[2] It is "defined by the problems it addresses rather than by the disciplines it employs" and "serves the need for advancing both knowledge and action by creating a dynamic bridge between the two".
The field reflects a desire to give the generalities and broad-based approach of "sustainability" a stronger analytic and scientific underpinning as it "brings together scholarship and practice, global and local perspectives from north and south, and disciplines across the natural and social sciences, engineering, and medicine".
[11] Ecologist William C. Clark proposes that it can be usefully thought of as "neither 'basic' nor 'applied' research but as a field defined by the problems it addresses rather than by the disciplines it employs" and that it "serves the need for advancing both knowledge and action by creating a dynamic bridge between the two".
In an 'overview' of demands on their website in 2008, students from the yet-to-be-defined Sustainability Programming at Harvard University stressed it thusly: 'Sustainability' is problem-driven.
[17] According to a compendium published as Readings in Sustainability, edited by Robert Kates, with a pre-face by William Clark.
[19] Knowledge structuring is an essential foundational evolution in the effort to acquire a comprehensive definition of sustainability which is complexly inter-connected.
[24] Regardless of Gaiaogists not always finding themselves centered, students are gaining a toehold through linking the two by creating the Journal of Sustainable Goals.
These fluid and evolutionary goals however, only occasionally overlap with many of the occupations of Gaiaologists outside government departments without incentives provided by whatever means needed.
[25] This transformation is important as it plays a major role in deciding if humans can live sustainably with Gaia.
Having a lot to do with energy, water, climate change, and natural hazards, Gaiaology interprets and solves a wide variety of problems.
[23] Tragically, many Gaiaologists work for oil and gas or mining companies which are typically poor avenues for sustainability.
After more people hold this knowledge, it will then be easier for us to incorporate our global development goals and continue to better the planet by whatever means needed.