The what, when, and how of translating knowledge to action in nature-society systems for sustainability

The what, when, and how of translating knowledge to action in nature-society systems for sustainability | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article The what, when, and how of translating knowledge to action in nature-society systems for sustainability John Anderies, Jean-Denis Mathias This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3877006/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Published Journal Publication published 10 Oct, 2025 Read the published version in Communications Earth & Environment → Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract The notion of a safe operating space for humanity has recently emerged as a conceptual guide for global-scale sustainability policy challenges. While the Planetary Boundaries Framework defines this space and has spurred empirical work to determine where the Earth system is relative to its boundaries, even less is known regarding the capacity of globally interconnected societies to navigate towards or remain within a safe operating space when constrained by imperfect information. This study leverages notions of observability and controllability from modern control systems theory to explore the link between information and the capacity to navigate Earth system dynamics in three interrelated sustainability problems. The analysis highlights the critical dependence of the notion of a safe operating space on information and decision processes and the subtle interplay between how past, real-time, and projected information on a particular observation is weighted and the controllability of a system. Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental social sciences/Climate-change policy Earth and environmental sciences/Climate sciences/Climate change controllability observability nature-society model controlled dynamical systems safe operating space Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files suppinfo.pdf Cite Share Download PDF Status: Published Journal Publication published 10 Oct, 2025 Read the published version in Communications Earth & Environment → Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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