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The outside world’s message to us is clear: Provide new knowledge that helps societies carry out a transition to sustainability and train more experts in science and mathematics. 

These messages are repeated in discussions with actors from the corporate world and the public sector alike. For example, it has been estimated that technology industries will need nearly 80,000 new, highly educated experts during the next ten years. Moreover, putting sustainable development onto corporations’ strategic agenda creates a growing need for diverse expertise in sustainability, resource wisdom and the circular economy.
 
The need for expertise in the natural sciences is evident and increasing. 

However, mere knowledge of natural science is not enough; we need open and diverse perspectives where expertise is combined with understanding and ethical considerations. 

We are challenged by the manifold environmental crisis through which we are currently living: Biodiversity is disappearing, the climate is changing, and our environment is being polluted with increasing speed.

Coping with this manifold crisis calls for a sustainability transition – a social change aiming at securing well-being within our planet’s boundaries. 

The role of education is highlighted at a transitional stage 

Education and knowledge enable reform and help us implement the sustainability transition. Education also provides the scientific capacity for developing new, sustainable technologies and ways of working, but alongside expertise, it also develops our ability to act according to these. A broad-based education must, however, do more than just provide scientific knowledge and in-depth expertise in the content and methodologies of one’s own field. Such an education must also develop our capacity for ethical consideration in applying our knowledge in varying settings. 

Broad-based education also involves the ability to work together with other experts from different fields and cultural backgrounds. 

Because the sustainability transition is about a cross-cutting systemic change in society, education should guide us in systemic thinking and help us see the connections and interactions between a range of issues and phenomena. 

The basic sciences are fundamental pillars for understanding, trunks in a forest with roots deep in the soil of accumulated knowledge. In order to solve the manifold crisis we are facing, it is essential that the canopy in this forest, supported by these many trunks, represents a multidisciplinary striving for sustainability. Even though the basic sciences and research are still needed, we must better and more effectively recognise the connections between research in the promotion of sustainability as well as the notion that solutions to complex problems are multidisciplinary. Chemists alone cannot solve the challenges of the circular economy, nor can mere biological expertise stop the loss of biodiversity. 

The need for new technology and new knowledge about sustainable solutions is urgent, but there is a concurrent need for understanding the ways in which the new solutions and technologies can be integrated into people’s daily lives and replace unsustainable practices. Scientists must build bridges to society. 

As the environment changes, so too must science change

In the sustainability transition, scientific knowledge has a potentially large role to play. The scientific method, which is based on observations and the testing of hypotheses, creates the best basis for new social and technological innovations. Science can speed up the introduction of such innovations and decrease uncertainty about their effectiveness and how they work. 

But the meaning of research knowledge in directing social changes is being challenged more than ever before. Its quality and reliability are questioned by viewing science as simply one narrative among others. Opening up the scientific process and including people in the conducting of science can increase the trust in and commitment to scientific results. Citizen science plays an important role here. 

Moreover, further opening up scientific work to cooperation with companies and the public sector will increase the significance and impact of scientific results in society.

Universities have the best possible scientific resources to act as pioneers and forerunners in the development of new, more sustainable ways of action. Because our commitment to broad-based education, we also have the ethical competence and organisational capabilities to adopt sustainable models of working. Therefore, when working for science we must critically examine the sustainability of our own actions, of how we consume energy and materials and how we move around and travel. This obligates us to act so that the overall outcome of our activities promotes sustainability and a net positive approach.

Mikko Mönkkönen is a professor of applied ecology as well as the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Science at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥.