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Sustainability Science: A Call to Collaborative Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

David D. Hart  and
Kathleen P. Bell
David D. Hart*
Affiliation:
School of Biology and Ecology, director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Center, and leader of the Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI) at the University of Maine
Kathleen P. Bell
Affiliation:
School of Economics at the University of Maine and a member of SSI's leadership team
*
Corresponding Author: David D. Hart ▪ Senator George J. Mitchell Center ▪ University of Maine ▪ 5710 Norman Smith Hall ▪ Orono, ME 04469 ▪ Phone 207.581.3257 ▪ Email [email protected].
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Abstract

Sustainability science is an emerging field directed at advancing sustainable development. Informed by recent scholarship and institutional experiments, we identify key roles for economists and encourage their greater participation in this research. Our call to collaborative action comes from positive experiences with the Sustainability Solutions Initiative based at the University of Maine, where economists collaborate with other experts and diverse stakeholders on real-world problems involving interactions between natural and human systems. We articulate a mutually beneficial setting where economists’ methods, skills, and norms add value to the problem-focused, interdisciplinary research of sustainability science and where resources, opportunities, and challenges from science bolster economic research specifically and land/sea grant institutions broadly.

Keywords

economicsinterdisciplinary researchproblem-solvingorganizational innovationstakeholderssustainable development
Type
Invited Papers
Information
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 2013 , pp. 75 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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