'Transformations towards sustainability':Emerging approaches, critical reflections, and a research agenda

Patterson, James, Schulz, Karsten, Vervoort, Joost, Adler, Carolina, Hurlbert, Margot, van der Hel, Sandra, Schmidt, Andreas, Barau, Aliyu, Obani, Pedi, Sethi, Mahendra, Hissen, Nina, Tebboth, Mark ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1193-8080, Anderton, Karen, Börner, Susanne and Widerberg, Oscar (2015) 'Transformations towards sustainability':Emerging approaches, critical reflections, and a research agenda. pp. 1-34.

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Abstract

Over the last two decades researchers have come to understand much about the global challenges confronting human society (e.g. climate change; biodiversity loss; water, energy and food insecurity; poverty and widening social inequality). However, the extent to which research and policy efforts are succeeding in steering human societies towards more sustainable and just futures is unclear. Attention is increasingly turning towards better understanding how to navigate processes of social and institutional transformation to bring about more desirable trajectories of change in various sectors of human society. A major knowledge gap concerns understanding how transformations towards sustainability are conceptualised, understood and analysed. Limited existing scholarship on this topic is fragmented, sometimes overly deterministic, and weak in its capacity to critically analyse transformation processes which are inherently political and contested. This paper aims to advance understanding of transformations towards sustainability, recognising it as both a normative and an analytical concept. We firstly review existing concepts of transformation in global environmental change literature, and the role of governance in relation to it. We then propose a framework for understanding and critically analysing transformations towards sustainability based on the existing ‘Earth System Governance’ framework (Biermann et al., 2009). We then outline a research agenda, and argue that transdisciplinary research approaches and a key role for early career researchers are vital for pursuing this agenda. Finally, we argue that critical reflexivity among global environmental change scholars, both individually and collectively, will be important for developing innovative research on transformations towards sustainability to meaningfully contribute to policy and action over time.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Reference: ‘Transformations towards sustainability’. Emerging approaches, critical reflections, and a research agenda. Earth System Governance Working Paper, No.34 2015.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sdg 2 - zero hunger,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/zero_hunger
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development) University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
Related URLs:	https://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/pu...
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	06 Oct 2015 11:00
Last Modified:	18 Apr 2024 09:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54624
DOI:

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