Sustain-Ability in Science, Technology and Innovation - Water, Energy and Natural Resources.

Among interesting questions that many of us like to know are Sustainability and Resilience, as they frequently appear in many professions and situations. Next to these questions, there are needs to know what Sustainability and Resilience mean in the context of Science, Technology and Innovation. Naturally these questions are related to all key sectors involving water, energy and natural resources (fossil, biological and renewables) on Earth.

Sustain-earth.com is organizing a series of WEBINARS staring in 2021 where professionals, including professors, from different disciplines and sectors will contribute. They will join to put together and address the essential components that answer 'What, Why and How' in 'Science, Technology and Innovation - Water, Energy and Natural Resources' in relation to sustainability and resilience.

Sustainability involves three main pillars that are considered the bases to achieve prosperity anywhere, these are: the social; the environmental; and the economical aspects of societies and communities. These three pillars, though recognized and understood in the later part of the 20th century, they were crystalized, put together and formulated in the Paris Agreement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement) of 2015 regarding Climate Change with the goal to limit the global warming to well below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) by 2100. Also in UN-SDGs "United Nations Sustainable Development Goals" of the UN-2015 or the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals). The Paris Agree, Goal 13 'The Climate Action', is intrinsically and actively linked to all the other 16 Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While Sustainability is the practice of reducing, or even eliminating, all the environmental impacts on planet Earth and thereby improving the quality of life. The Resilience is the practice of designing approaches and tools to endure, and live with, the physical, social and economic shocks and stresses. Sustainability and Resilience though may be understood to mean the same thing, they are indeed two markedly different concepts. Sustainability as given in the UN-SDGs is meant to bring about a state of balance that must be kept as stable as possible which is practically extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve. Resilience, however, is introduced by the Stockholm Resilience Center (https://www.stockholmresilience.org/) and is being defined as "the capacity of a system, be it an individual, a forest, a city or an economy, to deal with change and continue to develop". However, Resilience is an approach and innovation that takes in consideration to the UN-SDGs. So, Sustainability and Resilience can be looked upon as two sides of the same coin.

The WEBINARS on "Sustainability in Science, Technology and Innovation - Water, Energy and Natural Resources" are organized in four parts, the first three PARTS are being: Part (1) - performance of planet earth and the natural drivers of life, i.e. before the Anthropocene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene) which is a proposed geological era involving significant human impacts on the Earth's geology, ecosystems including the anthropogenic impacts on environment and climate; Part (2) - performance of humans 'Homo Sapiens' due to changes in the lifestyles associated with the agricultural and the four industrial revolutions that took place during the Anthropocene; Part (3) - performance of global economic systems with consideration to growth economy versus circular economy. These three parts are related to the three pillars of sustainability: the Social 'performance of humans'; the Environmental 'performance of planet Earth'; the Economic 'performance of economic systems'. Putting these three parts together will allow to define Part (4) - performance of Sustainability, Resilience in knowledge versus 'Science, Technology and Innovation' in Water, Energy and Natural Resources (https://youtu.be/i57OmFAiuY4).

In part one, the natural drivers of life on planet earth, in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere, will be explained to give the necessary bases for understanding the base-line and the boundary conditions of the natural climate and environment systems of the Earth. In part two the changes in life-styles of humans 'homo sapiens' on Earth since their evolution and migration out of Africa 70 000 years ago will be detailed. This will involve the different transitions and changes from the hunter-gatherer era until now. Part three will give the impacts of the combined spatio-temporal interactions between human life and the planets' own drivers on the global economic systems and will involve issues related to growth economy versus circular economy and the ongoing shifts in world economic systems. In part four analysis of the performance of sustainability with reference to the first three parts will explain 'What, Why and How' in 'Science, Technology and Innovation - Water, Energy and Natural Resources' in relation resilience in knowledge versus science, technology and innovation. These four parts together will give background information on building sustainable and resilient frameworks to scale-up and scale-out science, technology and innovation to meet the UN-SDGs in order to achieve prosperity on planet Earth.

In summary the forthcoming WEBINARS can be described as follows: Part One: The performance of planet Earth; Part Two: The performance of humans 'Homo Sapiens';Part Three: The performance of world economic systems with consideration to growth economy versus circular economy; Part Four: The performance of sustainability. Resilience in knowledge versus science and technology.