Abstract
Industry 5.0 recognizes the power of industry to be a flexible provider of welfare to achieve societal goals beyond employment and growth, by ensuring that production conforms to the limits of nature and places the well-being of employees in all processes. Adding a personal touch to automation increases competitiveness and helps attract the best talent. New digital solutions such as cloud systems, big data, and the internet of things require new management approaches that include sustainability in terms of efficient use of resources. These new approaches, which need different disciplines such as social and natural sciences to work together, are essential for the optimum balance between environmental, economic, and social components. Socio-Ecological sustainability encompasses the systems which provide new theory and evidence to transform sustainable development to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene better. Research on this subject at the interface of science and society is essential considering the sustainable environment, humanity, and new technology together.
TopIntroduction
While sustainability encompasses the environmental, economic, and social aspects of human life, socio-ecological sustainability (SES) takes this perspective even further. In the last century, with the sharp development of technology, urbanization and other socio-economic changes, the use, and control of resources have become a necessity with the increase in the material wealth and consumption of societies (Reyers et al., 2018). With increasing material well-being and the consumption of societies, pure science and engineering approaches to pollution control and resource conservation have become insufficient to create systemic, long-term solutions to pressing sustainability problems in the water, climate, food, soil, and other energy interconnections (Ince, 2018a). There is a growing need for a multidisciplinary approach and a shared understanding of human-ecosystem interactions that should inform environmental policy and decision-making on a public and private scale.
The focus area of the social-ecological approach aims to develop the basic knowledge and skills necessary for research at the interface between science, society, and the environment and to offer new models for sustainability. The focus is on systems thinking and modeling involving all stakeholders, sustainability assessment at product, project and macro-economic scales, economic and biological analysis of resources and the environment, particularly learning and participatory approaches to environmental policy design. This field requires a multidisciplinary perspective that can demonstrate adequate skill in quantitative and model-based inquiry as well as social and political awareness of the pressing environmental issues of the digital age (Perez-Soba & Dwyer, 2016). Because the concept of the social-ecological system adopts the perspective of nature and humans instead of humans in nature. Instead of just protecting or restoring nature, it is necessary to bring together the social system consisting of human capital and the ecosystem consisting of natural capital with the method of safe keeping. It is an inadequate and wrong way of thinking to think that natural resources and the earth exist to meet and serve human needs. In this direction, the scope of the SES theory developed to meet all expectations can be summarized as follows (Berkes et al., 2000; Redman et al., 2004):
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A coherent system of biophysical and social factors that interact regularly in a flexible, continually interacting manner,
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A system defined at several spatial, temporal and organizational scales that may be hierarchically interconnected,
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A set of critical resources, such as natural, socioeconomic, and cultural, whose flow and use are regulated by a combination of ecological and social systems,
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A constantly dynamic, complex system with constant adaptation.
Helping to structure the analysis of complex processes, SES enables the establishment of connections and dynamics, focuses on relationships as well as situations, and takes into account both human and biophysical drives and constraints. Moreover, the systems seek to help analyze and evaluate the specific context of public goods and ecosystem services provided by agriculture and forestry in different situations and their appreciation and value to society (Knoot et al., 2010). It offers a better-understood process of decision-making with a participatory approach, as it includes interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration to be beneficial in stakeholder communication.
Key Terms in this Chapter
EESC: European Economic Social Committee is an advisory committee made up of social partners, consisting of employers, employees, and various other interest representatives.
XaaS: Recognizing a large number of products, tools, and technologies offered to users as a service over the internet, Everything or Anything-as-a-Service defines a general service category related to cloud computing and remote access.
Organizational Silos: In the business world, department refers to individual groups or departments that work independently of each other and avoid sharing information.
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning is an integrated management system that enables the efficient use of production factors required for the production of goods and services in enterprises through an integrated database.
Digital masters: They are individuals or institutions that combine digital talent and leadership ability to turn digital technology into a business advantage.
Cobots: Collaborative robots are robots that enable them to work safely by interacting side-by-side with humans in a collaborative space.
SaaS: Software-as-a-Service is the de facto way for users to access services and products like Adobe and Microsoft in a pay-per-use business model.
IoP: Internet of People represents the mapping of social individuals and their interactions with smart devices to the internet, with a focus on data collection, modeling, and ubiquitous intelligence for crowdsourced internet-based personal information.
CCF: Community Capitals Framework is an approach that focuses on the types of capital that is effective in supporting economic development and analyzes societies and community development efforts from a systems perspective.