Forum The Quest to Understand Society and Nature: Looking Back, but Mostly Forward

Millennial transitions have long been occasions for reflection and anticipation . This brief article seizes on one such occasion , the coming of the year 2000 , to reflect on the knowledge we have accumulated in understanding human - nature interactions and to speculate about strategies that might best advance this understanding . It argues for a second environmental science where the central focus is on human environment interactions . It further argues that the second environmental science can best be realized via interdisciplinary approaches that are more attentive to the integration of ecology and related sciences with the social sciences .