Interview with the Editor-in-Chief of Sustainable Earth: Part 3

Peter Newman concludes this interview in Part 3 by discussing his plans for Sustainable Earth in its first year and what the journal means to him. Special thanks to Linda Blagg at Curtin University for the filming and recording of the interview.

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Interviewer: What are your main plans for the journal in its first year? Do you have any innovative projects you are excited to start working on?

Peter: Yes, we’ve got a number of really good ideas that we’re beginning to work on. We’re going to start with something about food, and a sustainable earth, there’s a lot of interest in food, diet, how the food’s produced, the impacts. But also what are the possibilities with new technologies, new smart systems, how can we feed the world but do it in a way that is sustainable. These are big issues.

Then we’ve got a special edition we’re planning on young lives and sustainable earth. The youth of the world certainly know more about the environment, they’re more concerned about it, but how much do they know? How can we delve into the motivations and knowledge of young people? And that will require some science, but communicating to policy people about how to involve them more and understanding the community and helping them to see what they can do.

The third area is about planetary boundaries. There’s a lot of work being done about that. It’s pretty esoteric at the moment, not too many journals have passed it into the community arena. We want to be able to translate a lot of that work into what policy can do about it and what the community can do about it, and we have some exciting new papers that will come out in that area.

We have ongoing interests that will come through as well. There’s a plan to do something with Tim Beatley on biophilic cities, the green cities of the future. And then the one point five centigrade agenda. The IPCC are looking at how rapid transformational change is needed and how this can be achieved. Is it possible to imagine this kind of rapid change? And I think that a journal like ours needs to address those kinds of issues.

Interviewer: Final question: what does Sustainable Earth mean to you, in 30 seconds?

Peter: Sustainable Earth is a new journal from a very prestigious publisher, who I am pleased to be working with, plus an amazing team of people from around the world who leapt at the chance to be part of this. People from across the world who are going to help find the topics that will be brought to this whole event and to create a long term future for something that is an idea whose time has come.

Rapid transformational change is needed, this is the journal that’s going to help bring it.

Chris McEntee

Chris has an MSci in marine biology from the University of Southampton and has been working at BMC for over three years. He is now a Journal Development Editor overseeing a portfolio of environmental science journals.
Chris McEntee

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