Developing integrative socio- environmental approaches in support of effective community level decision making for human development and environmental sustainability in Sustainability Science demonstration sites

UNESCO is an active partner in Future Earth, a global initiative to make
sustainability science an enabler of evidence-based policy-making. UNESCO is
leading the way for sustainability Science education in Asia Pacific region; it is also investing resources at various sustainable science demonstration sites to develop integrated approaches for community sustainability and supporting similar initiatives for better management of natural and human resources. Sustainability Science aims to establish sustainable development practices that harmonize human needs with the natural environment and reduce the impact of anthropogenic activities through transdisciplinary approaches and tackles the challenges of sustainable development. To achieve this objective it is crucial how various human-environment interactions affect the challenge of sustainability. One of the key challenges is to integrate natural and social sciences, to develop a thorough understanding of the complex global challenges at a community level in various contexts in order to develop, validate and monitor new approaches and develop environmentally responsive sustainable development
models.