In the last century the impacts of human activity on natural processes that sustain the Earth's biosphere,atmosphere,hydrosphere and lithosphere and that provide the bed-rock of human life support systems,have grown to the extent that they pose a credible existential threat to humanity.Today,the biggest challenge for science,technology and innovation (STI) is to contribute to the pursuit of global sustainability as exemplified in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2015.Referred to as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,the SDGs comprise an ambitious,integrated framework of goals that represent humanity's commitment to comprehensive and transformative action in response to the world's most pressing social,economic,and environmental problems.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been met by unequal responses in different countries1Brauner JM Mindermann S Sharma M et al.Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19.Science. 2020; (published online Dec 15.)https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abd9338Crossref PubMed Scopus (576) Google Scholar, 2Allen K Buklijas T Chen A et al.Tracking global evidence-to-policy pathways in the coronavirus crisis: a preliminary report. International Network for Government Science Advice, Auckland2020https://www.ingsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/INGSA-Evidence-to-Policy-Tracker_Report-1_FINAL_17Sept.pdfDate accessed: February 15, 2021Google Scholar and led to unequal impacts, with populations in Europe, the USA, and Latin America disproportionately impacted.3Roser M Ritchie H Ortiz-Ospina E Hasell J Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirusDate: 2020Date accessed: February 14, 2021Google Scholar Science has uncovered much about SARS-CoV-2 and made extraordinary and unprecedented progress on the development of COVID-19 vaccines, but there is still great uncertainty as the pandemic continues to evolve. COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out in many countries, but this does not mean the crisis is close to being resolved. We are simply moving to a new phase of the pandemic. What emerges next will partly depend on the ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2, on the behaviour of citizens, on governments' decisions about how to respond to the pandemic, on progress in vaccine development and treatments and also in a broader range of disciplines in the sciences and humanities that focus both on bringing this pandemic to an end and learning how to reduce the impacts of future zoonoses, and on the extent to which the international community can stand together in its efforts to control COVID-19. Vaccines alone, unless they achieve high population coverage, offer long-lasting protection, and are effective in preventing both SARS-CoV-2 transmission and COVID-19, will not end the pandemic or allow the world to return to "business as usual". Until high levels of global vaccine-mediated protection are achieved across the world, it could be catastrophic if measures such as mask wearing, physical distancing, and hand hygiene are relaxed prematurely.4Haug N Geyrhofer L Londei A et al.Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions.Nat Human Behav. 2020; 4: 1303-1312Crossref PubMed Scopus (887) Google Scholar Countries, communities, and individuals must be prepared to cope in the longer-term with both the demands and the consequences of living with such essential containment and prevention measures. Many factors will determine the overall outcome of the pandemic. A nationalistic rather than global approach to vaccine delivery is not only morally wrong but will also delay any return to a level of "normality" (including relaxed border controls) because no country can be safe until all countries are safe. SARS-CoV-2 could continue to mutate in ways that both accelerate virus transmission and reduce vaccine effectiveness.5Fontanet A Autran B Lina B Kieny MP Abdool Karim SS Sridhar D SARS-CoV-2 variants and ending the COVID-19 pandemic.Lancet. 2021; (published online Feb 11.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00370-6Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (390) Google Scholar, 6Chand M Hopkins S Dabrera G et al.Investigation of novel SARS-CoV-2 variant: variant of concern 202012/01. Public Health England, London2020Google Scholar, 7Tegally H Wilkinson E Giovanetti M et al.Emergence and rapid spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) lineage with multiple spike mutations in South Africa.MedRxiv. 2020; (published online Dec 22.) (preprint)https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.21.20248640Google Scholar Vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, and disinformation could compromise the global COVID-19 response.8de Figueiredo A Simas C Karafillakis E Paterson P Larson HJ Mapping global trends in vaccine confidence and investigating barriers to vaccine uptake: a large-scale retrospective temporal modelling study.Lancet. 2020; 396: 898-908Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (618) Google Scholar Naive assumptions about herd immunity, given the appearance of new and challenging SARS-CoV-2 variants,5Fontanet A Autran B Lina B Kieny MP Abdool Karim SS Sridhar D SARS-CoV-2 variants and ending the COVID-19 pandemic.Lancet. 2021; (published online Feb 11.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00370-6Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (390) Google Scholar, 9Sridhar D Gurdasani D Herd immunity by infection is not an option.Science. 2021; 371: 230-231Crossref PubMed Scopus (42) Google Scholar could seriously risk repeated outbreaks and recurrences. SARS-CoV-2 can probably never be globally eradicated, because of its presence in many animals (including cats and dogs)10Mahdy MAA Younis W Ewaida Z An overview of SARS-CoV-2 and animal infection.Front Vet Sci. 2020; 7596391Crossref PubMed Scopus (93) Google Scholar and because of incomplete vaccine coverage and variable degrees of immunological protection.11Jain S Batra H Yadav P Chand S COVID-19 vaccines currently under preclinical and clinical studies, and associated antiviral immune response.Vaccines. 2020; 8: 649Crossref Scopus (43) Google Scholar Hence, ongoing strategies to deal with the endemic presence of SARS-CoV-2 in populations over the long term will be needed. Furthermore, we do not yet know if, and when, revaccination with current or new COVID-19 vaccines will be required since the duration of immunological protection and the efficacy against emergent SARS-CoV-2 variants remain unknown. With such uncertainties, we should not assume that recent scientific progress on COVID-19 diagnostics, vaccines, and treatments will end the pandemic. The world is likely to have many more years of COVID-19 decision making ahead—there is no quick solution available at present. The decisions of global agencies and governments, as well as the behaviours of citizens in every society, will greatly affect the journey ahead. There are many possible outcomes. At one extreme is the most optimistic scenario, in which new-generation COVID-19 vaccines are effective against all SARS-CoV-2 variants (including those that may yet emerge) and viral control is pursued effectively in every country in a coordinated effort to achieve global control. Even with international cooperation and adequate funding, this scenario would inevitably take a long time to achieve. The COVAX initiative is just an initial step towards addressing vaccine equity and global coordination for vaccine access, especially for lower income countries.12Commissioners of the Lancet COVID-19 CommissionTask Force Chairs and members of the Lancet COVID-19 CommissionCommission Secretariat and Staff of the Lancet COVID-19 CommissionPriorities for the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of 2021: statement of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission.Lancet. 2021; (published online Feb 12.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00388-3Google Scholar At the other extreme is a pessimistic scenario, in which SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge repeatedly with the ability to escape vaccine immunity, so that only high-income countries can respond by rapidly manufacturing adapted vaccines for multiple rounds of population reimmunisation in pursuit of national control while the rest of the world struggles with repeated waves and vaccines that are not sufficiently effective against newly circulating viral variants. In such a scenario, even in high-income countries, there would probably be repeated outbreaks and the path to "normality" in society and business would be much longer. And there are many other intermediate or alternate scenarios. Countries that have kept SARS-CoV-2 in check and countries where there are high levels of viral transmission will in time all probably reach a similar destination, even though their paths to arrive there will be quite different, because no countries can remain permanently isolated from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, countries working in isolation from each other and from global agencies will prolong the pandemic. A nationalistic rather than a global approach to COVID-19 vaccine availability, distribution, and delivery will make a pessimistic outcome much more likely. Additionally, unless countries work together to scale up prevention efforts, the risk of other pandemics, or other transboundary disasters with similar consequences, including those fuelled by climate change, will remain a constant threat. The International Science Council (ISC), as the independent, global voice for science in the broadest sense, believes it is crucial that the range of COVID-19 scenarios over the mid-term and long-term is explored to assist our understanding of the options that will make better outcomes more likely. Decisions to be made in the coming months need to be informed not only by short-term priorities, but also by awareness of how those decisions are likely to affect the ultimate destination. Providing such analyses to policy makers and citizens should assist informed decision making. In developing its COVID-19 Scenarios Project, the ISC has consulted with WHO and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. The ISC has established in February, 2021, a multidisciplinary Oversight Panel made up of globally representative world experts in relevant disciplines to work with a technical team to produce the scenario map. The Oversight Panel will report within 6–8 months to the global community on the possible COVID-19 scenarios that lie ahead over the next 3–5 years, and on the choices that could be made by governments, agencies, and citizens to provide a pathway to an optimistic outcome for the world. The authors are members of the Interim COVID-19 Working Group of the ISC. DS is convener of the interim working group. PG is President-Elect of the ISC. GB is a member of the ISC Governing Board. HH is Chief Executive Officer of the ISC. SSAK is Co-chair of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19. PP has received grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and personal fees as special adviser from the European Commission and as Chair of the Board from the HMG SCOR Board, unrelated to the current project. CW is a member of the working group on pandemics and crisis of the Group of Chief Science Advisors to the European Commission and the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies and has received grants from the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education, the German Federal Ministry for Family and Seniors, the Bertelsmann Foundation, the German Federal Ministry for Health, the German Federal Ministry of Justice and for Consumer Protection, personal fees from Agaplesion gAG as a member of supervisory board, and personal fees from several companies and organisations all unrelated to this Comment. We thank Felicia Low for her help in preparing this Comment.

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The environmental challenges that confront society are unprecedented and staggering in their scope, pace and complexity. Unless we reframe and examine them through a social lens, societal responses will be too little, too late, and potentially blind to negative consequences.

This paper considers the changes in education and capacity building that are needed in response to environmental and social challenges of the 21st Century. We argue that such changes will require more than adjustments in current educational systems, research funding strategies, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Instead, it calls for a deeper questioning of the assumptions and beliefs that frame both problems and solutions. We first discuss the challenges of transforming education and capacity building within five key arenas: interdisciplinary research; university education systems; primary and secondary education systems; researchers from the developing world; and the public at large and politicians. Our starting point is that any type of revolution that is proposed in response to global change is likely to reflect the educational perspectives and paradigms of those calling for the revolution. We differentiate between a circular revolution (as in the "plan-do-check-act cycle" often used in change management) versus an axial revolution (moving to a different way of thinking about the issues), arguing that the latter is a more appropriate response to the complex transdisciplinary challenges posed by global environmental change. We present some potential tools to promote an axial revolution, and consider the limits to this approach. We conclude that rather than promoting one large and ideologically homogenous revolution in education and capacity building, there is a need for a revolution in the way that leaders working with education and capacity building look at systems and processes of change. From this perspective, transformative learning may not only be desirable, but critical in responding to the challenges posed by global environmental change. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Global environmental change is a potentially catastrophic and increasingly urgent problem for humanity. It is relevant to individuals, organisations and governments everywhere. But what exactly makes it so? How is the world changing around us, and how and where can the course and conditions of such change be altered? What role can and must the social sciences play in such efforts? These are the "big picture" questions tackled in Part 1, questions that expose the complexity and urgency of global environmental change, and locate it at the centre of the quest to secure a sustainable future for all.

The challenges formulated within the Future Earth framework set the orientation for research programmes in sustainability science for the next ten years. Scientific disciplines from natural and social science will collaborate both among each other and with relevant societal groups in order to define the important integrated research questions, and to explore together successful pathways towards global sustainability. Such collaboration will be based on transdisciplinarity and integrated research concepts. This paper analyses the relationship between scientific integration and transdisciplinarity, discusses the dimensions of integration of different knowledge and proposes a platform and a paradigm for research towards global sustainability that will be both designed and conducted in partnership between science and society. We argue that integration is an iterative process that involves reflection among all stakeholders. It consists of three stages: co-design, co-production and co-dissemination.

Global environmental change is linked to and exacerbates other social, economic and political crises such as poverty and inequality. Global sustainability requires urgent action to protect the planet and ensure human equity, dignity and well-being. The social sciences need to research the human causes, vulnerabilities and impacts of environmental change more effectively and inform responses to the challenges society faces. Social scientists need to work with each other and with colleagues from the natural and physical sciences to deliver credible, useful knowledge to help solve the world's problems.

Drawn from the more than 150 authors in the World Social Science Report 2013, the key messages and recommendations call for a new kind of social science – one that is bolder, better, bigger, different. There is a need to reframe global environmental change as a social process, infuse social science insights into problem-solving processes, encourage more social scientists to address global environmental change directly, and change the way the social sciences think about and do science to help meet the interdisciplinary and cross-sector changes society faces.

There is growing recognition that humans are faced with a critical and narrowing window of opportunity to halt or reverse some of the key indicators involved in the environmental crisis. Given human activities' scale and impact, as well as the overly narrow perspectives of environmental research's dominant natural sciences, a major effort is necessary to place the perspectives and insights of the humanities' and social sciences' perspectives and insights at the forefront. Such effort will require developing integrated approaches, projects, and institutions that truly do so. This article's goal is to help mobilize the social sciences and the humanities on the topic of sustainability transitions, but also call for a meaningful research agenda to acknowledge the profound implications of the advent of the Anthropocene epoch. We formulate the need for an innovative research agenda based on a careful consideration of the changing human condition as linked to global environmental change. The humanities and social sciences will need to change and adapt to this pressing, historic task.

Presenting human security perspectives on climate change, this volume raises issues of equity, ethics and environmental justice, as well as our capacity to respond to what is increasingly considered to be the greatest societal challenge for humankind. Written by international experts, it argues that climate change must be viewed as an issue of human security, and not an environmental problem that can be managed in isolation from larger questions concerning development trajectories, and ethical obligations towards the poor and to future generations. The concept of human security offers a new approach to the challenges of climate change, and the responses that could lead to a more equitable and sustainable future. Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security will be of interest to researchers, policy makers, and practitioners concerned with the human dimensions of climate change, as well as to upper-level students in the social sciences and humanities interested in climate change.

Progress in understanding and addressing both global environmental change and sustainable development requires better integration of social science research.