15th - Bill Clark - Pursuing Sustainability: Linking Science and Practice
This Wege Lecture on Sustainability will kick off the 3-day celebration of the Center's 25th Anniversary.
About Dr. William Clark
Professor Clark is the Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Trained as an ecologist, his research focuses on sustainability science: understanding the interactions of human and environmental systems with a view toward advancing the goals of sustainable development. He is particularly interested in how institutional arrangements affect the linkage between knowledge and action in the sustainability arena.
About the Lecture
The ultimate determinants of intergenerational well-being should be thought of as the stocks of assets on which people now draw and will draw in the future to subsist and improve their lives – stocks that include natural, social, manufactured, human and knowledge capital.
Managing these assets requires understanding how they interact in highly complex social-environmental systems. It also requires understanding how people, as committed agents of change, can intervene in those systems to move them toward sustainability goals, working collaboratively in governance processes to influence how society takes actions to promote sustainability. While actors from every realm of society can and need to engage in this, innovations from the research and development communities are particularly needed; creating useful knowledge and linking it effectively with decision making is a critical need. This talk explores frameworks and approaches for understanding, analyzing, and effectively engaging in sustainability challenges.