“Sustainable Development” in Geographic Perspective

For geographers, both the seriousness of the sustainable development issue and the power of the term are challenges that are very welcome. The intellectual value and practical utility of such distinctive concepts as diversity, flow (nature-society, spatial, and temporal), scale, and visualization represent opportunities to contribute profoundly to questions of significance to both general learning and social decisionmaking. Moreover, geography's perpectives can help to address the pressing need for a stronger theoretical basis for understanding sustainable development. In the end, however, our contributions will depend on a demonstration in our roles as teachers and citizens, as well as scholars, that we recognize the importance of an ethical revolution as well as well as increased scientific understanding.