Sustainability Science is an emerging academic discipline that takes a holistic, integrated approach to the complex, long-term problems facing the world such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The aim of this science is to build a sustainable society that functions inharmony with the natural environment. In order to address the complex global issues that impede progress toward this goal, a new approach to academic scientific inquiry is necessary. What is required is an approach that can integrate and organize vast amounts of specialized knowledge generated in many related individual academic disciplines and, thus, produce “innovation in knowledge” that can be applied to the complex issues now facing mankind at every societal level from local to global.
In order to create a sustainable society, it is necessary to promote socio-economic and technological evolution through innovations in knowledge that enable social and technological innovation. One important role of sustainability science is to suggest action policies and reference models for the development of a sustainable community.