Equity and sustainability in the Anthropocene: a social–ecological systems p...

雩风三日

Equity and sustainability in the Anthropocene:a social–ecological systems perspective on their intertwined futures
人类世的公平和可持续性:社会-生态系统对其交织未来的看法

   Addressing rising inequalities and inequities, and maintaining a stable and resilient planet are two defining and interdependent challenges of our age. Recognizing that we are now in the Anthropocene, scientists, policymakers and practitioners are increasingly paying attention to securing sustainable human futures within our planetary life support system [1]. At the same time, the question of equity now needs more focused attention, recasting positive sustainable futures in the Anthropocene as ones that are also fair and just [2]. This includes the United Nations Agenda 2030, which places equity at the heart of sustainable development, not only highlighting reducing inequalities as one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but also recognizing its centrality to several other goals, and pledging to ‘leave no-one behind’ [3]. Recognizing the hyper-connectivity and complexity of the Anthropocene makes clear that human and environmental systems, which have always been entwined and co-evolving despite their disciplinary disconnection in the past two centuries [4], are now even more so, often in new, teleconnected and uncertain ways. The Anthropocene implies real risks of destabilizing the Earth system, undermining all attempts for equitable human development on our planet. At the same time, in the Anthropocene we are witnessing rising and globalized inequities that have far-reaching consequences for almost every aspect of our lives, and our ability to achieve other goals, including sustainable human futures [5,6]. Unlike other concepts that have highlighted
the impact of human pressures on the environment, the Anthropocene  describes a state change in the Earth system,
viewed as an interdependent, co-evolving social–ecological system [7], as well as a new set of ways of thinking about our recent and current epoch [8]. Anthropocene thinking takes us away from reductionist linear cause–effect analysis of equity and sustainability, to underline the fully intertwined character of human and ecological systems, and the co-evolving fates of sustainability and equity [9–11]. While there is already much attention to the twin challenges of sustainability and equity, there is remarkably little systematic work to address their interlinkages. Some existing work addresses the interactions between inequality and unsustainability [12–16]; and numerous case studies attest to their importance (e.g. [17,18]). However, the interlinkages between equity and sustainability need deeper and broader interdisciplinary analysis and
understanding (e.g. [19]), as well as new concepts, approaches and agendas better suited to the intertwined complexity of the Anthropocene. This paper offers the outline of a new conceptual framework and some key building blocks towards an agenda that deeply connects equity and sustainability, essentially asking ‘what are the dynamics of equitable sustainability’? It begins by introducing some central concepts and emerging debates in understandings of sustainability and equity, including offering a new synthetic framework for equity’s multiple forms. It then proposes a new perspective on the interlinked fates of sustainability and equity and explores alternative ways in which they can be seen to be dynamically interacting in complex, coupled social–ecological systems (SES), in pathways which over time head towards or away from ‘equitable sustainability’. We end by using this foundation of intertwined equitable sustainability to outline some transformative pathways towards fair and sustainable futures in the Anthropocene, and a research agenda that could contribute to extending these initial framing thoughts.

  应对日益加剧的不平等和不平等现象，维护一个稳定和有复原力的地球，是我们这个时代的两个决定性和相互依存的挑战。认识到我们现在处于人类世，科学家、政策制定者和实践者越来越关注在我们的行星生命支持系统[1]中确保人类未来的可持续发展。与此同时，公平问题现在需要更加关注，将人类世的积极可持续未来重塑为公平公正的未来。这包括《联合国2030年议程》，该议程将公平放在可持续发展的核心位置，不仅强调将减少不平等作为17个可持续发展目标之一，而且承认减少不平等对其他几个目标的核心作用，并承诺不让任何一个人掉队。认识到人类世的高度连接性和复杂性，我们可以清楚地看到，尽管在过去的两个世纪里，人类和环境系统的学科脱节，但它们一直是相互缠绕和共同进化的，现在更是如此，通常以新的、远程联系和不确定的方式。人类世意味着破坏地球系统稳定的真正风险，破坏我们星球上所有公平人类发展的努力。与此同时，在人类世中，我们正在目睹日益加剧的全球化不平等，这种不平等对我们生活的几乎每一个方面，以及我们实现其他目标(包括可持续的人类未来)的能力产生深远影响[5,6]。不像其他的概念,强调了人类对环境压力的影响,人类世描述了地球系统的状态变化,视为一个相互依存的,共赢的社会生态系统[7],以及一套新的思维方式对我们近期和当前时代[8]。人类世的思想使我们摆脱了对公平和可持续性的还原主义线性因果分析，强调人类和生态系统完全相互交织的特性，以及可持续性和可持续性的共同演变的命运[9 11]。虽然对可持续性和公平性这两大挑战已经给予了很大关注，但解决它们之间相互联系的系统性工作却少得惊人。一些现有的工作解决了不平等和不可持续性之间的相互作用[12 16];大量的案例研究证明了它们的重要性(如[17,18])。然而，公平和可持续性之间的相互联系需要更深入和更广泛的跨学科分析和理解(如[19])，以及更适合人类世错综复杂的新概念、方法和议程。本文概述了一个新的概念框架和一些关键的构建模块，以实现一个将公平和可持续性紧密联系在一起的议程，本质上是问什么是公平可持续性的动力?本文首先介绍了一些核心概念以及在理解可持续发展和公平方面出现的争论，包括为公平的多种形式提供一个新的综合框架。然后，它提出了一个关于可持续发展和公平的相互关联的命运的新视角，并探索了在复杂的、耦合的社会生态系统(SES)中，随着时间的推移，在走向或偏离公平的可持续发展的路径中，它们可以被视为动态互动的替代方式。最后，我们将利用这一相互交织的公平可持续性的基础，勾勒出人类世迈向公平和可持续未来的一些变革路径，并提出一项研究议程，有助于扩展这些初步框架思想。