Scientific evidence makes it clear that challenges to the sustainability of the planet are jeopardizing our way of life. Global temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising, more than a billion people live in extreme poverty and both people and places are experiencing serious water shortages.
These planetary challenges, and others like them, are solemn threats to human well-being. Their rate of ascendancy has steadily increased. By comparison, practical solutions that address these problems are being implemented slowly. This situation has created a dangerous gap between sustainability challenges and their potential solutions.
We urgently need more and better solutions. The year 2015 was the hottest on record. The Gini index, a measure of income disparity, has been increasing. And, a global food production/distribution crisis is predicted by the year 2050. We simply cannot afford- economically or morally- to let the gap between mega-problems and their solutions spread beyond the pale.
Sustainability is not merely a cause célèbre. It's a basic human value, a placeholder for the future we want. Although definitions of sustainability abound, two that enjoy considerable agreement are "universal, intergenerational human well-being" and "treating the Earth as if we intend to stay." Both definitions share this moral -- future generations have the right to expect sufficient resources to be available so they can live as well as or better than their progenitors.
And yet, we've let the aforementioned gap between mega-problems and solutions grow wide. One reason is because many sustainability problems get worse incrementally, almost imperceptibly, over long periods (think: sea level rise) instead of suddenly (think: global pandemics). This makes it difficult to perceive the actual degree of threat that sustainability challenges can pose to people and planet.
Here's where universities come in. Worldwide, universities are uniquely qualified to take on these gaps. They have the right resumé for the job: expertise in economics, engineering, business, law, social sciences and humanities; a universally shared goal of helping people learn how to thrive; a mission that includes "the public good."
However, universities typically neither focus on problem solving, nor reward what is described in academia as "applied research." Instead, their tradition is knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination. What¹s more, while universities can be brilliant sources of teaching and discovery, they generally fall short when it comes to finding ways to generate and scale positive outcomes based on their intellectual endeavors. A recent article in Elementa put it this way: "It is no longer enough to simply do the science and publish an academic paper. That is a necessary first step, but it moves only halfway toward the goal of guiding the planet toward a future that is sustainable."
Universities have been carrying the mantle for sustainability science. But sustainability science is too often descriptive rather than prescriptive. Clearly, we need to understand sustainability problems before we can develop solutions to them. But understanding problems alone won't in-and-of-itself solve them, it won't close the gap.
The university mission in the 21st Century should explicitly include something akin to "Develop solutions to sustainability problems." Such a mission, coupled with a genuine effort by universities to transfer potential, practical solutions they develop to agents that can implement them (governments, NGOs, businesses, neighborhood groups) could begin to close troubling gaps.
We urge universities to reward their professors, staff and students for working on behalf of sustainability outcomes by teaching problem solving skills, developing potential solutions to sustainability challenges and transferring solutions sets to implementing agents. Presently, this just isn't the norm.
If universities don't step-up to the challenges of sustainability, they run the risk of being marginalized, of their value being questioned. Many people already decry public support for higher education because of its fast-rising cost. Yet, by contrast, the economic and social costs of global sustainability problems reaching "tipping points" would be overwhelmingly more expensive than public investment in universities that would seek ways to avoid, minimize or solve such problems.
The value proposition is simple -- in addition to their traditionally important teaching and discovery functions, universities should repay their investors by developing and transferring solutions that address local, national and global sustainability problems, by taking a measure of responsibility for closing the gap between dangerous trajectories and desirable sustainability outcomes.
Can universities save the planet? No, not on their own. But they should accept some responsibility for paving the way. This would help universities remain relevant in the 21st Century.
Rob Melnick, Gary Dirks and Chris Boone are faculty and administrators in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University.
