Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-03-24DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01660-4
Florian Goldschmeding, René Kemp, Véronique Vasseur, Christian Scholl
{"title":"Institutional logics as an object of change: the experiences of a water organization using design thinking for climate adaptation in a multi-stakeholder process.","authors":"Florian Goldschmeding, René Kemp, Véronique Vasseur, Christian Scholl","doi":"10.1007/s11625-025-01660-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01660-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the search for solutions to complex challenges posed by climate change and sustainability transitions, organizations often turn to innovative approaches and new cognitive frames. Particularly in the public sector, however, entrenched institutional logics often impede progress toward novel solutions. This paper explores how a public organization in the Dutch water sector navigates competing and sometimes conflicting frames and institutional logics through design-thinking. The object of study is a 6-month project initiated by a regional water authority in response to a severe flooding in 2021. The project aimed to develop and reimagine instruments for inclusive and climate-adaptive water management in collaboration with diverse actors. Based on participant observation and qualitative interviews, we analyze a series of design-thinking workshops where diverse stakeholders co-created tools for climate-adaptive water management. The findings disclose the existence of significant conflicts between the frames and institutional logics and offer details on how these were addressed through repeated stakeholder interaction and institutional work. We found that individuals showed varied responses to the emerging institutional logics, and that dominant institutional logics were diversely interpreted by different actors within the organization. Our research shows how iterative, participatory design methods can help actors temporarily shift institutional logics, but also reveals persistent challenges in achieving enduring changes to dominant institutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 3","pages":"759-776"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12033102/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144028314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-03-17DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01666-y
Tersur Theophilus Akpensuen, M Jordana Rivero
{"title":"Achieving net-zero agriculture in Africa: perspective on policies, challenges, and opportunities.","authors":"Tersur Theophilus Akpensuen, M Jordana Rivero","doi":"10.1007/s11625-025-01666-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01666-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Africa, with 55 Member States and over 1 billion people, is projected to nearly double its population to 2.5 billion by 2050, presenting both opportunities and challenges for sustainable development. Agriculture employs 65% of the labour force and contributes 32% to gross domestic product. The aim of this perspective is to highlight the challenges and opportunities of achieving net-zero agriculture in Africa while proffering appropriate recommendations. The primary issues are how extreme weather events affect food security and how to cut emissions from livestock farming as well as rice cultivation and fertilizer usage alongside evaluating current policies that support climate-smart agricultural practices. Africa needs to investigate how its expanding young population along with research and innovation can advance the move towards net-zero agricultural practices. Challenges of insufficient data availability together with ineffective policy enforcement, financial barriers, and limited awareness, decreasing precipitation levels coupled with regional conflicts and population migration hinder progress in achieving net-zero agriculture on the continent. However, Africa possesses substantial opportunities through its extensive arable land combined with its youthful workforce and renewable energy capabilities. Africa needs to obtain climate funds and strengthen regional partnerships while enhancing climate information services and creating inclusive and gender-responsive policies to address these issues. Investing in innovative technologies alongside renewable energy sources and crops resistant to climate change stands as an essential strategy. The implementation of early warning systems along with the development of alternative livelihoods will enhance efforts towards sustainable management of climate-induced migration. Africa will develop a climate-resilient agricultural system by confronting existing challenges while capitalizing on emerging opportunities.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-025-01666-y.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 3","pages":"1117-1137"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12033123/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144042080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-02-17DOI: 10.1007/s11625-024-01619-x
Benjamin Hofmann, Hanna Salomon, Sabine Hoffmann
{"title":"Roles of researchers in inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research: a reflection tool.","authors":"Benjamin Hofmann, Hanna Salomon, Sabine Hoffmann","doi":"10.1007/s11625-024-01619-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01619-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) research is increasingly called for and supported to promote sustainable transformation through knowledge co-production, knowledge integration, and solution development. The paper explores what is needed to support researchers in reflecting on their new roles in ITD research. We introduce a reflection tool that makes the growing literature on researchers' roles in sustainability science applicable to ITD projects. Its design is based on the arguments that each researcher can have several roles within one research project and that focusing on a few key roles increases clarity compared to differentiating many specialized roles. The tool consists of (1) a researcher survey that operationalizes six prominent roles (traditional scientist, self-reflexive scientist, knowledge integrator, knowledge broker, process facilitator, and change agent), (2) a visualization of role profiles from the survey, and (3) a set of reflection questions on related opportunities, challenges, and coping strategies on individual and project level. We empirically applied the tool in two ITD research projects focused on sustainable food production and water and forest ecosystem management. Comparative application of the tool yielded diverse role profiles of researchers in both projects, with different patterns for senior and junior researchers as well as natural and social scientists. The reflection produced a collection of opportunities, challenges, and coping strategies that corroborates and extends insights from ITD literature. We discuss how the tool triggers multi-dimensional reflection on roles (individual and project level, role combinations, self-perception and external perception) and outline opportunities for further strengthening such reflection in ITD research.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-024-01619-x.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 3","pages":"777-792"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12033213/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143992448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-06-05DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01696-6
Benjamin K Sovacool, Chad M Baum, Livia Fritz, Sean Low
{"title":"Exploring global climate intervention experiments: sociotechnical promises, innovation dynamics, and perceived co-impacts across 20 projects and pilots.","authors":"Benjamin K Sovacool, Chad M Baum, Livia Fritz, Sean Low","doi":"10.1007/s11625-025-01696-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11625-025-01696-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Using techniques commonly applied in participatory action research and ethnography, we examine 20 specific cases of experimentation for a selection of carbon removal and solar radiation modification interventions. These experiments include engineering-based approaches such as stratospheric aerosol injection, cloud brightening, carbon-neutral cement, biochar, direct air capture, and enhanced rock weathering alongside ecosystems-based approaches such as afforestation, seagrass restoration, and coral reef protection. Based on extensive original research of these 20 experimental projects-including 118 semi-structured research interviews and naturalistic site-based observation-we explore four questions. Firstly, what are the actor coalitions surrounding each experiment? Secondly, what promises and expectations do those actors generate? Thirdly, what innovation dynamics and styles are emergent and evident here? Finally, what perceived co-impacts are expected (by actors) to occur with widespread prospective deployment? Answering these questions in our empirical study offers insights into energy, climate, and climate intervention research, given that these experiments involve some of the most powerful and dominant actor coalitions, are supported by large amounts of climate finance investment, and will undoubtedly shape future deliberations over climate policy and technology deployment.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 6","pages":"2195-2216"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12554822/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145394724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-07-09DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01719-2
Alexandra Frangenheim, Marie Louise Schneider, Cornelia Fischer, Susanne Waiblinger, Stefan Hörtenhuber, Verena Radinger-Peer, Marianne Penker
{"title":"Mission-oriented agrifood innovation systems in the making: a transdisciplinary approach to identify context-specific drivers of change.","authors":"Alexandra Frangenheim, Marie Louise Schneider, Cornelia Fischer, Susanne Waiblinger, Stefan Hörtenhuber, Verena Radinger-Peer, Marianne Penker","doi":"10.1007/s11625-025-01719-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11625-025-01719-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A new generation of transformative policies has recently led to conceptual advances that map and evaluate agrifood innovation dynamics that contribute to the fulfillment of a societal mission within clearly defined time frames. In the context of the \"European Green Deal\", national policies are being implemented with varying levels of government ambition and rigor, which is not yet reflected in these concepts. This article provides a framework and a methodology to help multi- and transdisciplinary teams to operationalize the transformation of an agrifood innovation system (AIS) into a mission-oriented agrifood innovation system (MAIS) in the absence of clear policy goals and objectives, i.e., where policymakers do not provide for the development of a mission. Within the safe space of a transdisciplinary research project, researchers and practitioners aim to understand where to start a sustainability transformation by examining subsectoral, transformative and directable drivers of change (DoC) in Austrian beef and dairy. To gather and integrate knowledge from different scientific and societal perspectives on how to transform this specific subsector, they established and facilitated a policy-independent, transdisciplinary mission arena. Besides context-specific results related to Austrian beef and dairy supply, we discuss the contribution of our transdisciplinary research to identify transformative and directable DoC as leverage points for transforming an AIS into a MAIS. Moreover, we explore the potentials, challenges and limitations of a policy-independent, transdisciplinary mission arena to provide orientation in the absence of national sustainability goals and objectives. Our conclusion includes a brief outlook for further research.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-025-01719-2.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 6","pages":"2265-2280"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12554819/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145394694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2024-12-12DOI: 10.1007/s11625-024-01584-5
Patricia Santillán-Carvantes, Alejandra Tauro, Patricia Balvanera, Juan Miguel Requena-Mullor, Antonio J Castro, Cristina Quintas-Soriano, Berta Martín-López
{"title":"Impact of land transformation, management and governance on subjective wellbeing across social-ecological systems.","authors":"Patricia Santillán-Carvantes, Alejandra Tauro, Patricia Balvanera, Juan Miguel Requena-Mullor, Antonio J Castro, Cristina Quintas-Soriano, Berta Martín-López","doi":"10.1007/s11625-024-01584-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11625-024-01584-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recognizing and understanding the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of individuals is essential for designing effective policies that promote human development and the sustainable management of social-ecological systems (SES). This is particularly important for smallholders, critical stewards of biodiversity who face acute livelihood challenges. This article explores how smallholders inhabiting tropical dry forests in Mexico perceive their SWB and how it changes across a spectrum of SES that undergo different land transformations, management intensities, and governance dynamics. Our aims are to identify the dimensions of SWB that smallholders perceive, understand how these dimensions change across SES, and examine how smallholders' perceptions of fulfilled material and non-material dimensions vary across SES. We analyzed the content of 25 in-depth interviews with farmers and identified 48 SWB items belonging to six categories: (1) social capital, (2) economic capital, (3) agency, (4) nature, (5) pleasant non-work activities, and (6) governmental services, and two additional dimensions referred to obstacles and enablers. We found two prevailing visions of SWB: 'living well' prevails especially in areas with communal governance and medium management intensity, and 'need to earn more' prevails in areas with individual governance and intensified land management. As management is intensified and governance fosters individualism, the lower the self-perceived material and non-material satisfaction. We discuss the different SWB found per SES, as well as strategies that can foster smallholder's SWB and SES dynamics that can motivate different conservation goals and sustainable uses of nature, especially in biodiverse areas.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-024-01584-5.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 2","pages":"469-483"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11937195/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143732544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-06-20DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01702-x
Benjamin Hofmann, Ueli Reber, Priska Ammann, Julia Dötzer, Jennifer Mark, Chloe McCallum, Milena Wiget, Lucca Zachmann
{"title":"A typology of interdisciplinary collaborations: insights from agri-food transformation research.","authors":"Benjamin Hofmann, Ueli Reber, Priska Ammann, Julia Dötzer, Jennifer Mark, Chloe McCallum, Milena Wiget, Lucca Zachmann","doi":"10.1007/s11625-025-01702-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11625-025-01702-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To understand complex societal transformations, scholars have called for more interdisciplinary research in which researchers from various disciplines collaborate. To support the implementation of such collaborations, we introduce a novel typology of interdisciplinary collaborations developed from the literature and from structured reflection on our own research experience. The typology distinguishes (I) common base, (II) common destination, and (III) sequential link type of interdisciplinary collaborations. Common base refers to an interdisciplinary collaboration at one research stage that later separates into parallel disciplinary work; common destination to a collaboration where separate disciplinary work feeds into joint interdisciplinary work at the next stage; and sequential link to a completed stage of disciplinary research that provides the basis for research in another discipline. We illustrate the typology with a case study of interdisciplinary collaborations in a research project that studied the potential for an evidence-based transformation of agricultural pesticide governance. The project involved researchers from seven natural, health, and social science disciplines who developed a process for forming and maintaining interdisciplinary collaborations. We provide five examples of interdisciplinary collaborations from the project, explaining for each its practical design and implementation, its contribution to overall research goals, and related opportunities and challenges. The examples show that the typology can systematize the thinking about interdisciplinary collaborations and enable critical reflection about interdisciplinary research design and implementation. Based on our reflections as early-career researchers, we conclude with lessons that can inform future interdisciplinary research projects on agri-food transformation and beyond.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 5","pages":"1791-1808"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12414061/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145024653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-03-21DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01665-z
Silja Zimmermann, Brian J Dermody, Courtney Carothers, Valeria Di Fant, Lauren M Divine, Kadyn Lestenkof-Zacharof, Veronica M Padula, Bert Theunissen, Martin J Wassen, Ine Dorresteijn
{"title":"Value change debt as a window of opportunity for transformative change: a case study on the mixed Indigenous food system of St. Paul Island, Alaska.","authors":"Silja Zimmermann, Brian J Dermody, Courtney Carothers, Valeria Di Fant, Lauren M Divine, Kadyn Lestenkof-Zacharof, Veronica M Padula, Bert Theunissen, Martin J Wassen, Ine Dorresteijn","doi":"10.1007/s11625-025-01665-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11625-025-01665-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Arctic Indigenous food systems are essential to the survival of local communities, but face significant challenges due to environmental, economic, and social pressures. The objective of this study is to elicit values of the mixed Indigenous food system on St. Paul Island, Alaska, and understand their potential as deep leverage points for transformative change in the context of their historical co-evolution with the local food system. To achieve this objective, we engage three generational groups within the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island to obtain local food system stories. From these stories, we (i) elicit historical events that are thought to have shaped the local food system, (ii) identify factors that influence the food system in its present and future states, and (iii) delineate intrinsic, instrumental, and relational food system values. Our findings show that most identified historical events are perceived to have undermined the Indigenous food system and that most factors identified to shape present and future food system states present barriers for community members to engage in traditional practices. Yet, despite this, values that relate to traditional Indigenous livelihoods remain central in the local value system. These results suggest a value change debt, i.e., a time lag between changes in peoples' held values following changes in the system around them. We propose that this lag provides a window of opportunity to leverage transformative change. We argue that as long as traditional food system values persist, there is potential to reconfigure the food system in a way that embraces these values, enhancing the system's relevance to the community's way of life.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-025-01665-z.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 5","pages":"1883-1901"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12414080/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145024623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2024-12-12DOI: 10.1007/s11625-024-01590-7
A Varvarousis, G Kallis, C Catanneo, F Sekulova, M Tsagkari, A Slamersak, M Conde, G Dalisa, K Hanacek, B Roy
{"title":"Beyond the urban shift: towards a relational degrowth spatial politics.","authors":"A Varvarousis, G Kallis, C Catanneo, F Sekulova, M Tsagkari, A Slamersak, M Conde, G Dalisa, K Hanacek, B Roy","doi":"10.1007/s11625-024-01590-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11625-024-01590-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Degrowth is coming of age, and its analysis of what can be called <i>degrowth spatial politics</i> is advancing rapidly. In this article, we attempt to unravel the history of spatial thought in the degrowth literature to reveal its tendencies, tipping points, and blank spots. We argue that the more recent degrowth spatial literature overly focuses on the big urban scale by reversing what has purportedly been one of the weak spots of degrowth scholarship: its focus and preference for small-scale, relocalization, and decentralized communities. While we see the merit of this shift, first, we try to contextualize it in the broader sustainability discourse, and second, we contend that it has not been without problems and omissions. We see three predicaments stemming from it: first, a deficit of the degrowth spatial literature in recognizing and engaging with unsustainable rural transformations such as rural depopulation and shrinkage, as well as rural dispossession and depeasantisation. Second, a difficulty to account for urban and rural interconnectedness and engage with new epistemological frames that emerge in urban studies, such as planetary urbanization. Third, the urban shift may affect the capacity of degrowth to remain pluriversal, anti-colonial, and grassroots-fueled, or what Chertkovskaya et al. (Towards a political economy of degrowth. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PuXaDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=info:c45bQLgYCfYJ:scholar.google.com&ots=5LsDF9Y_Er&sig=buZn4ogpUN4octi3_WFJf1mO9Lg) called <i>nomadic utopianism</i>. Finally, in the concluding part, we set the stepstones for a relational degrowth spatial politics, focusing on a solidary connection of space and place across the urban and rural and in multiple scales. This approach avoids the pitfalls of both degrowth proposals for relocalization and those who put excessive trust in urban transformations alone.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 2","pages":"485-498"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11937061/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143732486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sustainability SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-03-15DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01658-y
Christopher J Orr, Sarah Burch
{"title":"Transformative capacities for navigating system change: a framework for sustainability research and practice.","authors":"Christopher J Orr, Sarah Burch","doi":"10.1007/s11625-025-01658-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01658-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the face of climate change and other ecological pressures, there is urgent need to transform human systems and their society-nature relationships. However, there is a gap between transformative ambitions and our ability to enable transformative change. The relationship between sustainability transformations in practice and the transformative capacities that enable them is complex and indirect, requiring integrative frameworks to clarify the relationships between what transformations entail and the capacities needed to enable them. We develop the integrative transformative capacities framework (TCF) to conceptualize how sustainability transformations relate to the capacities to realize them in terms of the focal system and the strategies needed to bring about a desired change. We illustrate this framework, proposing key features of sustainability transformations, then identifying strategies for change associated with each feature and the capacities required to implement each strategy. We conclude by discussing some challenges of theorizing, identifying, and building transformative capacities and how the TCF addresses these challenges. This framework can help researchers be explicit about their assumptions and decisions about systems change, strategies to influence change, and the capacities to enable different actors to meaningfully contribute to change.</p>","PeriodicalId":49457,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability Science","volume":"20 3","pages":"975-992"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12033196/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144043343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}