22-23 June 2011, Reims, France. Through a partnership with the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, UNITAR is supporting the creation of a Focal Point on Sustainability Studies which is to be established following The First “Rencontres internationales de Reims” conference on Sustainability Studies. Linking economy, society and environment around a paradigm that favours all these aspects equally and sustainably will be the centre point of discussions bringing eminent professors, thinkers and practitioners from different continents and from the North and South.

To combine the increase of everyone’s wellbeing with sustainability is one of the greatest challenges for contemporary development. This issue becomes particularly central in the perspective of 2012, a key year representing a double deadline: that of the new Rio Conference on the environment and development, 20 years after 1992, and that of the formal recognition by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, that we live in a new era: the antropocene. The increasing responsibility of human societies, not only towards the planet, but also towards our future needs to be highlighted.

It is fundamental to match this responsibility with instruments of governance capable of implementing truly sustainable policies. In fact, the legitimate increase of environmental concerns provokes an increase of technical devices and of regulations. It is not rare that these responses to environmental challenges end up not considering social and spatial justice or to reinforce existing access inequalities. And to be able to conceive this governance, it is essential to rethink the practices of planning.

These first ‘rencontres’ mark the launching of a European focal point for Sustainability Science in Reims. Sustainability Science represents an emerging discipline. Its formal birth dates back to the 2001 Amsterdam Conference on Challenges of a Changing Earth. Sustainability science addresses action on sustainable development. This presupposes a multi-scale approach – temporal, spatial, and functional, as well as the inclusion of dynamic equilibria, not only of an economic, physical-chemical or biological kind, but also between actors and societies whose interests may be divergent. It corresponds to use-inspired research, which is based on the postulate that the greatest scientific achievements in whatever domain take place in the framework of research applied to concrete needs of human societies. This research is, therefore, at the same time ‘basic’ and ‘applied’.

This European focal point will be a place for theoretical construction of research programmes that privilege interfaces among disciplines. Every year, it will organize a thematic intensive workshop, bringing together a wide partnership.