameworks. There are four major obstacles to the enhancement of regional research capacity-building in sustainability science. In order to build up the regional research capacity in sustainability science and to realize both local and global goals of the sustainable development in northeast Asia, this paper proposes some展开更多
On January 16 in Beijing, the president of the CAS, Prof. Zhou Guangzhao, met his US counterpart, Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the US National Academy of Sciences. On behalf of the two sides, the two leaders signed...On January 16 in Beijing, the president of the CAS, Prof. Zhou Guangzhao, met his US counterpart, Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the US National Academy of Sciences. On behalf of the two sides, the two leaders signed a joint statement of sustainable development, signaling an important step forward in the field of S&T cooperation between the largest developing country and the largest developed country in today’s world. Three dominant themes were under discussion at the meeting of Chinese and US officers: challenges posed to scientists and research units in a drastically changing world; science & sustainable development constitute a vista in common for the展开更多
Understanding the interactions between humans and nature in the Anthropocene is central to the quest for both human wellbeing and global sustainability.However,the time-space compression,long range interactions,and re...Understanding the interactions between humans and nature in the Anthropocene is central to the quest for both human wellbeing and global sustainability.However,the time-space compression,long range interactions,and reconstruction of socio-economic structures at the global scale all pose great challenges to the traditional analytical frameworks of human-nature systems.In this paper,we extend the connotation of coupled human and natural systems(CHANS)and their four dimensions—space,time,appearance,and organization,and propose a novel framework:“Coupled Human and Natural Cube”(CHNC)to explain the coupling mechanism between humans and the natural environment.Our proposition is inspired by theories based on the human-earth areal system,telecoupling framework,planetary urbanization,and perspectives from complexity science.We systematically introduce the concept,connotation,evolution rules,and analytical dimensions of the CHNC.Notably there exist various“coupling lines”in the CHNC,connecting different systems and elements at multiple scales and forming a large,nested,interconnected,organic system.The rotation of the CHNC represents spatiotemporal nonlinear fluctuations in CHANS in different regions.As a system continually exchanges energy with the environment,a critical phase transition occurs when fluctuations reach a certain threshold,leading to emergent behavior of the system.The CHNC has four dimensions—pericoupling and telecoupling,syncoupling and lagcoupling,apparent coupling and hidden coupling,and intra-organization coupling and inter-organizational coupling.We mainly focus on the theoretical connotation,research methods,and typical cases of telecoupling,lagcoupling,hidden coupling,and inter-organizational coupling,and put forward a human-nature coupling matrix to integrate multiple dimensions.In summary,the CHNC provides a more comprehensive and systematic research paradigm for understanding the evolution and coupling mechanism of the human-nature system,which expands the analytical dimension of CHANS.The CHNC also provides a theoretical support for formulating regional,sustainable development policies for human wellbeing.展开更多
基金supported by General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China"Research on Carbon Productivity and Low-carbon Competitiveness based on Steady-state Economics Theory"(Grant number 71173157)
文摘Since United Nations adopted the global Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) for the next15 years(2016-2030), sustainable development will further become a core concept and main principle to guide global and national economic and social development. According to this background, strengthening the integrative research on the theories and methodologies of sustainable development has been a strategically important mission. This article provided an analytic framework for sustainability science, named the object-subject-process(OSP) framework for examining the key issues encountered during the theoretical research and policy analysis. This study emphasized that, on the object dimension, sustainable development means to seek for economic and social development within biophysical limits of the earth and the relationship of environment, society, and economy should be containing and complementary rather than parallel and substitute; on the process dimension, sustainable development should adopt both the responsive and proactive strategies for the whole process management which employing pressure-state-response(PRS) model rather than dealing with one part of them; on the subject dimension, sustainable development research should involve the key stakeholders who are kind of collaborate governance rather than separate each other. From the perspective of sustainability science, green economy was utilized as a case study to explore the issues of object, process and subject and also the significance of green economy was discussed in this study.
文摘This brief conceptual paper contributes a sustainability theoretic perspective of an urbanization paradigm known as Compact City. Compact City is an urban planning and development concept which promotes relatively high population density associated with an integrated and mixed-use land district. It is enabled by transit-oriented development and results in low transport-related energy consumption and reduced the GHG (Greenhouse Gases) pollution. Compact City conserves the natural capital of land mass and subscribes to the strong sustainability ethics. ICT (Information and Communications Technology) could be deployed to optimize the Compact City operations by first tackling some of the development problems associated with Compact City and also unleashing new urban innovations and functionalities to achieve sustainable urbanization. The paper suggests and elucidates several general systemic synergies archetypes such as co-benefits, cascading, ICT infrastructure reuse, etc., which could be leveraged to facilitate the emergence of compact green smart and resilient city. These archetypes are solutions to the Compact City paradigm thus conductive to the development ofa Sustainability Science of Compact City.
文摘Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seems to be a very positive signal for the future development of sustainability science in this region. However,studyes show that there are still some major gaps there. One is the problem of how to build up the regional research capacity of sustainability science among northeast Asian research institutes across different disciplines as well as different political systems. Another is how to shift the conceptual frameworks of sustainability science into the operational policy frameworks. There are four major obstacles to the enhancement of regional research capacity-building in sustainability science. In order to build up the regional research capacity in sustainability science and to realize both local and global goals of the sustainable development in northeast Asia, this paper proposes some
文摘On January 16 in Beijing, the president of the CAS, Prof. Zhou Guangzhao, met his US counterpart, Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the US National Academy of Sciences. On behalf of the two sides, the two leaders signed a joint statement of sustainable development, signaling an important step forward in the field of S&T cooperation between the largest developing country and the largest developed country in today’s world. Three dominant themes were under discussion at the meeting of Chinese and US officers: challenges posed to scientists and research units in a drastically changing world; science & sustainable development constitute a vista in common for the
基金Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China,No.41590842,No.41801164China Postdoctoral Science Foundation,No.2018M630196。
文摘Understanding the interactions between humans and nature in the Anthropocene is central to the quest for both human wellbeing and global sustainability.However,the time-space compression,long range interactions,and reconstruction of socio-economic structures at the global scale all pose great challenges to the traditional analytical frameworks of human-nature systems.In this paper,we extend the connotation of coupled human and natural systems(CHANS)and their four dimensions—space,time,appearance,and organization,and propose a novel framework:“Coupled Human and Natural Cube”(CHNC)to explain the coupling mechanism between humans and the natural environment.Our proposition is inspired by theories based on the human-earth areal system,telecoupling framework,planetary urbanization,and perspectives from complexity science.We systematically introduce the concept,connotation,evolution rules,and analytical dimensions of the CHNC.Notably there exist various“coupling lines”in the CHNC,connecting different systems and elements at multiple scales and forming a large,nested,interconnected,organic system.The rotation of the CHNC represents spatiotemporal nonlinear fluctuations in CHANS in different regions.As a system continually exchanges energy with the environment,a critical phase transition occurs when fluctuations reach a certain threshold,leading to emergent behavior of the system.The CHNC has four dimensions—pericoupling and telecoupling,syncoupling and lagcoupling,apparent coupling and hidden coupling,and intra-organization coupling and inter-organizational coupling.We mainly focus on the theoretical connotation,research methods,and typical cases of telecoupling,lagcoupling,hidden coupling,and inter-organizational coupling,and put forward a human-nature coupling matrix to integrate multiple dimensions.In summary,the CHNC provides a more comprehensive and systematic research paradigm for understanding the evolution and coupling mechanism of the human-nature system,which expands the analytical dimension of CHANS.The CHNC also provides a theoretical support for formulating regional,sustainable development policies for human wellbeing.