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Driving Spaceship Earth editorial Driving spaceship Earth Designing policies to maintain human wellbeing within the limits of planet Earth is a daunting task, but scholars and policymakers should embrace the challenge now. his month, Nature Sustainability is achieved by maximizing throughput, crossing one or more boundaries. The celebrates its first anniversary. A whereas in the latter throughput should overarching message is simple, yet powerful Tyear since we launched, relentlessly be minimized. A few big thinkers at the — we do not need to look for new policy building our content and responding time cultivated similar views on humanity’s instruments, we need to use more wisely proactively to the needs of the community, handling of natural resources and the need and effectively the ones available. The we have a lot to be proud of. It has been for a fundamental shift in perspective when authors offer a number of suggestions an exciting journey, at times challenging it comes to securing human wellbeing over on how to best design such policies and and tiring, but definitely worthwhile. time. Buckminster Fuller3 imagined planet include examples of successful policies, but And we are keen to continue growing and Earth as a spaceship driven by humans as they warn readers about the role of politics exploring new avenues to give voice to the the astronauts — it was already apparent in policymaking. In order for a policy best sustainability scholarship and practice in 1968 how humans managed to derail it instrument, for example a carbon tax or a from across perspectives and geographies. from its natural course. And our driving renewable energy subsidy, to be successful, Over the 12 issues in 2018, we have covered abilities have not improved that much it needs to minimize political resistance. As a variety of topics including agriculture, as of today. The idea of a closed, limited an example, they refer to the case of some food security, sustainable diets, water use system was much emphasized by the Club European green tax reforms that gained and management, air pollution, land use, of Rome in their famous book The Limits political acceptance by reducing some non- ecosystem services, waste management, to Growth4, where the authors modelled green taxes, and therefore reducing voters’ post-disaster reconstruction, conservation, the interactions between population tax burden elsewhere. technological solutions and many more. growth, industrialization, resource demand, There is urgent need for more research And we have also seen recurrent themes pollution and food production to show that and lessons-learned exercises to better through our pages, such as the resource drawing resources from the natural world inform policymakers on how to design and nexus, synergies and trade-offs among the indefinitely to sustain economic growth implement sustainability policies. Given sustainable development goals, planetary is simply not feasible. Even when they the complexities involved, there is also a boundaries, and the role of interdisciplinary factored in technological progress, their need for stronger collaborations across research in advancing sustainability debates extrapolations of continuing with business- diverse scholarly domains and practices, and policies. as-usual trends still looked dire. so that a more complete understanding of And how to design effective policies for Since those years of raising awareness the intricate far-reaching problems of the sustainability is no doubt a key theme for about humanity’s challenges in a finite Anthropocene can be developed. Finally, we our journal. Policies are the backbone of world, we have not achieved enough need much more effective communication countries’ development paths, as all societal progress, and setting societies and and dissemination channels between actors need rules and legal frameworks to economies on a truly sustainable research and policymaking, in order to operate safely while striving to secure a development path is still more of an ensure that interventions are successful. We good life. Successful sustainability policies aspiration than a reality. Against this hope that the Perspective by Sterner and hinge on an in-depth understanding backdrop, a Perspective by Sterner and colleagues will stimulate debate and further of the multiple facets of the human– colleagues discusses the challenges of thinking in this direction. We are ready to nature relationship. Developing such designing policies for the current geological feature the best forthcoming work about an understanding goes back to the first era, the Anthropocene, dominated by safely driving spaceship Earth. ❐ contributions that brought sustainability to human activity. The article is packed with the attention of the general public during thoughts about the extent to which the the 1960s and 1970s. The first economist, complexities of human–nature interactions Published online: 10 January 2019 perhaps not so well known today, to dive should be reflected in sustainability-oriented https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0217-7 into the complexities of sustainability was policies. Their discourse is placed within the 5 Kenneth E. Boulding. In 1964, he wrote context of planetary boundaries research , References about the great transition from a civilized a scholarly domain focusing on identifying 1. Boulding, K. E. Te Meaning of the Twentieth Century: Te Great to a post-civilized society1 and later, in critical ‘safe’ boundaries for processes Transition (Harper and Row, 1964). 1966, he deepened his thinking around the determining the state of the Earth system. 2. Boulding, K. E. In Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy (ed. Jarrett, H.) 3–14 (Resources for the Future, Johns Hopkins transition from the idea of an open-earth Transgressing any boundary would increase University Press, Baltimore, 1966). system with infinite reservoirs (the cowboy the risk of catastrophic change. According to 3. Fuller, B. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Lars Muller economy) to that of a closed-earth system Sterner and co-authors, the main motivation Publishers, 1968). 4. Meadows, D. H., Randers, J., Meadows, D. L. & Behrens III, W. W. without infinite reservoirs (the spaceman behind sustainability policies is precaution; Te Limits to Growth (Club of Rome, Universe Books, 1972). 2 economy) . In the former system, success a policy is introduced to limit the risk of 5. Rockström, J. et al. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009). NATURE SUSTAINABILITY | VOL 2 | JANUARY 2019 | 1 | www.nature.com/natsustain 1.
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