Introduction

We live in an era of great concern about environmental sustainability. Global problems such as climate change, resource depletion, and biodiversity reduction have worked their way into both public and scholarly consciousness with a force not felt in at least a generation. Public awareness of these and other environmental issues in the modern world has often rested on scientific knowledge and research practices. This is especially the case for problems that transcend the local level; everyday experiences have often proved insufficient to comprehend larger-scale environmental phenomena. Moreover, modern scientific knowledge has become centrally important for solving or mitigating these environmental problems. While citizens and policy makers who are interested in addressing environmental issues may differ in their estimation of how vital science may be-ranging from those who regard the discovery and application of scientific knowledge as the primary tasks of earth repair to those who believe that changes in values, social and economic systems, and institutions are more important-few would dispute the centrality of the modern environmental sciences for influencing how those problems have been represented and understood.