Call for abstracts: Sustainable social-ecological systems

Related GLP Member: Sébastien Boillat, Chinwe Ifejika Speranza

Sustainability science deals with the interactions between the natural and the social systems and seeks to assess who these interactions affect the challenge of sustainability, namely to meet the needs of present and future generations while reducing poverty and conserving ecosystems. Such interactions have been conceptualized as nature-society interactions, social-ecological systems, biophysical-social systems or coupled human-environment systems.

Sustainability science spans across many disciplines within and between social and natural science and is therefore multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. Because it seeks to contribute to transform society and combines fundamental and applied knowledge, it is also transdisciplinary.

In this session, our objective is to gather contributions that deal with core questions of sustainability by addressing social-ecological interactions, including:

  • Long-term trends and transitions in interactions between ecological and social systems
  • Risk and resilience in social-ecological systems
  • Theories and models of social-ecological systems, e.g. safe and just operating space
  • Distant social-ecological interactions, e.g. “telecouplings”
  • Sustainable management of land systems
  • Sustainability assessments and trade-offs between human-wellbeing and environmental sustainability

We welcome contributions from junior and senior scholars with interdisciplinary and integrative scopes, as well as transdisciplinary contributions that address transformations to sustainability at the science-society interface.