This review synthesizes diverse approaches that researchers have brought to bear on the challenge of sustainable development. We construct an integrated framework highlighting the union set of ...elements and relationships that those approaches have shown to be useful in explaining nature-society interactions in multiple contexts. Compelling evidence has accumulated that those interactions should be viewed as a globally interconnected, complex adaptive system in which heterogeneity, nonlinearity, and innovation play formative roles. The long-term evolution of that system cannot be predicted but can be understood and partially guided through dynamic interventions. Research has identified six capacities necessary to support such interventions in guiding development pathways toward sustainability. These are capacities to (
a
) measure sustainable development, (
b
) promote equity, (
c
) adapt to shocks and surprises, (
d
) transform the system into more sustainable development pathways, (
e
) link knowledge with action, and (
f
) devise governance arrangements that allow people to work together in exercising the other capacities.
Crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development Clark, William C.; van Kerkhoff, Lorrae; Lebel, Louis ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2016, Volume:
113, Issue:
17
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This paper distills core lessons about how researchers (scientists, engineers, planners, etc.) interested in promoting sustainable development can increase the likelihood of producing usable ...knowledge. We draw the lessons from both practical experience in diverse contexts around the world and from scholarly advances in understanding the relationships between science and society. Many of these lessons will be familiar to those with experience in crafting knowledge to support action for sustainable development. However, few are included in the formal training of researchers. As a result, when scientists and engineers first venture out of the laboratory or library with the goal of linking their knowledge with action, the outcome has often been ineffectiveness and disillusionment. We therefore articulate here a core set of lessons that we believe should become part of the basic training for researchers interested in crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. These lessons entail at least four things researchers should know, and four things they should do. The knowing lessons involve understanding the coproduction relationships through which knowledge making and decision making shape one another in social–environmental systems. We highlight the lessons that emerge from examining those coproduction relationships through the ICAP lens, viewing them from the perspectives of Innovation systems, Complex systems, Adaptive systems, and Political systems. The doing lessons involve improving the capacity of the research community to put its understanding of coproduction into practice. We highlight steps through which researchers can help build capacities for stakeholder collaboration, social learning, knowledge governance, and researcher training.
Boundary work for sustainable development Clark, William C.; Tomich, Thomas P.; van Noordwijk, Meine ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2016, Volume:
113, Issue:
17
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Previous research on the determinants of effectiveness in knowledge systems seeking to support sustainable development has highlighted the importance of “boundary work” through which research ...communities organize their relations with new science, other sources of knowledge, and the worlds of action and policy-making. A growing body of scholarship postulates specific attributes of boundary work that promote used and useful research. These propositions, however, are largely based on the experience of a few industrialized countries. We report here on an effort to evaluate their relevance for efforts to harness science in support of sustainability in the developing world. We carried out a multicountry comparative analysis of natural resource management programs conducted under the auspices of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. We discovered six distinctive kinds of boundary work contributing to the successes of those programs—a greater variety than has been documented in previous studies. We argue that these different kinds of boundary work can be understood as a dual response to the different uses for which the results of specific research programs are intended, and the different sources of knowledge drawn on by those programs. We show that these distinctive kinds of boundary work require distinctive strategies to organize them effectively. Especially important are arrangements regarding participation of stakeholders, accountability in governance, and the use of “boundary objects.” We conclude that improving the ability of research programs to produce useful knowledge for sustainable development will require both greater and differentiated support for multiple forms of boundary work.
Priests and programmers Lansing, John Stephen; Lansing, John Stephen
2007., 20090110, 2009, 2007, 2009-01-10, 20070101
eBook
For the Balinese, the whole of nature is a perpetual resource: through centuries of carefully directed labor, the engineered landscape of the island's rice terraces has taken shape. According to ...Stephen Lansing, the need for effective cooperation in water management links thousands of farmers together in hierarchies of productive relationships that span entire watersheds.
Lansing describes the network of water temples that once managed the flow of irrigation water in the name of the Goddess of the Crater Lake. Using the techniques of ecological simulation modeling as well as cultural and historical analysis, Lansing argues that the symbolic system of temple rituals is not merely a reflection of utilitarian constraints but also a basic ingredient in the organization of production.
The need for faster and deeper transitions toward more sustainable development pathways is now widely recognized. How to meet that need has been at the center of a growing body of academic research ...and real-world policy implementation. This paper presents our perspective on some of the most powerful insights that have emerged from this ongoing work. In particular, we highlight insights on how sustainability transitions can be usefully conceptualized, how they come about and evolve, and how they can be shaped and guided through deliberate policy interventions. Throughout the paper, we also highlight some of the many how questions that remain unresolved and on which progress would be especially helpful for the pursuit of sustainable development. Our approach to these "how" questions on sustainability transitions draws on two strands of solution-driven research and policy advice: one emerging from studies of how human societies interact with nature and the other emerging from studies of how those societies interact with their technologies. Consumption-production systems have been a focus of extensive work in both strands. To help build bridges between them, we recently brought together a cross-section of relevant scholars for a PNAS Special Feature on "Sustainability transitions in consumption-production systems." Their contributions are summarized in a companion paper we have written to introduce the Special Feature F. W. Geels, F. Kern, W. C. Clark, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (2023). We draw on that work in the Perspective we present here as well as our reading of the relevant literatures.
The last decade has witnessed the emergence of an array of increasingly vibrant movements to harness science and technology (S ) in the quest for a transition toward sustainability. These movements ...take as their point of departure a widely shared view that the challenge of sustainable development is the reconciliation of society's development goals with the planet's environmental limits over the long term. In seeking to help meet this sustainability challenge, the multiple movements to harness science and technology for sustainability focus on the dynamic interactions between nature and society, with equal attention to how social change shapes the environment and how environmental change shapes society.
Migration and sustainable development Adger, William Neil; Fransen, Sonja; Safra de Campos, Ricardo ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
01/2024, Volume:
121, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
To understand the implications of migration for sustainable development requires a comprehensive consideration of a range of population movements and their feedback across space and time. This ...Perspective reviews emerging science at the interface of migration studies, demography, and sustainability, focusing on consequences of migration flows for nature-society interactions including on societal outcomes such as inequality; environmental causes and consequences of involuntary displacement; and processes of cultural convergence in sustainability practices in dynamic new populations. We advance a framework that demonstrates how migration outcomes result in identifiable consequences on resources, environmental burdens and well-being, and on innovation, adaptation, and challenges for sustainability governance. We elaborate the research frontiers of migration for sustainability science, explicitly integrating the full spectrum of regular migration decisions dominated by economic motives through to involuntary displacement due to social or environmental stresses. Migration can potentially contribute to sustainability transitions when it enhances well-being while not exacerbating structural inequalities or compound uneven burdens on environmental resources.
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