The role of environmental or sustainability sciences in society.

摘要

Against the background of the so-called environmental crisis and rapidly changing societies, environmental sciences are facing a fundamental shift in societal demands - with various implications for their legitimation. The need to contribute to the handling of environmental crisis and to provide feasible knowledge, decision support, and innovations for a rational, risk minimizing organization of future makes it necessary to broaden the traditional explanatory approach of 'environmental sciences' towards 'sustainability sciences'. Their aim is to provide traditional scientifical explanations as well as the basis for rational management decisions in the wake of limited natural resources. The resort between the paradoxical situation of an expanding expert-culture on the one side and a growing pragmatism on the other is seen in a well-directed education and promotion of 'interface' skills and competencies, which have to affiliate with the standard professional competencies and which will help to ensure social legitimation.