At the very moment that humanity is facing a broadening ecological crisis, and that both policy makers and civil society are calling for a transition towards more sustainable societies, modern ...science seems incapable of providing operational solutions for managing this transition. In this context, both Noble prize laureates and high-level science officials have stressed the need of an in depth transformation of the modes of organization of scientific research for governing the transition to sustainable societies. However, existing analyses of on-going initiatives show that most of the barriers to a major, consolidated effort in sustainability science will not be removed without far-reaching institutional change. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an incremental institutional change approach, based on a gradual institutionalization process of existing initiatives. The analysis in this paper shows that strategic research for sustainability and reform of research funding mechanisms will only be effective if they are supported at the same time by reforms of career and training paths at higher education institutions. To promote this vision, the paper proposes a set of capacity building measures that can be undertaken at the level of research funding, higher education institutions and networking.
This book addresses the gap in the existing literature on the governance of transdisciplinary research partnerships in transformational sustainability research by exploring the governance of ...knowledge co-production in coupled socio-ecological system dynamics. Multiple social and ecological crises raise new cross-sectoral research questions that call for an evolution in contemporary science in the direction of society-wide knowledge co-production on sustainability transformations of interdependent social and ecological systems. This book proposes a new approach to this based on enabling capacities for collaboration among scientific researchers and societal actors with diverse values, perspectives, and research interests. By drawing upon the thriving literature on the conditions for community and multistakeholder-driven collective action, the analysis sheds new light on the governance arrangements for organizing so-called transdisciplinary research partnerships for sustainability. This book identifies robust conditions that lead to effective collaborative research with societal actors and digs deeper into capacity building for partnership research through fostering social learning on sustainability values among research partners and organizing training and knowledge exchange at institutions of higher education. The book proposes solutions for addressing collective action challenges in transdisciplinary partnerships in an accessible and broadly interdisciplinary manner to a large audience of sustainability scholars and practitioners. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of sustainable development, social ecological transitions, and science policy, while also being a useful resource for engineers, QSE managers, and policymakers.
This article analyses social learning in transdisciplinary research processes by a systematic comparative analysis of 20 completed or nearly completed projects in the field of sustainable ...development. This article considers the social learning generated by transdisciplinary processes in a broad way. It looks how social learning is embedded in the practical interaction processes between new scientific knowledge, practitioners’ life-world experiences and social experimentation. The analysis finds that three factors in particular play an important role in social learning: the clarification of the normative orientations, the co-construction of the research question and practical problem situation, and the balancing of power asymmetries. While a single criterion may not allow increasing social learning alone, the analysis supports the hypothesis that a combination of these three criteria systematically increases the strength of the social learning generated. Other factors, such as active facilitation modes and the presence of collective interest advocacy organizations, only play a strong role as a condition for generating social learning in some specific types of transdisciplinary research.
•Develops a collaborative economy model for sharing research materials for biodiversity research.•Presents a world-wide survey on collaborative practices in global research for sustainability.•Shows ...the limits of relying on internalized motivations only to build a collaborative economy.•Provides inputs for the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol for non-commercial research.
This paper aims to get a better understanding of the motivational and transaction cost features of building global scientific research commons, with a view to contributing to the debate on the design of appropriate policy measures under the recently adopted Nagoya Protocol. For this purpose, the paper analyses the results of a world-wide survey of managers and users of microbial culture collections, which focused on the role of social and internalized motivations, organizational networks and external incentives in promoting the public availability of upstream research assets. Overall, the study confirms the hypotheses of the social production model of information and shareable goods, but it also shows the need to complete this model. For the sharing of materials, the underlying collaborative economy in excess capacity plays a key role in addition to the social production, while for data, competitive pressures amongst scientists tend to play a bigger role.
Microbes hold the key to life. They hold the secrets to our past (as the descendants of the earliest forms of life) and the prospects for our future (as we mine their genes for solutions to some of ...the planet's most pressing problems, from global warming to antibiotic resistance). However, the piecemeal approach that has defined efforts to study microbial genetic diversity for over 20 years and in over 30,000 genome projects risks squandering that promise. These efforts have covered less than 20% of the diversity of the cultured archaeal and bacterial species, which represent just 15% of the overall known prokaryotic diversity. Here we call for the funding of a systematic effort to produce a comprehensive genomic catalog of all cultured Bacteria and Archaea by sequencing, where available, the type strain of each species with a validly published name (currently∼11,000). This effort will provide an unprecedented level of coverage of our planet's genetic diversity, allow for the large-scale discovery of novel genes and functions, and lead to an improved understanding of microbial evolution and function in the environment.
Environmental activism, defined as a range of difficult pro-environmental behaviors, is analyzed within the conceptual framework of Significance Quest Theory (SQT). In Study 1, 40 interviews were ...carried out on two groups of people in the European Union: Committed Actors for Nature (CANs, n = 25) versus Committed Actors for Society (CASs, n = 15). Results demonstrated that Significance Quest (SQ) motivates each group to be strongly committed to their chosen action and the main difference between them being in their ideology (pro-social vs. pro-environmental). In Study 2 (N = 131), the relationship between SQ and intention to enact difficult pro-environmental behaviors was assessed. Results suggested that the higher the SQ, the higher the tendency to enact difficult pro-environmental behaviors, but not average or easy ones. Moreover, the higher the pro-environmental ideology, the stronger the indirect effect of SQ on difficult behavior through willingness to sacrifice.
The dynamism of science has been catalytic for human prosperity in recent history. Conventional perspectives of the ivory tower model of modern science are, however, rivalled by the failure of ...humanity to tackle global crises of an economic, environmental and social nature. Operational solutions to these pressures have grown and exposed pitfalls of modern science to date. Sustainability Science for Strong Sustainability investigates core concepts, tools and institutional strategies of transdisciplinary sustainability science. Prominent research programs within heterodox economics, the environmental sciences and transition theory are explored through diverse case studies, revealing challenges and advancements for transdisciplinary research. In this book, the reform of modern science is facilitated by the consideration of action points to overcome the institutional barriers of putting sustainability science into practice. Researchers, students and policy practitioners will benefit from up to date knowledge on the practice of transdisciplinary research for sustainability.
This paper investigates a situation of coexistence of landraces and modern crop varieties for market-oriented production in the Yunnan rice fields in China. Through a fieldwork survey of an ...experiment by the government with the introduction of modern varieties in traditional villages, the paper shows that landraces and modern crop varieties can co-exist. The analysis shows that the major features that play a role in the choices made by the individual farmers between modern crop varieties and landraces are not the agronomic conditions, although they certainly play a role, but economic and social drivers. The results of the analysis allows a better understanding of the distinct socio-economic drivers and impacts of each of the production systems. The latter can provide insights for policy strategies aimed at promoting agrobiodiversity rich landscapes in situations of co-existence of heterogeneous socio-technical production systems.
•Provides a framework for analysing reflexive research processes.•Shows the relevance of post-positivism and pragmatism for sustainability research.•Reviews the differences between major ...transdisciplinary approaches to sustainability.•Highlights the potential and the challenges of reflexive transdisciplinary research on sustainability.
The importance of questioning the values, background assumptions, and normative orientations shaping sustainability research has been increasingly acknowledged, particularly in the context of transdisciplinary research, which aims to integrate knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge. Nonetheless, the concept of reflexivity underlying transdisciplinary research is not sufficiently clarified and, as a result, is hardly able to support the development of social learning and social experimentation processes needed to support sustainability transitions. In particular, the concept of reflexivity is often restricted to building social legitimacy for the results of a new kind of ‘complex systems science’, with little consideration of the role of non-scientific expertise and social innovators in the design of the research practice itself.
The key hypothesis of the paper is that transdisciplinary research would benefit from adopting a pragmatist approach to reflexivity. Such an approach relates reflexivity to collective processes of problem framing and problem solving through joint experimentation and social learning that directly involve the scientific and extra-scientific expertise. To test this hypothesis, the paper proposes a framework for analysing the different types of reflexive processes that play role in transdisciplinary research. The main conclusion of the analysis is the need to combine conventional consensus-oriented deliberative approaches to reflexivity with more open-ended, action-oriented transformative approaches.
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