Sustainability Without Geology? A Shortsighted Approach

Abstract

O the last few decades, the concept of sustainability has been proposed and championed as the answer to the impending challenges our society will be facing in the future. It has been a rallying opportunity for the broad earth sciences community and a good starting point for such a community to impact societal and policy decisions; however, it has been an opportunity we have largely missed thus far. We are not the first to notice that the sustainability wave has left geosciences behind. In fact, almost ten years ago, Grimm and Van Der Pluijm (2012) lamented the absence of geoscientists at a National Academies Symposium aimed at “Science, Innovation, and Partnerships for Sustainable Solutions.” Sustainability theory is rooted in three interconnected domains or pillars: social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Much of the early notion stemmed from the United Nations’ initiatives where the basic concepts were sharpened over the last 50 years (see Purvis et al., 2019, for a review of concepts through time). The anticipation is that the three pillars, if properly harmonized, will improve both the present and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). So, it is often stated that the main drive behind sustainability—and its corollary initiatives—is to explore the capacity for the biosphere and human civilization to co-exist, in which the term (sustainability) is thrown around as the deus ex machina that will, if correctly implemented, save us and our planet. While it is important for humans to act upon the foreseeable changes to our planet with urgent mitigation—such as the upcoming climate crisis—we fear that the current strategies are too shortsighted and anthropocentric to produce durable solutions. This may be because sustainability education and research are taking place in the absence of geological sciences, and without