Social-ecological resilience and the quest for sustainability as object of science

The term ‘ sustainability science ’ has been employed to refer to a scientific trend, movement or program aimed at studying problems related to human–nature interactions. However, since it does not have its own set of principles for knowledge building and lack of a definition of a study object, sustainability science is not a science, at least in the usual sense of the word. A study object is the conceptual delimitation of the problems tackled by a science, and therefore, its search in the context of a science of sustainability requires exploring different notions of sustainability. This article presents different perspectives on the concept of sustainability and analyzes the viability to assume them as study object of sustainability science. Such exploration demands concepts based on a processual ontology that directs the researcher toward the dynamic, historic and temporal and social-ecological character of problems of unsustainability. The concept of social-ecological resilience seems to comply with such requirements.