“The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems is different from traditional encyclopedias. It is the result of an unprecedented world-wide effort that has attempted to forge pathways between disciplines in order to address contemporary problems” said UNESCO Director General Koïchiro Matsuura. “A source-book of knowledge that links together our concern for peace, progress, and sustainable development, the EOLSS draws sustenance from the ethics, science and culture of peace. At the same time, it is a forward-looking publication, designed as a global guide to professional practice, education, and heightened social awareness of critical life support issues. In particular, the EOLSS presents perspectives from regions and cultures around the world, and seeks to avoid geographic, racial, cultural, political, gender, age, or religious bias.”

“EOLSS has the goal to provide a firm knowledge base for future activities to prolong the lifetime of the human race in a hospitable environment”, according to Richard R. Ernst, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

Leon M. Lederman, Nobel Laureate in Physics remarked: “The EOLSS is not only appropriate, but it is imaginative and, to my knowledge, unique. Much of what we can write about science, about energy, about our far-ranging knowledge base, can indeed be found in major encyclopedias, but as I understand your vision, never as a central theme; the theme of humanity, embedded in nature and constrained to find ways of maintaining a relationship with nature based upon understanding and respect.”

In the words of M.S. Swaminathan, First World Food Prize Winner, “Ecotechnology involving appropriate blends of traditional technologies and the ecological prudence of the past with frontier technologies such as biotechnology, information technology, space technology, new materials, renewable energy technology and management technology, can help us to promote global sustainable development involving harmony between humankind and nature on the one hand and tolerance and love of diversity and pluralism in human societies on the other. We need shifts in technology and public policy. This is a challenging task to which the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems should address itself.”

According to Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry : “Pursuit of knowledge and truth supersedes present considerations of what nature, life or the world are or should be, for our own vision can only be a narrow one. Ethical evaluation and rules of justice have changed and will change over time and will have to adapt. Law is made for man, not man for law. If it does not fit any more, change it…. Some think that it is being arrogant to try to modify nature; arrogance is to claim that we are perfect as we are! With all the caution that must be exercised and despite the risks that will be encountered, carefully pondering each step, mankind must and will continue along its path, for we have no right to switch off the lights of the future…. We have to walk the path from the tree of knowledge to the control of destiny.”

J.L. Lions, Japan Prize winner in Applied Mathematics said:  “EOLSS is concerned with the Life Support Systems…. Each of these systems is a very complex one. …we have to think of all these “systems” as closely related “subsystems” of the Planet Earth System. The situation is extremely different in most of life support systems modeling…. There is not one model, but a hierarchy of models. Examples of these situations will be given throughout the Encyclopedia. … More delicate are the global problems, involving several goals, with possible conflicts of interest. …Rational decisions will be more and more possible to envision if one will be able to couple the physical modeling to economic and financial models and to human factors…. These delicate and fundamental questions will deserve a lot of attention in the Encyclopedia.”

S.P. Kapitza, UNESCO Kalinga Prize Winner said: “The population of our planet and its development over the ages sets the scene for considering all global problems and it is reasonable to begin their discussion with population growth. … Thus we are dealing with an interdisciplinary problem in an attempt to describe the total human experience, right from its very beginning. But without this perspective of time it is not possible to objectively assess what is happening today and provide an objective view of the present state of development, the challenge now facing humanity.”

“Our best hopes for future peace and global security rely upon strengthened international cooperation to protect the web of life support systems that we destroy, so ridiculously, day in and day out. We share only one planet. We—and future generations—have nowhere else to go,” according to Mostafa K. Tolba, formerly Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and the editor of ‘Our Fragile World: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development’ a two volume publication in about 2300 pages published in 2001 as forerunner to the Encyclopedia. “It is hoped that the encyclopedia will provide the necessary impetus and knowledge support to enable humanity to choose the right direction to move towards sustainable development.”

“Most United Nations projects of this size begin by consulting government representatives. But EOLSS went straight to the scientific communities involved,” said Andras Szollosi-Nagy, a member of the UNESCO-EOLSS Joint Committee and Director of UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme. In 1996 thousands of scientists, engineers and policy-makers began meeting just to define the scope of the project, before discussing the details of the contributions. Regional workshops were held in Washington DC, Tokyo, Moscow, Mexico City, Beijing, Panama, Abu Sultan (Egypt), and Kuala Lumpur to develop a list of possible subjects and debate analytical approaches for treating them.

“From the start, we had to be absolutely certain that one school of thought did not dominate the conceptual basis of the encyclopedia,” said Szollosi-Nagy. “This democratic process guided every step in the encyclopedia’s development. With thousands of authors from more than 100 countries the editors have set up a self-regulating mechanism to ensure that the subjects are considered from a variety of cultures and perspectives.”

Teams of experts are working to regularly update the various sections of the web-based encyclopedia, making EOLSS a “living virtual library and a site for action rather than just a publication,” according to Mustafa El Tayeb, Director, Division for Science Policy and Sustainable Development (SC/PSD), UNESCO and Secretary of the UNESCO-EOLSS Joint Committee. Soon, it will mature to its full size of about 70 million words (equivalent to about 200 volumes) by augmentation and updating as often as every month. EOLSS is rapidly becoming the most sought after reference site in the World.

 

Updated 4 June 2007