PLOS Sustainability and Transformation最新文献

{"title":"Epistemic outsiders: Unpacking and utilising the epistemic dimension of disruptive agency in sustainability transformations","authors":"Sergiu Spatan, Daniel Peter, Gundula Thiele, Marc Wolfram, Franziska Ehnert, Stefan Scherbaum, Moritz Schulz, Caroline Surrey","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000097","url":null,"abstract":"Disruptions (systemic disturbances) are crucial to initiate and accelerate sustainability transformations of large-scale social systems (be they socio-ecological, socio-technical, or socio-institutional). Their emergence, characteristics and effects strongly relate to the role of agents who aim to disrupt and transform the status quo, and which thus possess what we call disruptive agency. In this paper, we highlight the epistemic dimension of disruptive agency in social transformations, first by conceptualizing disruptive agents as epistemic outsiders with respect to the social system that they intend to disrupt and transform, and second by connecting this conceptualization to notions of belief, social practices, social networks, discourses, or institutions. We identify five advantages of this approach. Firstly, it informs and conceptually enables various promising interdisciplinary avenues to explore and potentially influence transformative change towards sustainability. Secondly, an epistemic conception of disruptive agency offers a key for an integrated analysis of the individual and collective levels of agency involved in sustainability transformations. Thirdly, the notion of epistemic outsiders conceptually connects agent positions across system boundaries that are understood to be of crucial importance for sustainability transformations respectively (e.g., “niche innovators” or “regime intermediaries”) but which lack an integrated understanding. Fourthly, an epistemic perspective additionally highlights the changing requirements and challenges resulting in two principal stages of transformations unfolding over time, namely before/after a new epistemic layout is shared by a majority of agents. Finally, the above features allow to derive and conceive of new intervention formats and strategies.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"27 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139778123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Correction: Global UN 2030 agenda: How can Science, Technology and Innovation accelerate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals for All?","authors":"A. Adenle, Hans De Steur, Caroline Mwongera, Fay Rola-Rubzen, M. D. de Barcellos, David F. Vivanco, G. Timilsina, Cristina Possas, Robyn Alders, Marian Chertow, Simon Poon, Bob Scholes","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000100","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":" 28","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139789571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Correction: Global UN 2030 agenda: How can Science, Technology and Innovation accelerate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals for All?","authors":"A. Adenle, Hans De Steur, Caroline Mwongera, Fay Rola-Rubzen, M. D. de Barcellos, David F. Vivanco, G. Timilsina, Cristina Possas, Robyn Alders, Marian Chertow, Simon Poon, Bob Scholes","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000100","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"61 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139849382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does ESG privilege climate action over social and governance issues? A content analysis of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s annual letters","authors":"Nela Mrchkovska, N. Dolšak, A. Prakash","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000090","url":null,"abstract":"Milton Friedman famously argued that the social responsibility of business is to maximize shareholder wealth. Friedman’s view is challenged by the proponents of corporate social responsibility who suggest that firms should consider the interests of all stakeholders, and not just shareholders. Following the stakeholder approach, BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink has made the case that firms should use the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) metric to evaluate their performance as opposed to short-term profit maximization. Fink employs his annual “Dear CEO” letters as a platform to outline his views on ESG. While these letters focus on all three ESG dimensions, the media tends to portray Fink as a climate advocate. We examined the texts of the ten letters Fink has published since 2012 to assess the extent to which Fink focused on climate issues. We found that Fink emphasized the climate dimension over social and governance dimensions only in two letters (2020 and 2022), which suggests that the thrust of Fink’s letters differs from how the media frames them. Broadly, our paper suggests that norm advocates sometimes cannot fully control how their advocated norm is interpreted and framed. Limiting ESG to climate issues has implications for its business acceptability. Specifically, this framing links business incentives to adopt ESG to the policy salience of climate issues as well as the fortunes of both the fossil fuel industry and the renewable energy sector. Second, if businesses face a legitimacy crisis from governance shortfalls or inadequate social performance, ESG will serve as a less effective tool in alleviating stakeholder concerns.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":" 48","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139143983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Utilizing high-resolution genetic markers to track population-level exposure of migratory birds to renewable energy development","authors":"R. Harrigan, Jasmine Rajbhandary, C. Bossu, Peter Sanzenbacher, Thomas Dietsch, Cristian Gruppi, Todd E. Katzner, Thomas B. Smith, Kristen C. Ruegg","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000088","url":null,"abstract":"With new motivation to increase the proportion of energy demands met by zero-carbon sources, there is a greater focus on efforts to assess and mitigate the impacts of renewable energy development on sensitive ecosystems and wildlife, of which birds are of particular interest. One challenge for researchers, due in part to a lack of appropriate tools, has been estimating the effects from such development on individual breeding populations of migratory birds. To help address this, we utilize a newly developed, high-resolution genetic tagging method to rapidly identify the breeding population of origin of carcasses recovered from renewable energy facilities and combine them with maps of genetic variation across geographic space (called ‘genoscapes’) for five species of migratory birds known to be exposed to energy development, to assess the extent of population-level effects on migratory birds. We demonstrate that most avian remains collected were from the largest populations of a given species. In contrast, those remains from smaller, declining populations made up a smaller percentage of the total number of birds assayed. Results suggest that application of this genetic tagging method can successfully define population-level exposure to renewable energy development and may be a powerful tool to inform future siting and mitigation activities associated with renewable energy programs.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"45 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139151213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Finding hope and fulfillment in meaningful work: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of conservation and stewardship practitioners’ experience, values, and motivations","authors":"A. Soucy, Sandra De Urioste-Stone, Parinaz Rahimzadeh-Bajgiran, Jessica Jansujwicz, Karla Eitel, Matthew Brownlee","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000087","url":null,"abstract":"Values and motivations can shape natural resource management decision-making as individuals set conservation goals based on diverse, unique backgrounds, histories, and experiences. Recent literature points to the need to understand, evaluate, and articulate practitioner values to make explicit how experiences shape their work. Our research responds to calls to explore a diverse range of values and motivations among conservation practitioners. We used a qualitative approach grounded in phenomenology to advance an in-depth understanding of how conservation and stewardship practitioners experience, acknowledge, and make sense of conservation decision-making in Maine, USA. We interviewed 21 conservation and stewardship practitioners. Our results indicate the presence of complex value systems, including strong biospheric, altruistic, eudaimonic, as well as egoistic values. These values interact and intersect with motivations for participants’ careers in conservation in unique ways, driving participant actions and decision-making. Within Maine specifically, our results highlight the many areas for convergence of broad values among seemingly diverse groups that can inform opportunities for collaboration. Participants expressed various pathways to careers in conservation, where their work enables them to make a meaningful contribution to the environment and society. However in situations where personal and organizational values are misaligned, the role of organizational transparency, employee empowerment, and agency are key. Our results have implications for conservation groups seeking to achieve high employee satisfaction, as well as researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who hope to inspire individuals to take on conservation careers to create sustainable and transformative action for the future. Fostering early experiences in place, including interactions with the non-human world and local community, are important for influencing and reinforcing values and motivations for conservation action.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"182 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139248867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The “healthy = sustainable” heuristic: Do meal or individual characteristics affect the association between perceived sustainability and healthiness of meals?","authors":"Gudrun Sproesser, Ulrike Arens-Azevedo, Britta Renner","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000086","url":null,"abstract":"Research has found an association between the perceived sustainability and healthiness of foods and meals between individual consumers. The current study aimed to investigate whether the association between perceived sustainability and healthiness on the individual level is rooted in reality. Moreover, we investigated whether meal or individual characteristics affect this association. In total, 5021 customers of a public canteen rated the sustainability and healthiness of 29 meal options. For determining the actual environmental sustainability and healthiness scores, exact recipes of each meal were analyzed using the NAHGAST algorithm. Results showed a substantial association between perceived sustainability and healthiness at the individual level. However, this perceived relation was unrelated to the overlap between the actual environmental sustainability and healthiness scores of the meals. Moreover, this “healthier = more sustainable” perception was unrelated to other meal characteristics (e.g., vegan content) or individual characteristics (i.e., gender, eating style). However, this association was slightly higher in older than in younger participants. The present study shows in a real-world setting that food consumers seem to evaluate the sustainability and healthiness of meals based on a simple “healthy = sustainable” heuristic which is largely independent of the actual overlap of these dimensions. Future research is needed to shed more light on the nature, sources, and consequences of this heuristic.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139266453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A nature-based solutions approach to managing shrimp aquaculture effluent","authors":"Garrett M. Goto, E. Corwin, Alexander Farthing, Anisa Rilla Lubis, Dane H. Klinger","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000076","url":null,"abstract":"While coastal habitat conversion was a primary environmental concern in Asia for the mostly extensive shrimp aquaculture sector in previous decades, the transition towards intensive production is creating new environmental risks, primarily water quality impacts from nutrient-rich effluent. There is a need to compare the performance of conventional and Nature-based Solution (NbS) effluent treatment options given the increasing nutrient loads from more intensive aquaculture and historic loss of ecosystem services from mangrove deforestation. This study evaluates the potential for common and emerging effluent treatment systems to address total nitrogen and total phosphorus effluent from shrimp farms across a spectrum of production intensities. Nutrient waste loading for four stocking density scenarios (7PLm-2, 20PLm-2, 75PLm-2, and 120PLm-2) are estimated to compare the treatment efficiency, economic feasibility, spatial requirements, and ecosystem service provision of conventional and NbS effluent treatment systems. We use secondary data to assess effluent treatment systems applicable for shrimp aquaculture in Asia. Findings provide the conceptual framework for comparing the characteristics and tradeoffs of aquaculture effluent treatment systems. Constructed mangrove wetlands are an NbS approach that can meet the intensification needs of aquaculture producers and reduce negative impacts from aquaculture effluent at competitive costs, while also providing ecosystem service co-benefits.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"766 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116191282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Towards a Mission-oriented Innovation Systems (MIS) approach, application for Dutch sustainable maritime shipping","authors":"J. Wesseling, Nick Meijerhof","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000075","url":null,"abstract":"This paper builds on the literature on mission-oriented innovation policy, governance, transition studies and innovation systems, and develops a structural-functional approach to formatively evaluate mission governance from a Mission-oriented Innovation Systems (MIS) perspective. Central to this MIS approach is the mission arena, a governance structure where actors formulate and govern the mission, by mobilizing and directing other, preexisting system components. Their goal is to meet the mission by developing and diffusing innovative mission solutions and destabilizing harmful practices. The MIS approach involves a problem-solutions diagnosis and an analysis of structural, functional, and systemic barriers. To provide formative mission governance recommendations, the systemic barriers are then contrasted with the mission arena’s governance tasks. To illustrate the value of the MIS approach, we use a case study of the Dutch mission for sustainable maritime shipping. This case study illustrates a mission arena striving to increase coherence amongst different innovation system structures in semblance of a MIS. The mission arena configuration of actors shaped the mission formulation and negotiated governance actions. Dominant industry networks negotiated green growth as problem direction and non-committal governance actions, which are likely ineffective for inherently transformative sustainability missions. The paper concludes by identifying directions for further developing the MIS approach and the mission arena concept.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124661441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Water and chemical consumption in the textile processing industry of Bangladesh","authors":"M. A. Uddin, Most. Setara Begum, M. Ashraf, A. Azad, A. C. Adhikary, M. S. Hossain","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000072","url":null,"abstract":"The textile wet processing industry is considered a notorious polluter due to its widespread use of natural resources without proper replenishment. Bangladesh is one of the largest producers of textile products in the World, and therefore, it is vulnerable to environmental degradation. Bangladesh is predominantly a cotton processing country; therefore, reactive dyes are commonly used, and the dye combination is very water and chemical-intensive. There is a scarcity of information on the consumption of water, textile dyes and the generation of wastewater in the textile sector. Thus, this study aimed to estimate the amount of water use, wastewater generation, and chemical use in textile wet processing units. Therefore, a face-to-face in-depth questionnaire-based survey was conducted in 18 textile wet processing factories, including knit composite, knit dyeing, yarn dyeing, denim dyeing, and knit and yarn dyeing. The average specific groundwater consumption to process 1 Kg of textile materials was 164 L/Kg (SD ~ 81.8); dyehouse water was136 L/Kg (SD ~ 70.6), while corresponding wastewater was 119 L/Kg (SD ~ 73.0). This high consumption of groundwater is directly linked to the depletion of groundwater in the region, where textile industries are situated and also, causes water pollution through wastewater generation. The water used in the dyehouse water was usually soft water and found to be in a range of 68% to 100% that of groundwater extracted. For chemical use, a factory used 449 g of chemicals to process 1 Kg of textile materials, in which the most widely used chemicals were inorganic and basic chemical in nature. However, the chemical use varied from 152 g/Kg to 705 g/Kg of textile production. The total chemical consumption ranged from 954 tons to 4,525 tons a year. More than 50% of the wastewater treatment plants were biological, a quarter of combination and physico-chemical and biological, and the rest were chemical treatment plants in this study. Even though this study may not represent the whole textile wet processing industry of Bangladesh, however, This study provides baseline information on water and chemical consumption and wastewater generation. Our findings would be helpful for policy makers and researchers to identify transformative challenges required at the national level.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132842697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}