Ethical approaches for engaging extended peer communities: Insight into responsible workshopping with citizens

Abstract

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the most ambitious and encompassing global framework for ecological, economic, and social sustainability for our planet to date. However, the relevance of the global goals to local actions remains elusive and opaque, which presents a real risk that society will be unable to adapt to growing environmental risks, such as climate change. Thus emerges the need for a responsible and ethical SDG localization process. We use a normative approach to engage a local extended peer community, which took the form of an interactive, day-long workshop. This paper describes how the T.R.U.S.T ethos of post-normal science is used to co-design and implement the workshop, which is then reviewed as a heuristic inquiry using the Three Spheres of Transformation framework for sustainability. The result of this workshop is a realization of the extended peer community that the interconnectedness of personal values, community values, and the SDGs can set a more coherent path for local collaboration across sectors. As such, this mode of using the T.R.U.S.T ethos of PNS and Three Spheres of Transformation frameworks in the SDG localization process represents an ethical approach in post-normal science.