The digitalization of agricultural production and the use of digital data are fundamentally transforming processes, products, and services of the agro-food systems. Digitalization improves efficiency ...and facilitates sophisticated farm management, thus increasing productivity, efficacy, and profitability. At the same time, it promises many opportunities for a more sustainable and, especially, more ecological and cleaner agricultural production. However, with it comes the potential for a number of unintended side effects and risks that may increase the vulnerability of agricultural production and have, thus far, received scant scientific and societal attention. This article presents the results of a two-year transdisciplinary process that aimed to identify unintended side-effects (short “unseens”) and perceived risks of digitalization in German agriculture. Results base on a triangulation of knowledge integration from the transdisciplinary group process involving twelve representatives from science and practice and an ethnographic qualitative meta-analysis. The findings have shown that, despite digitalization's numerous promises for a more ecological and resource efficient agricultural production, a broad range of risks was perceived by some key stakeholders involved. These risks were anticipated to be caused by unintended negative and uncertain side effects on agro-ecological and social systems. Data rights, the restructuring of the value chain with new market concentrations, power structures and dependencies, changing knowledge requirements for farmers (lacking “digital literacy”), and information asymmetries that may cause potentially negative effects on food security were identified as causal factors. Based on these results, we co-developed socially robust orientations (SoROs) for coping with resulting risks and vulnerabilities. We argue that these SoROs provide perspectives on how anticipated knowledge can be turned into responsible action within the RRI (responsible research and innovation) framework. Finally, with regard to the preventive and anticipatory paradigm of “cleaner production”, our transdisciplinary methodology shows a way to adaptively govern the highly complex socio-technological transitions of digitalization in agriculture in the sense of a sustainability-oriented transformation.
•Digitalization comes with many promises, but risks remained unseen so far.•Results from this transdisciplinary process show a broad range of perceived risks.•However, actors' perceptions vary greatly and depend on their values and interests.•This poses challenges for shaping the digitalization in a socially responsible way.•We show how co-developed, socially robust orientations point a way forward.
In discourses on sustainability, its underlying conceptualizations and meanings, the role of imaginations and their influence on concrete social practices and mutually dependent sociomaterial ...structures have been overlooked. Therefore, our article uses Adloff and Neckel’s (Sustain Sci 14(4):1015-1025, 2019) conceptual framework to explore the role of imaginations in generating different trajectories from a concrete environmental problem, namely issues attributed to manure surpluses in Germany, to assess the hurdles and conflicting goals of a transformation toward a sustainable livestock system. Our study builds on qualitative, semistructured, and problem-centered interviews with both new innovation actors and incumbent actors in the current system. Our results show that different trajectories of “manure futures” exist, as we identify “preservation”, “modernization” and “transformation” as trajectories representing ideal types of change. We discuss the results in light of the theory of imaginations and reflect on the usefulness of the concept of imaginations for analyzing environmental discourses and practices. Furthermore, we find that normative framings of problems rather than factual knowledge describe contesting imaginations as barriers to sustainability transformations, a point that must be acknowledged when developing a sustainable livestock system. We conclude that contesting imaginations could result in conflicts that must be moderated as drivers for change yet could also point to transformations that are already underway.
Environmental crises, which are consequences of resource-intensive lifestyles and are characterized to a large extent by both a changing climate and a loss of biodiversity, stress the urgent need for ...a global social-ecological transformation of the agro-food system. In this regard, the bioeconomy and bioeconomic innovations have frequently been seen as instrumental in addressing these grand challenges and contributing to more sustainable land use. To date, the question of how much bioeconomic innovations contribute to sustainability objectives remains unanswered. Against this background, we study four bioeconomic innovations using the case study of animal production and manure utilization in relation to their potential contributions to a social-ecological transformation. The analysis is based on the application of analytical categories derived from the literature that assess the normativity of these innovations and their implicit cultural changes. The results show that the innovations examined manifest existing thought styles and the incumbent socio-technical regime rather than contribute to a more fundamental transition. In this respect, we stress the importance of evolving alterative ideas in innovation design, applying more integrative approaches, such as embedding innovation processes into transdisciplinary processes, and developing adaptive and reflective governance approaches. In return, bioeconomic innovations should adjust towards the design mission of a social-ecological transformation and include a multitude of actors to discuss and harmonize contesting imaginaries and ethical concerns.
Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is discussed as a promising approach in land-use science and spatial research to address complex multifaceted “real-world problems” and to design strategies and ...solutions for sustainable development. TDR has become a widespread research approach in sustainability science and is increasingly promoted by research programmes and agencies (e.g., Future Earth and Horizon 2020). Against this backdrop, TDR can be considered a (social) innovation in the academic system, which is currently in the midst of an up-scaling diffusion process from a rather small TDR-advocating expert community to a broader science-practice community. We argue that this up-scaling phase also places TDR in a critical state as the concept potentially risks a type of “rhetorical mainstreaming”. The objectives of this study were to analyse how the challenging approach of TDR is currently adopted and implemented in the field of land-use research and to identify potential influencing factors. We studied 13 transdisciplinary research projects from Germany by performing qualitative interviews with coordinators, document analysis and participatory observation during meetings over a period of five years. Results show that the adoption level of the TDR concept varied widely among the studied projects, as did the adoption of the TDR indicators used in our analysis. In many of the investigated projects, we identified a clear lack of conceptual knowledge of TDR. In addition, we found that current academic structures limit the ability of researchers to thoroughly adapt to the requirements of TDR. We conclude that further communication and educational efforts that promote TDR are required. In addition, we advocate for the development of suitable funding instruments that support sustained research structures.
Sufficiency is a crucial strategy for achieving climate targets by reducing energy and resource consumption in absolute terms through changed practices. While most climate-protection concepts focus ...almost exclusively on the technological strategies of efficiency and consistency (e.g., renewable energies), sufficiency is being increasingly considered in public policy as a social-organizational strategy, especially at the municipal level. However, given the diverse facets of this theoretical concept, the interpretations of the character of sufficiency vary widely. Using examples from the 40 German Masterplan municipalities, our qualitative study examines these different interpretations of sufficiency in municipal climate-protection concepts. In this study we analyze the general meaning and relevance of sufficiency in the concepts mentioned, work out the central dimensions of sufficiency and use them to distinguish between the different concepts, and present a typology, which allows the basic distinction between four municipal sufficiency types: technophiles, privatizers, vision builders, and frameworkers. The results show that sufficiency is gaining importance for municipal climate protection and can contribute to alternative future visions. However, sufficiency remains mostly subordinated to technological solutions and is hardly woven into the specific sectoral strategies and concrete measures. Furthermore, the transformative trajectories are limited through depoliticized understandings of sufficiency in many cases. We therefore argue for a more political, cross-sectoral, and transformative interpretation of sufficiency as a guiding principle in public climate policy that links tangible framework conditions for sufficiency practices with visions for alternative futures.
Evaluation is a major issue in discussions of transdisciplinary research (TDR). Empirical studies often consider expert perspectives; however, knowledge of the experiences, attitudes, and motivations ...of a broader science-practice community applying transdisciplinarity remains rare. The present study aims to gather insights into the perceptions and assessments of success of TDR projects from scientists and practitioners with experience with TDR processes. Based on a mixed-method approach combining qualitative expert interviews with a quantitative survey reaching 178 respondents from practice and science, the results show a high commitment to the targets of TDR projects and a basic shared ‘success profile’. Nevertheless, there is currently a strong ‘practice tendency’, while TDR-specific benefits of the scientific knowledge gain remain neglected. The general success assessment of TDR projects can be described as rather moderate, indicating several deficits in the application and management of TDR.
Since 2012, the citizen science project 'Mückenatlas' has been supplementing the German mosquito monitoring programme with over 28,000 submissions of physical insect samples. As the factors ...triggering people to catch mosquitoes for science are still unknown, we analysed the influence of mass media reports on mosquito submission numbers. Based on a theoretical framework of how mass media affect citizen responsiveness, we identified five possible influencing factors related to citizen science: (i) project awareness and knowledge, (ii) attention (economy), (iii) individual characteristics of citizen scientists and targeted communication, (iv) spatial differences and varying affectedness, and (v) media landscape. Hypotheses based on these influencing factors were quantitatively and qualitatively tested with two datasets: clipping data of mass media reports (online, television, radio and print) referring to or focussing on the 'Mückenatlas', and corresponding data of 'Mückenatlas' submissions between 2014 and 2017. In general, the number of media reports positively affected the number of mosquito submissions on a temporal and spatial scale, i.e. many media reports provoke many mosquito submissions. We found that an already heightened public and media awareness of mosquito-relevant topics combined with a direct call-to-action in a media report title led to a maximum participation. Differences on federal state level, however, suggest that factors additional to quantitative media coverage trigger participation in the 'Mückenatlas', in particular the mosquito affectedness of the resident population. Lastly, media types appear to differ in their effects on the number of submissions. Our results show under which circumstances the media presence of the 'Mückenatlas' is most effective in activating people to submit mosquito samples, and thus provide advice for designing communication strategies for citizen science projects.
Background
One common renewable energy source for substituting fossil sources is photovoltaic (PV) systems. However, installing PV systems in agricultural areas can lead to competition with other ...land uses. These projects, therefore, often encounter problems with social acceptance in affected communities. Especially from the perspective of nature conservation targets, conflicts can arise. These potential differences are still under-researched but represent important knowledge for the societally broadly accepted design of such facilities and their contribution to energy transformation. In this paper, we investigate the perspectives of nature conservationists on PV in the region of Brandenburg, Germany. We comparatively analyse attitudes towards ground-mounted photovoltaics (GM-PV) and agrophotovoltaics (APV). APV combines energy supply and agricultural production on the same land and could thus be a possible solution for mitigating land-use conflicts.
Results
We investigated the degree of local acceptability and positive and negative influencing factors through a qualitative text analysis of ten interviews with local representatives and position papers by Nature Conservation Associations. Our findings show a growing consensus around basic assumptions of the need for renewable energies, the prioritised support for PV systems on rooftops over the installation on agricultural land (GM-PV and APV), and the necessity for PV systems to be compatible with nature conservation objectives. Regarding specific site decisions on agricultural land, we find diverging attitudes when comparing the content of position papers and the responses of interviewees. The interviewees advocate taking into account local interests and specific regional conditions, the effects of PV systems on the local environment, and the need for distributional justice. Large-scale plants are locally less accepted than smaller ones and there is a more open attitude towards the expansion of APV than of GM-PV on agricultural land. However, a range of concerns regarding consequences for landscape and biodiversity persists, and further research and clarification is required to address these issues.
Conclusions
We conclude that basic ecological standards and the demands of local stakeholders and interest groups should be taken into account when planning, implementing and reviewing PV projects in the future.
Acceptability analyses of place–based innovations provide crucial in-depth knowledge (e.g., perceptions and values on landscapes) for the social–ecological transformation of landscapes. However, ...previous acceptability analyses often neglected complex and ongoing processes. We argue that, for the design of a sustainability-oriented transformation and to address spatial and temporal dynamics in landscapes, an operational heuristic is needed; one that integrates acceptability analyses into an adaptive landscape co-design and management approach. Therefore, this conceptual–empirical paper introduces the concept of the ‘acceptability and landscape design cycle’ (ALDC), which is based on findings from various transdisciplinary innovation processes in the Spreewald region (Germany). It is composed of four iterative phases: (1) defining the preconditions for acceptability analysis, (2) conducting the acceptability analysis, (3) integrating the results into the landscape development strategy, and (4) re-designing and refining it. We illustrate the application of these phases using a case study of the cultural landscape in Spreewald. The paper provides practical implementation guidelines of the ALDC and contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of acceptability decisions regarding the transformation processes of landscapes. Furthermore, it can advance the understanding of how co-evolution of socio-ecological systems occurs.
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