Harvard’s William Clark Hails Sustainability Science as a Key to Long-Term Local, Global Well-Being

William Clark. Photo: Martha StewartSustainability science is not, at its core, about innovation or high-tech advancement. It is, first and foremost, an exercise in humility, an approach that requires the elusive skills of listening and patience. Academic agendas? Leave them at the door.

“It may not be what we went into science and technology looking for,” said William Clark of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Clark gave the keynote address at the Senator George J. Mitchell Lecture on Sustainability on Oct. 2. Working toward a sustainable future on our planet is “about the concerns, hopes and fears of stakeholders,” Clark added. “It’s about listening instead of talking.”

The annual lecture is hosted by the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions (Mitchell Center) with a goal to bring together people from across Maine who seek to understand the intersecting economic, social and environmental challenges and opportunities faced by communities, as well as to present constructive options that will facilitate a renewed commitment to the development of collaborative approaches to problem solving.

David Hart, Director of the Mitchell Center, credited Clark as one of the co-founders of the emerging field of sustainability science. “Bill’s work suggests that universities have great potential to help society solve sustainability problems. To reach this potential, however, they need to mobilize their full complement of expertise in the many different facets of sustainability challenges – not just expertise in natural science and engineering, but also in the social sciences, arts and humanities” said Hart.

Clark, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development, sang the praises of sustainability science, which promotes research collaborations between universities, government, the private sector, and civil society. The goal is to engage diverse values and viewpoints to achieve real world solutions – meetings of minds that favor long-term benefits to individuals and society.

“It’s about the well-being of individual people here and on the other side of the world, rather than doing well at someone else’s expense,” Clark said in a talk early Thursday with faculty and students.

Clark said such scientific mindfulness comes with a steep learning curve. He recalled a project in Kenya. He was working with rural villages to solve problems caused by cook stoves, which fill dwellings with dangerous smoke. Clark presented one villager with a common-sense solution to the problem – at least it seemed like one to him.

“I said ‘Why don’t you build bigger windows?’ She said, ‘yes, but then the leopards would come in,’” Clark recalled. “I was not solving their problem.”

Sustainability science, Clark said, still requires risk and tenacity on the part of academic faculty. Research that combines the scholarship of economists, biologists, anthropologists, engineers and legal experts can lead to tension within individual university departments and often defies clean categorization in academic journals. Such is the burden of emerging areas of study, Clark said, noting that academic fields as well established as biochemistry were born of scholarly tumult.

“Sustainability science is a coming together place where folks unite around certain classes of problems,” Clark said. .

Sen. George Mitchell also spoke at his namesake lecture, citing the commitment of faculty and students at the Mitchell Center in the face of challenges outlined by Clark.

“The road to solutions is often long and winding. Persistence is essential to success,” Mitchell said. “In a larger sense, the ethos of (the Mitchell Center’s) work reflects one of my deepest beliefs: the importance of public service. The many faculty and students involved in the Mitchell Center have committed themselves to a goal larger than their individual lives: the goal of helping to build a better world starting right here in our own communities in our own state.”

An online video recording of the 2014 Mitchell Lecture on Sustainability will be available shortly at umaine.edu/mitchellcenter. DVDs are also available. Please contact Kim Raymond to request a copy.