This presentation will explore many of the same issues that were raised last year, especially fundamental questions or tensions that permeate the debate on achieving a transition to sustainability.

Can technology alone solve the seemingly intractable global environmental and socio-economic problems we now face, or are more fundamental shifts in societal values required? What role can or should Western scientific approaches play in the sustainability challenge? Indeed, what roles should the researchers play - “objective" observers and commentators or activists for change.

The presentation will not attempt to answer these deep-seated questions, but will rather point the way towards to types of research, education and attitudes needed to meet the great challenges of the 21st century.

About Will Steffen
Will Steffen is the Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute. His research interests span a broad range within the field of Earth System science, with a special emphasis on terrestrial ecosystem interactions with global change, the global carbon cycle, incorporation of human processes in Earth System modelling and analysis, and sustainability and the Earth System. He is a visiting researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. From 1998 to 2004 he was executive director of International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).