A letter to the editor in Science discussing a recent article, “Sustainability Science,” by Kates et al.

The letter argues that sustainability science will need to transcend the determinism and incremental responses to perturbation that still dominate much research on the dynamics of combined socio-ecological systems. It offers participatory scenario development as an approach for systematically addressing many of the core challenges the discipline faces.

Originally published in Science 297 (September 2002): 1994.