Regional Research Capacity-Building in Sustainability Science: Facts,Gaps, and Futures in Northeast Asia

Abstract

Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seems to be a very positive signal for the future development of sustainability science in this region. However, studyes show that there are still some major gaps there. One is the problem of how to build up the regional research capacity of sustainability science among northeast Asian research institutes across different disciplines as well as different political systems. Another is how to shift the conceptual frameworks of sustainability science into the operational policy frameworks. There are four major obstacles to the enhancement of regional research capacity-building in sustainability science. In order to build up the regional research capacity in sustainability science and to realize both local and global goals of the sustainable development in northeast Asia, this paper proposes some basic frameworks, including regional institutional innovations, establishment of a regional sustainability information network, initiatives of the regional assessment programme, and focus on the regional education and training of sustainability knowledge.     

Science, Research, Knowledge and Capacity Building

A small part of the scientific community is seeking hard to enhance the contribution of science, knowledge and capacity building to environmentally sustainable and socially fair human development around the world. Many researchers over the globe share the same commitment – anchored in concerns for the human condition. They believe that science and research can and have influenced sustainability. Therefore their main goals are to seek and build up knowledge, know-how and capacity that might help to feed, nurture, house, educate and employ the world's growing human population while conserving its basic life support systems and biodiversity. They undertake projects, that are essentially integrative, and they try to connect the natural, social and engineering sciences, environment and development of communities, multiple stakeholders, geographic and temporal scales. More generally, scientists engaged in sustainable development are bridging the worlds of knowledge and action. This pro-active, heavily ethics- and wisdom-based "science for sustainability" can be seen as the conclusion of all dialogues and discussions amongst scientists at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) 2002 in Johannesburg. The "Plan of Implementation" after WSSD will be based on political will, practical steps and partnerships with time-bound actions. Several "means of implementation" are going to be proofed and initiated: finance, trade, transfer of environmentally sound technology, and, last but not least, science and capacity building.Some characteristics of working scientific sustainability initiatives are that they are regional, place-based and solution-oriented. They are focusing at intermediate scales where multiple stresses intersect, where complexity is manageable, where integration is possible, where innovation happens, and where significant transitions toward sustainability can start bottom-up. And they have a fundamental character, addressing the unity of the nature – society system, asking how that interactive system is evolving and how it can be consciously, if imperfectly, steered through the reflective mobilization and application of appropriate knowledge and know-how. The aims of such sustainability-building initiatives conducted by researchers are: first to make significant progress toward expanding and deepening the research agenda of science and knowledge-building for sustainability; secondly to strengthen the infrastructure and capacity for conducting and applying science, research and technology for sustainability – everywhere in the world where it is needed; and thirdly, to connect science, policy and decision-making more effectively in pursuit of a faster transition towards real sustainable development. The overall characteristic is, that sustainability initiatives are mainly open-ended networks and dialogues for the better future. A world society that tries to turn towards sustainable development has to work hard to refine their clumsy technologies, in "earthing" their responsibility to all creatures and resources, in establishing democratic systems in peace and by heeding human rights, in building up global solidarity through all mankind and in commit themselves to a better life for the next generations.     

Linking global drivers with local and regional change: a social-ecological system approach in Chilika Lagoon,Bay of Bengal

Global scale drivers such as international markets for shrimp can trigger large changes at local and regional scales. But there is also a poorly appreciated reverse process, operating from the bottom up, with potential for triggering changes at higher scales. Thus, effects of drivers can be seen as a two-way process in which global drivers and local and regional drivers can potentially impact each other. Here, we argue that not only can global drivers impact the sustainability of local and regional social-ecological systems, but sustainability at higher scales can also be impacted by changes at the scale of local and regional social-ecological systems. Using Chilika, a large lagoon on the Bay of Bengal, Odisha State in India as a case, we show that traditional small-scale capture fisheries supporting 150 fisher villages with some 400,000 people were marginalized by aquaculture development for tiger prawn and by state-driven hydrological interventions, with impacts on the ecology of the lagoon. These changes, in turn, contribute to global poverty and food insecurity, making it difficult for India to meet international targets such as millennium development goals. The marginalized fisherfolk become part of environmental justice and other social movements. With large parts of the lagoon converted into a virtual monoculture for the production of tiger prawn, changes in Chilika (a Ramsar site) contribute to wetland habitat loss at the global scale, and biodiversity losses, possibly including IUCN red-listed species.     

Supporting climate change vulnerability and adaptation assessments in the Asia-Pacific region: an example of sustainability science

Sustainability is achieved only when there is full reconciliation between: (1) economic development; (2) meeting, on an equitable basis, growing and changing human needs and aspirations; and (3) conserving the limited natural resources and the capacity of the environment to absorb the mulitple stresses that are a consequence of human activities. The linkages between climate and sustainability are examined in the context of both the wider Asia-Pacific region and local level climate risks and adaptation responses. These findings are used to underpin and illustrate several implications for sustainability science. Climate change is seen as both an impediment to increasing sustainability and as an opportunity, though in most cases the former far outweighs the latter. Assessments of climate change vulnerability and risk are shown to be of critical importance because they inform decisions as to where resources for adaptation are best invested. They also show whether global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions need to be strengthened because of limits to adaptation. In practice, adaptation takes place at many levels, essentially ranging between tangible interventions at community and enterprise level and national and international efforts to strengthen the enabling environment for adaptation. It is informative to undertake regional assessments of adaptation, even though most adaptation interventions need to reflect local conditions, including local adaptive capacities. The foregoing findings, based in part on a series of regional and local case studies, lead to several recommendations for further research that will help reduce barriers to implementing responses that reduce climate related risks, including adverse consequences for sustainability. The recommendations relate to such themes as making optimum use of predictive capabilities, characterising the linkages between climate change and sustainability, implications of the required rates and magnitudes of adaptation, institutional responses that enhance adaptive capacity, use of new and traditional technologies, the multiple dimensions of social responsibility, and enhancing the enabling environment for adaptation at the community and enterprise level. If these recommendations are acted upon they will, in turn, help address much needed improvements in quantifying the costs and benefits of adaptation, prioritising adaptation options, assessing sustainable development tradeoffs, and monitoring the success of adaptation initiatives. Such improvements will have even greater utility if they are incorporated into user-friendly decision support tools for adaptation.     

Sustainability classifications in engineering: discipline and approach

In order to discuss how to advance sustainability in engineering, it is necessary to be clear as to what exactly is the science of sustainability. The linkage between sustainability philosophy and scientific principles has, in some ways, been acknowledged in the wider literature. Moreover, the recent scholarship on sustainability in international literature has focused on providing definitions, policies and methods, though from an engineering perspective, there is an obvious need for clarity on how the engineering and science community can integrate the science of sustainability into practice. Prima facie, this article provides an overview of the development of sustainability science through a textual analysis to collate the underlying discourse and ideology cited in literature. While the number one sustainability challenge is to mitigate climate change, compiling a definition genesis of sustainability will assist the engineering community in gaining an understanding in the underlying philosophical frames. The aim of this paper is to analyse sustainability information in the print press, journals, periodicals and textbooks since publication patterns contribute to our understanding of the cognitive aspects of scholarly knowledge development.     

A science of integration: frameworks,processes, and products in a place-based,integrative study

Integrative research is increasingly a priority within the scientific community and is a central goal for the evolving field of sustainability science. While it is conceptually attractive, its successful implementation has been challenging and recent work suggests that the move towards interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in sustainability science is being only partially realized. To address this from the perspective of social-ecological systems (SES) research, we examine the process of conducting a science of integration within the Southcentral Alaska Test Case (SCTC) of Alaska-EPSCoR as a test-bed for this approach. The SCTC is part of a large, 5 year, interdisciplinary study investigating changing environments and adaptations to those changes in Alaska. In this paper, we review progress toward a science of integration and present our efforts to confront the practical issues of applying proposed integration frameworks. We: (1) define our integration framework; (2) describe the collaborative processes, including the co-development of science through stakeholder engagement and partnerships; and (3) illustrate potential products of integrative, social-ecological systems research. The approaches we use can also be applied outside of this particular framework. We highlight challenges and propose improvements for integration in sustainability science by addressing the need for common frameworks and improved contextual understanding. These insights may be useful for capacity-building for interdisciplinary projects that address complex real-world social and environmental problems.     

Learning for change: an educational contribution to sustainability science

Transition to sustainability is a search for ways to improve the social capacity to guide interactions between nature and society toward a more sustainable future and, thus, a process of social learning in its broadest sense. Accordingly, it is not only learning that is at issue but education and educational science, of which the latter is about exploring the preconditions of and opportunities for learning and education—whether individual or social, in formal or informal settings. Analyzing how educational science deals with the challenge of sustainability leads to two complementary approaches: the ‘outside-in’ approach sees the idea of sustainability influencing educational practice and the way the relationship of learning and teaching is reviewed, theoretically as well as within the social context. In an ‘inside-out’ approach, an overview is given of how educational science can contribute to the field of sustainability science. An examination of the literature on education and sustainability shows that, while sustainability features prominently in one form or another across all sectors, only little work can be found dealing with the contributions of educational science within sustainability science. However, as sustainability is a concept that not only influences educational practices but also invites disciplinary contributions to foster inter- and transdisciplinary research within the sustainability discourse, the question remains as to how and to what extent educational science in particular can contribute to sustainability science in terms of an ‘inside-out’ approach. In this paper, we reconstruct the emergence of education for sustainable development as a distinctive field of educational science and introduce and discuss three areas of sustainability research and throw into relief the unique contribution that educational science can make to individual action and behavior change, to organizational change and social learning, and, finally, to inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.     

Towards an umbrella science of sustainability

Sustainability research has gained scholarly attention since the 1980s as the new science investigating the changes in social, environmental and economic systems and their impacts on the future of planetary life support systems. Whilst broad literature on sustainability has expanded significantly over the past decades, academic literature developing sustainability as a distinct science has received little attention. After more than two decades of sustainability research, the time has come for us to begin asking reflective questions about what sort of science we call sustainability science. How has the broader research on sustainability contributed to developing sustainability science as a unique discipline within the past two decades? How has the label science promoted or hindered the interdisciplinary project of integrating the natural and social sciences as well as arts and humanities in addressing human nature problems? I argue in this review paper that special efforts need to be made towards the building and positioning of sustainability as an umbrella science for global sustainability research. The benefits of the new sustainability science advocated for in this paper are that; a) it offers a universal definition of sustainability that accounts for both the needs of life and the capacity of planetary life support systems to provide for those needs and b) proposes ways of bridging gaps among different research traditions, facilitating cross disciplinary communication and addressing the challenge of multiple meanings and definitions of concepts facing sustainability research today.     

Towards institutional analysis of sustainability science: a quantitative examination of the patterns of research collaboration

This paper examines quantitatively the patterns of collaboration over geographical boundaries in the emerging field of sustainability science by empirically analyzing the bibliometric data of scientific articles. The results indicate that an increasing number of countries are engaged in research on sustainability, with the proportion of articles published through international collaboration rising as well. The number of countries engaged in international collaboration on sustainability research has been increasing, and the diversity of countries engaged in research collaboration beyond national borders is also increasing. The geographical patterns of collaboration on sustainability show that research collaboration tends to be conducted between countries which are geographically located closely, suggesting that communication and information exchange might be limited within the regional clusters. The focused fields of research activities on sustainability are significantly different between countries, as each country has its focused fields of research related to sustainability. The specialization of research activities is also observed in international collaboration. While these patterns of international collaboration within regional clusters focusing on specific fields could be effective in promoting the creation, transmission, and sharing of knowledge on sustainability utilizing the already existing regional networks, they could pose a serious obstacle to collecting, exchanging, and integrating diverse types of knowledge, especially when it is necessary to deal with problems involving large-scale complex interactions with long-term implications, such as climate change. It would be of critical importance to establish inter-regional linkages by devising appropriate institutional arrangements for global research collaboration on sustainability science.     

The future of sustainability science: a solutions-oriented research agenda

Over the last decade, sustainability science has been at the leading edge of widespread efforts from the social and natural sciences to produce use-inspired research. Yet, how knowledge generated by sustainability science and allied fields will contribute to transitions toward sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. This article explores the limitations of sustainability science research to move the field beyond the analysis of problems in coupled systems to interrogate the social, political and technological dimensions of linking knowledge and action. Over the next decade, sustainability science can strengthen its empirical, theoretical and practical contributions by developing along four research pathways focused on the role of values in science and decision-making for sustainability: how communities at various scales envision and pursue sustainable futures; how socio-technical change can be fostered at multiple scales; the promotion of social and institutional learning for sustainable development.     

Coevolving Ostrom’s social–ecological systems (SES) framework and sustainability science: four key co-benefits

Research on social–ecological systems (SES) is scattered across many disciplines and perspectives. As a result, much of the knowledge generated between different communities is not comparable, mutually aggregate or easily communicated to nonspecialists despite common goals to use academic knowledge for advancing sustainability. This article proposes a conceptual pathway to address this challenge through outlining how the SES research contributions of sustainability science and researchers using Elinor Ostrom’s diagnostic SES framework (SESF) can integrate and co-benefit from explicitly interlinking their development. From a review of the literature, I outline four key co-benefits from their potential to interlink in the following themes: (1) coevolving SES knowledge types, (2) guiding primary research and assessing sustainability, (3) building a boundary object for transdisciplinary sustainability science, and (4) facilitating comparative analysis. The origins of the SESF include seminal empirical work on common property theory, self-organization, and coupled SES interactions. The SESF now serves as a template for diagnosing sustainability challenges and theorizing explanatory relationships on SES components, interactions, and outcomes within and across case studies. Simultaneously, sustainability science has proposed transdisciplinary research agendas, sustainability knowledge types, knowledge coproduction, and sustainability assessment tools to advance transformative change processes. Key challenges for achieving co-beneficial developments in both communities are discussed in relation to each of the four themes. Evident pathways for advancing SES research are also presented along with a guideline for designing SES research within this co-aligned vision.     

The scientific challenge of bridging the gap from the local to the earth system level: lessons from the study of mangroves and people in North Brazil

This article aims to address the challenges of sustainable earth system governance from a multi-scale level perspective. The local to regional system level reviews findings from a social–ecological system approach of a mangrove ecosystem in North Brazil. Seven challenges (Glaser et al. in Mangrove dynamics and management in North Brazil. Ecological studies series. Springer, Berlin, pp 307–388, 2010) that could provide relevant knowledge to society were identified. Their respective justification and recommendations are presented here. Further, these “challenges from the field” are linked and discussed with those challenges on earth system level elaborated by the International Council for Science in 2010. There it was stressed that sustainability problems are increasingly caused by drivers from multiple spatial and institutional levels in a single global human–nature system. The comparison between the global and local to regional challenges shows that most of these are reappearing disregarding the level of analysis, indicating that there is a universal core of global change problems. However, there are gaps visible which hamper the effective connections across the different spatial levels. These pertain to the subjects of knowledge generation and stakeholder inclusion. The final section elaborates on these recognized gaps and their science–policy dimensions. The article closes with the identification of a number of factors which currently impede global sustainability efforts: shortcomings in inter- and transdisciplinary research practice, lack of consistent structures for earth system governance and shortcomings in dealing with upscaling challenges whilst remaining locally relevant. A blueprint for a globally focused but regionally informed social–ecological analysis framework remains to be worked out.     

Social metrics in the process industry: background,theory and development work

Sustainable development as the leading global development paradigm and sustainability as a cornerstone of modern industrial development have guided this development work on social metrics in the process industry. This study addresses the development of social metrics in the process industry and for metal production, in particular, at the plant level. The developed social indicators are one part of the overall sustainability index that aims to present a balanced and holistic view of plant-level sustainability performance, encompassing information on all different dimensions. This development work was preceded by the benchmarking and review of existing global reporting frameworks, initiatives and the literature. Current indicators of industrial sustainability mainly satisfy the needs of corporate-level management and capital investors. Therefore, plant-level indicators are critically needed to support and fill potential gaps in corporate-level assessments and management with a special emphasis on plant-level sustainability. The purpose of our development work for social indicators was to operationalise the concept of sustainability and associated performance measurement at the plant level. The development of social indicators was carried out through workshops with industry partners. As a joint effort, eight core social indicators and their associated sub-indicators were developed. We also report the results of our benchmarking and review of existing frameworks, initiatives and the literature. The social part of the overall sustainability index provides the information on both in-plant sustainability performance and the direct and indirect impacts of plant-level operations on the surrounding society including various stakeholders, interest groups and citizens.     

Modeling normativity in sustainability: a comparison of the sustainable development goals,the Paris agreement,and the papal encyclical

The idea of sustainability is intrinsically normative. Thus, understanding the role of normativity in sustainability discourses is crucial for further developing sustainability science. In this article, we analyze three important documents that aim to advance sustainability and explore how they organize norms in relation to sustainability. The three documents are: the Pope’s Encyclical Laudato Si’, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. We show that understanding the role of different types of norms in the three documents can help understand normative features of both scientific and non-scientific sustainability discourses. We present the diverse system of norms in a model that interrelates three different levels: macro, meso, and micro. Our model highlights how several processes affect the normative orientation of nations and societies at the meso-level in different ways. For instance, individual ethical norms at the micro-level, such as personal responsibility, may help decelerate unsustainable consumerism at the aggregate meso-level. We also show that techno-scientific norms at the macro-level representing global indicators for sustainability may accelerate innovations. We suggest that our model can help better organize normative features of sustainability discourses and, therefore, to contribute to the further development of sustainability science.     

From global sustainability research matrix to typology: a tool to analyze coastal and marine social-ecological systems

An attempt is made to develop a coastal and marine social-ecological typology. An explicitly regional focus is taken to explore how a regionally grounded, multi-scale analysis may support multi-level local to global sustainability efforts. A case study from Indonesia exemplifies this approach. Social-ecological sustainability problems, caused by drivers at different earth system levels, lead the way into the proposed typology. A social-ecological system consists of a biogeophysical territory, an identified issue and the associated social agents. It can extend across disciplines as well as across spatial and institutional levels and scales. A global sustainability research matrix, which is based on ecozones and problem types, can thus be constructed and serves as a research-driven multi-level typology. The regional application links directly to stakeholder agendas at the problem level. It is argued that some of the central functions of coastal and marine social-ecological systems are resource provision, livelihood access, and storm and erosion protection, which need special attention in a coastal and marine social-ecological typology, as exemplified in the Indonesian case study used. This contribution is an exploratory research to propose steps toward such a typology. It is extended to the social-ecological subsystems—natural, social, governance—and applied to additional cases. A two-dimensional, hierarchical typology is proposed as a tool to analyze, compare and classify coastal and marine systems. A policy typology is added to assess changes. A governance baseline is assumed to foster normative sustainability goals. A subsystems appraisal typology is meant to evaluate action results. Finally, unresolved methodological questions are discussed.     

Entrepreneurship in climate governance at the local and regional levels: concepts,methods, patterns,and effects

This editorial sets the scene for a special issue on climate governance entrepreneurship at the local and regional levels. To make climate governance work, much policy activity is needed at the local and regional levels. Entrepreneurs are actors who aim to affect change by using their agency. They target policy decisions at the local and regional levels, which might subsequently turn to other governance levels to expand their influence. The scientific discussion about governance entrepreneurs is characterized by a lack of conceptual clarity, by methodological challenges, and by several research gaps. Regarding the latter, at present, it is especially unclear when and why entrepreneurs become active, which factors they take into account when they select their strategies, and what explains the effects of entrepreneurial activity on the emergence of innovations in climate governance. All contributions to this special issue engage with one or several of these conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges, thus advancing the state of art in the field. Highlights from the special issue include the development of a simple conceptual frame that connects actors, contexts, strategies, and outcomes in a systematic way. Some promising methodological avenues are described, since the special issue contains not only some qualitative case studies but also some studies that take a long-term perspective by following policy development for decades, and a study that proposes a census approach. Empirically, the contributions in this special issue shed light on a range of factors explaining levels of entrepreneurial activity, and they carefully trace impacts over time. We conclude by sketching an agenda for further work in this realm.

     

Distant agricultural landscapes

This paper examines the relationship between the development of the dominant industrial food system and its associated global economic drivers and the environmental sustainability of agricultural landscapes. It makes the case that the growth of the global industrial food system has encouraged increasingly complex forms of “distance” that separate food both geographically and mentally from the landscapes on which it was produced. This separation between food and its originating landscape poses challenges for the ability of more localized agricultural sustainability initiatives to address some of the broader problems in the global food system. In particular, distance enables certain powerful actors to externalize ecological and social costs, which in turn makes it difficult to link specific global actors to particular biophysical and social impacts felt on local agricultural landscapes. Feedback mechanisms that normally would provide pressure for improved agricultural sustainability are weak because there is a lack of clarity regarding responsibility for outcomes. The paper provides a brief illustration of these dynamics with a closer look at increased financialization in the food system. It shows that new forms of distancing are encouraged by the growing significance of financial markets in global agrifood value chains. This dynamic has a substantial impact on food system outcomes and ultimately complicates efforts to scale up small-scale local agricultural models that are more sustainable.     

Advancing sustainability science: report on the International Conference on Sustainability Science (ICSS) 2009

As a new discipline, sustainability science poses a challenge to researchers focused on issues in sustainable development world wide. Although definitions vary, three characteristics appear to be fundamental: sustainability science is transdisciplinary, provides integrated analysis, and is aimed at action. There is clearly a need for such a science to address complex contemporary issues. Yet the question remains how to go about advancing this new integrated approach. The ICSS2009 conference was organized to address this question. This article, based on the conference report, provides a summary of the deliberations and highlights recommendations to advance this new science including creation of a global network of networks in sustainability science.     

Quality criteria for visions and visioning in sustainability science

Envisioning how a desirable future might look is a long-standing effort in human evolution and social change. Utopian thought and visions provide direction for actions and behavior; more so, they create identity and community. Accordingly, the discourse on sustainability and sustainable development has recognized that positive visions about our societies’ future are an influential, if not indispensable, stimulus for change. Visioning is, thus, considered a key method in sustainability research and problem solving, for instance, in transformational sustainability science or in planning for urban sustainability. Yet, quality criteria for sustainability visions and guidelines on how to rigorously craft such visions are scattered over different strands of the literature and some are insufficiently developed. The goal of this article is to review and synthesize such quality criteria and design guidelines to inform sustainability visioning methodology. The review provides a concise reference framework for sustainability students, researchers, and professionals on how to enhance their sustainability visioning practices.