Integrative, multi-disciplinary science is necessary for charting a sustainable development trajectory to 2050, but it is not sufficient. Yes, of course we need more climate science, sustainability science, and resiliency science. We also need more and better resource sciences (water, soil, oil), social sciences (economics, politics, people), and the engineering sciences (agricultural, information, mechanical, and more recently biological). But all the understanding in the world probably wont solve the challenges that lie ahead. We need leadership capacity.
A recent PNAS history of climate science reviews the long and torturous history of efforts to meaningfully integrate social and ecological system-science to the point of providing useful/powerful information. It demonstrates a bias for understanding when we need a bias for action.
A major distinction exists between most university programs and CLiGS, a recent effort I’ve become associated with. CLiGS build leadership capacity to affect change in sustainability systems rather than build science/models to understand the system, a subtle but critical difference.
Leadership actions within a system as complex as climate require courage and opportunism. Leadership requires being informed about the system, stakeholders and strategies, but never fully mastering them. It requires responding to black-swan events with leadership skills that give direction, alignment and commitment to the partial and evolving expertise of a diverse group of well (and sometimes not well) intentioned stakeholders. An informed scientific understanding of the system is important, but a distant second to leadership.