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emerge from international scientifi c programs, the world's scientifi c academies, and
independent networks of scientists' (p. 641).
Thus sustainability scientists argue that their scientifi c approach, because it is
objective, can replace the overly subjective and politicised approach prominent in
ongoing debates regarding what counts as sustainability and how to achieve it. In
other words, science can defi ne for us what should count as sustainable and what
processes contribute to a sustainability transition. What should be obvious is that
this completely ignores the key questions raised earlier about the normative - rather
than objective - nature of decisions about what counts as sustainability. As Redclift
points out, the idea that sustainability 'speak[s] to objective scientifi c method,
without the complication of human judgement' has been present in debates about
sustainability since at least the 1992 Earth Summit (2005, p. 17). This idea therefore
precedes (and even suggests the need for) sustainability science as a new fi eld. Sus-
tainability science aims to bypass politics by making sustainability a technical ques-
tion, yet in so doing scholars in this area ignore the extent to which they are actually
participating in the politics of sustainability. They do so by claiming that their
approach to sustainability is objectively better than others, which is also a claim
about what kinds of knowledge get to count. Not only does this leave little room
for non-academic forms of knowledge, it also denigrates other forms of academic
research that are not seen as appropriately scientifi c. This, fundamentally, is the
politics of sustainability.
Sustainability in geography
A very different understanding of sustainability is presented in the more general
geographical literature in both human and nature-society geography. (Physical
geographers have largely been absent from explicit discussion of what is meant by
sustainability, yet a large proportion of the work that physical geographers are
engaged in is related to sustainability, in that it is about understanding environmen-
tal change, especially as related to human action). Within this geographical litera-
ture, there is no unifying approach to the study of sustainability, yet there are some
overarching contributions. The fi rst is that geographic work, especially on nature-
society relations, on the whole does a better job at integrating social and ecological
concerns and processes, giving special attention to the complexity of these processes.
The second is that geographers treat sustainability itself as diverse, rather than sin-
gular. It is context dependent, infl uenced by space, place, and scale, and - above all
- is the
outcome
of diverse and complex socio-ecological relations. Although cer-
tainly not alone in addressing these issues, geographers contribute to sustainability
discussions especially on the basis of their unique, long-standing spatial and human-
environment traditions.
Turning to the fi rst contribution, geographical literature presents a much differ-
ent, more textured sense of what human-environment integration means. One way
it does this is by challenging the notion that nature and society exist as two separate
realms that interact. Instead, geographers demonstrate that the idea that they are
separate is itself historical, and is based on a complicated politics of knowledge that
is tied-up with the history of science, colonialism, capitalism, and the exploitation
of both people and nature (Castree 2005). Further, views of nature, and of a human-
nature split, infl uence actions. Dualistic views of nature not only justify actions that
degrade the environment, but they also infl uence conservation strategies, which are
