This year's Stegner Symposium will consider whether it is possible to create a civilization that is both prosperous and environmentally healthy and, if so, how.

The Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law will stage its 15th Annual Symposium on Friday and Saturday in Salt Lake City.

The two-day event will include perspectives from scientists, economists, agriculturists, ecologists, architects, attorneys and policy analysts who will represent the thoughts of industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations.

The symposium will take up the notion of sustainability, what it adds to traditional environmental protection and how it might help people live in balance with their natural and human-made surroundings.

Pamela Matson, dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, will give Friday's keynote address, "How We Can Create a Society That Meets the Needs of Both People and the Planet in the 21st Century."

Symposium organizers say participants will examine sustainability's three pillars -- environment, economic development and equity -- and how population and consumption fit in the mix.

Friday will close with another keynote lecture by M.A. Sanjayan, lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy.

On Saturday, the symposium will reconvene for a discussion of sustainability in the American West. Chip Ward, author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West , will close the event with a final keynote speech.