EAST LANSING, Mich. – Recognizing that one size does not fit all has earned a Michigan State University professor a prestigious national ecology award.

Tom Dietz, director of MSU’s Environmental Science and Policy Program, this week will accept the 2005 Sustainable Science Award from the Ecological Society of America (ESA). The award is given to the authors of a scholarly work that makes the greatest contribution to the emerging science of ecosystem and regional sustainability through the integration of ecological and social sciences.

Dietz is being recognized for the paper “The Struggle to Govern the Commons,” which was published in Science magazine in 2003. Dietz was the lead author.

The paper examined what works when it comes to managing the environment and exploring the balances between corporations or government calling the shots. Dietz said that after years of seeking universal truth, he and co-authors Elinor Ostrom and Paul Stern make a case that there is no one solution that fits every problem – but there are universally useful questions.

“There are ways people can take good care of environment, but there isn’t a universal solution for everything,” Dietz said. “There is an awareness that the way we deal with these problems will always be context specific – you can’t draw the solution from a textbook. We can’t tell you how to solve a problem, but we can tell you what to watch out for.”

Dietz is associate dean in the colleges of Social Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources and Natural Science. He also is professor of sociology and of crop and soil sciences.

The award, Dietz said, is a satisfying reflection of the growing acknowledgment that environmental problems will be best solved when disciplines meld – a key component of the Environmental Science and Policy Program.

“One of the places these discussions is going is the melding of physical and biological sciences and social sciences,” Dietz said. “No particular discipline or field can wrestle with these problems. We have to have the interdisciplinary work. We need to have more integrative science. We’re honored by this award because it’s a group of ecologists who are saying this is an important piece of work. I think that’s a signal of the kind of thing we’re beginning to see happening – work that integrates across fields.”

The ESA meets in Montreal this week, where the award will be presented.