Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America.
PLoS Biol. 2012;10(6):e1001345. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345. Epub 2012 Jun 19.
The discipline of sustainability science has emerged in response to concerns of natural and social scientists, policymakers, and lay people about whether the Earth can continue to support human population growth and economic prosperity. Yet, sustainability science has developed largely independently from and with little reference to key ecological principles that govern life on Earth. A macroecological perspective highlights three principles that should be integral to sustainability science: 1) physical conservation laws govern the flows of energy and materials between human systems and the environment, 2) smaller systems are connected by these flows to larger systems in which they are embedded, and 3) global constraints ultimately limit flows at smaller scales. Over the past few decades, decreasing per capita rates of consumption of petroleum, phosphate, agricultural land, fresh water, fish, and wood indicate that the growing human population has surpassed the capacity of the Earth to supply enough of these essential resources to sustain even the current population and level of socioeconomic development.
可持续性科学这一学科的出现，是为了回应自然和社会科学家、政策制定者以及普通民众对于地球是否能够继续支持人口增长和经济繁荣的担忧。然而，可持续性科学的发展在很大程度上是独立于并很少参考那些支配地球上生命的关键生态原则的。宏观生态学的观点强调了应该成为可持续性科学基础的三个原则：1）物理守恒定律支配着能量和物质在人类系统与环境之间的流动；2）较小的系统通过这些流动与更大的系统相连接，而这些系统又嵌入在更大的系统之中；3）全球约束条件最终限制了较小尺度上的流动。在过去几十年中，石油、磷酸盐、农业用地、淡水、鱼类和木材的人均消费率下降表明，不断增长的人口已经超过了地球供应这些基本资源的能力，即使是当前的人口和社会经济发展水平也无法得到维持。
