Preparing for 10 Billion: Workshop on Sustainability Science

Centered around the question "Can Earth’s and Society’s Systems Meet the Needs of 10 Billion People?" this event will feature invited presentations and discussions directed at a careful empirical examination of sustainability. Key issues, including population growth, aging populations, migration, differential consumption, and land use change, will be discussed based on different views of both social and natural science. 

Wolfgang Lutz will contribute to this discussion with a presentation entitled "Intergenerational tradeoffs: What do future generations lose because of efforts to equitably improve current human well-being?". He will introduce the model of “Demographic Metabolism”, a powerful tool for studying the evolution of intra- and inter-cohort differences and inequalities over time and with respect to key drivers and indicators of human well-being, and illustrate his argument with reference to a new set of global scenarios called SSPs (Shared Socio-economic Pathways). 

Initiated by the Presidents of the National Academies this workshop, within a systems framework, will explicitly emphasize the integration of the social sciences and the natural sciences that will be required to achieve sustainability for a larger human population. It will examine key issues of population size, distribution, growth, aging, and differential consumption, as well as land and water use and climate change and their effects on availability of resources to achieve improved well-being for a larger number of people. 

For more information visit the workshop website 

Last edited: 19 September 2013