Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥

"The international research community has adopted a critical stand in relation to the concept of sustainable development for a long time, and for a good reason. Development as a term is often understood narrowly in a human-centered manner, meaning that the state of non-human nature is regarded merely as a condition to human well-being. We want to challenge such way of thinking", says Wisdom Fellow Teea Kortetmäki, one of the authors.

°­´Ç°ù³Ù±ð³Ù³¾Ã¤°ì¾±â€™s background is in social sciences and environmental philosophy. According to her, the idea of Planetary Well-being is ecosystem-based, apart from the commonly used sustainable development concept. The authors of the article consider well-being of non-human nature as a base for all economic activity, for instance.

"Escalation of the current environmental crises indicates that development of the society and economy has not been sustainable. Large-scale ecosystem-level processes must be protected as they are a precondition of maintaining life on earth and preserving human and nonhuman well-being."

Collaboration between more than ten disciplines

The authors represent the School of Resource Wisdom (JYU.Wisdom), which is an open cooperation network of sustainability and responsibility experts at the University of ´³²â±¹Ã¤²õ°ì²â±ôä. The article is the first peer-reviewed research article joint publication of the community. Different disciplines across human and natural sciences are represented, for example sociology, psychology and ecology.

Mikael Puurtinen, the Education Coordinator of JYU.Wisdom, is one of the authors. He found writing of the cross-disciplinary paper as rather instructive process. Scientists from various backgrounds supplement each other’s expertise.

"For instance, social scientists deepen understanding about the structural factors behind sustainability issues, whereas natural scientists aim at exact solution-oriented analyses to solve those issues. It took time and effort to integrate different discipline-specific approaches, but it was worth it.

The concept of Planetary Well-being is used while developing sustainability education of the University of ´³²â±¹Ã¤²õ°ì²â±ôä. Puurtinen is leading the work.

"Thanks to the joint writing effort, we can now operate with a concept that is applicable in education and research across various faculties and disciplines."

The article at nature.com: 

For further information:
Jonne Hytönen, Research Coordinator of JYU.Wisdom, jonne.p.hytonen@jyu.fi, tel. +358 40 1981450

Join JYU.Wisdom: /en/research/wisdom/e-mail-list-for-jyu-wisdom