Educational initiative of Osaka University in sustainability science: mobilizing science and technology towards sustainability

One of the most important and yet difficult challenges that modern societies face is how to mobilize science and technology (S&T) to minimize the impact of human activities on the Earth’s life support systems. As the establishment of inter-disciplinary education programs is necessary to design a unified vision towards understanding the complexity of human nature, the Research Institute for Sustainability Science (RISS) launched a new program on sustainability science in April 2008. The program expects to address the issue of how to use knowledge more effectively to understand the dynamic interactions between nature and human society. This paper first offers an overview of international and Japanese initiatives on sustainability education in which we highlight the uniqueness of the attempt by the Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S). The paper then introduces the RISS program for sustainability science, addressing the principles and curriculum design of the program. The paper discusses the main problems and constraints faced when developing the program, such as institutional barriers in building a curriculum and obtaining cooperation from faculty. To challenge these barriers and limitations, the RISS uses the program as a platform to disseminate the idea of sustainability science across the university. This attempt helps us to obtain the continuing cooperation necessary to improve and maintain the program.

Rethinking assessment of drought impacts: a systemic approach towards sustainability

Although impacting primarily economic sectors, droughts may also initiate dynamic mechanisms that have socio-environmental consequences on sustainability of the impacted areas. To date, most research has dealt with the economic impacts of droughts, with minimal attention being paid to the dynamics of damaging mechanisms associated with socio-environmental impacts. Using a systemic approach, this paper develops a method of identifying the dynamic structures responsible for the consequences of drought. Considering the impacts of recent droughts in Iran, the paper presents a conceptual model, underpinned by a Limits to Growth archetype to explain how different drought impacts are triggered. Moreover, adopting the Viability Loops concept, a range of strategies and indices are suggested as monitoring tools to sustain socio-economic life in a drought-impacted area. The provinces of Hamadan (with water abundance), and Yazd and Isfahan (with water scarcity) in Iran have been selected to illustrate the proposed methodology. Results show a higher vulnerability to droughts in the water-rich region due to dependence on water abundance as opposed to the water-poor regions, which are well adapted to water scarcity conditions.     

Design concept for an ecological relaxing textile product using solar energy

We can enhance our quality of life and reduce environmental impacts by making improvements in textile product design. By thinking about the environment when we design, choose and use technology, we can play an important part in building a better world for the future. If we are going to live in a sustainable way, the technology that we use has to be sustainable.

This paper provides an insight into how the design of textile products could provide for a more sustainable future. It describes a design concept for an ecological relaxing textile that uses photovoltaic cells to collect and store solar energy and to power an electronic relaxing system. This design may help improve our quality of life now and in the future.

The raw materials and processes, the electronic devices and the dimensions of solar energy for this application are analysed from an environmental perspective. The solar relaxing textile can facilitate our daily life by providing increased comfort and well being, and also acts as an indirect message to use renewable energy within textile support, in order to preserve our ecology.     

Visioneering: an essential framework in sustainability science

The science of sustainability has inevitably emerged as a vibrant field of research and education that transcends disciplinary boundaries and focuses increasingly on understanding the dynamics of social-ecological systems (SES). Yet, sustainability remains an elusive concept, and its nature seems unclear for the most part. In order to truly mobilize people and nations towards sustainability, we place emphasis on the necessity of understanding the nature, cost and principles of ‘visioneering’—the engineering of a clear vision. In SES, purpose is the most important pillar, which gives birth to vision—the key to fulfilling the systems’ mission. Such a systems perspective leads us to redefine resilience as jumping back to the original purpose, for which SES do not necessarily retain the same structures and functioning after disturbances. A sustainable future will require purpose-driven transformation of society at all scales, guided by the best foresight, with insight based on hindsight that science can provide. Visioneering with resilience-based systems thinking will provide communities with a logical framework for understanding their interconnections and purposes, envisioning a sustainable web of life, and eventually dancing with the systems.     

New frontiers for sustainability: emergy evaluation of an eco-village

The emergy analysis was used to evaluate the sustainability of a village which aims to be ecologically friendly. The choice of focusing on the use of local resources including agriculture and farm goods, photovoltaic panels, renewable heating and cooling systems, recycled water from constructed wetlands etc., aims to obtain a sustainable village. Indices and ratios based on emergy flows have been calculated and used to evaluate the behaviour of the whole system. Their dependence upon the fraction of renewable and non renewable inputs as well as locally available versus purchased inputs from outside is stressed. A new index of sustainability (SI) is also applied to the case study. Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

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.     

Fisheries sustainability assessment and sensitivity analysis: an illustration

Using a modified Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) framework, this paper assesses progress towards sustainability over time with a case study of the demersal trawl fishery of Oman, which has been transformed and turned into the coastal fishery after the trawl ban. A multi-criteria decision analysis method is used for ranking the years and deciding on the best performing year under five alternative scenarios related to the core components involving humans and the environment. Under the environment component, the year 2001 stood out as the best across all scenarios. The combined results also echoed the same in four out of five scenarios. With reference to progress towards sustainability during the study period, no clear positive year-to-year trend was observed from the overall results. The analysis of the S2 scenario revealed that the closed fishing season during 1998–2001 yielded a positive spill-over effect on the local economy. The results from a comparative analysis indicated that the strengths (weaknesses) of the year 2001 were predominantly associated with the environment (human) component, and thereby, reflecting a comparatively higher conservation outcome in the year 2001. The findings from the comparative analysis would guide fishery managers in designing appropriate strategies for improving weaknesses of the preferred option and reducing the inter-scenario risk by combining positive features of the second-best option. The framework outlined in the present paper can be used to guide the sustainability assessment of other local fisheries (for instance, the lobster, abalone, and shrimp fisheries) including the recently developed coastal fishery.

     

Evidence for the prevalence of the sustainability concept in European corporate responsibility reporting

This paper empirically examines the terminology used in the titles of corporate social responsibility (CSR)/sustainability reports in Europe. Our data supports the claim of the rise of the sustainability concept in corporate communication in comparison to other concepts. In detail this research analysed CSR/sustainability reports to support Matten and Moon’s [Acad Manage Rev 33(2):404–424, 2008] hypothesis regarding a recent European trend towards a more voluntary and explicit CSR practice. The second and main objective of the research was to describe statistically significant trends in the use of terms and concepts in CSR/sustainability reporting to better understand how European companies interpret CSR and sustainability and how they communicate it to their stakeholders. To this end, a content analysis was conducted on 329 CSR/sustainability reports from 50 leading European companies from Euro Stoxx 50 that were published between the beginning of online CSR/sustainability reporting in 1998 and 2010. Our data analysis clearly indicates that the use of social and environment-related terms occurred more frequently in the past and demonstrates the establishment of sustainability in corporate non-financial reporting. Based on the results of our empirical research, the final discussion explores the development and diffusion of the sustainability concept in both the academic and business fields and examines economic, environmental, and social implications. Different propositions are presented to explain the recent rise of the sustainability concept in European CSR/sustainability reporting, adding to the formation of sustainability as a concept and as a science.     

Creating an academic landscape of sustainability science: an analysis of the citation network

Sustainability is an important concept for society, economics, and the environment, with thousands of research papers published on the subject annually. As sustainability science becomes a distinctive research field, it is important to define sustainability clearly and grasp the entire structure, current status, and future directions of sustainability science. This paper provides an academic landscape of sustainability science by analyzing the citation network of papers published in academic journals. A topological clustering method is used to detect the sub-domains of sustainability science. Results show the existence of 15 main research clusters: Agriculture, Fisheries, Ecological Economics, Forestry (agroforestry), Forestry (tropical rain forest), Business, Tourism, Water, Forestry (biodiversity), Urban Planning, Rural Sociology, Energy, Health, Soil, and Wildlife. Agriculture, Fisheries, Ecological Economics, and Forestry (agroforestry) clusters are predominant among these. The Energy cluster is currently developing, as indicated by the age of papers in the cluster, although it has a relatively small number of papers. These results are compared with those obtained by natural language processing. Education, Biotechnology, Medical, Livestock, Climate Change, Welfare, and Livelihood clusters are uniquely extracted by natural language processing, because they are common topics across clusters in the citation network.     

Soil degradation and agricultural sustainability: an overview from Iran

During the past six decades, agriculture as a main sector in Iran’s economy has been affected by economic development, land-use policies, and population growth and its pressures. From the 1940s until 2010, the percentage of the total urban population of Iran increased from about 21?% to around 72?%. Urbanization, industrialization, and intensive cultivation have dramatically affected soil and water resources. The exploitation of groundwater has been increased around fourfold from the 1970s to the mid-2000s. Total water resources per capita reduced around 23?% from 1956 to 2008. The average annual decrease in the groundwater table in Iran during the last two decades is 0.51?m. In 2008, the groundwater table fell around ?1.14?m in average in Iran. The average use of chemical fertilizers increased from around 2.1?million tons in 1990s to about 3.7?million tons in 2009. During that period, fertilizer use efficiency decreased from around 28?% to around 21?%. Approximately 77?% of the agricultural land under irrigation suffers from different levels of salinity. According to the quantification of four indices, such as soil erosion, fall in groundwater levels, salinity, and use of chemical fertilizer, that are directly related to agricultural land use, the results show that agricultural management in Iran needs special attention to reach sustainable conditions. The total cost of soil and water degradation and use of fertilizers in agriculture are estimated around than US $12.8?billion (about 157,000?billion IRRials)—approximately 4?% of the total gross domestic product (GDP) and approximately 35?% of the GDP of the agricultural sector in Iran.     

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.     

First steps towards a European atlas of natural radiation: status of the European indoor radon map

Within the context of its institutional scientific support to the European Commission, in 2005 the Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) group at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, started to explore the possibility of mapping indoor radon in European houses as a first step towards preparing a European Atlas of Natural Radiations. The main objective of such an atlas is to contribute to familiarizing the public with its naturally radioactive environment. The process of preparing the atlas should also provide the scientific community with a database of information that can be used for further studies and for highlighting regions with elevated levels of natural radiation. This document presents the status of the European indoor radon (Rn) map, first statistical results, and outlines of forthcoming challenges.     

The positive psychology of sustainability

As in most areas of psychology, a negative bias permeates the study of the subject of Conservation Psychology: sustainable behavior (SB). SB constitutes the set of actions aimed at protecting the socio-physical environment. This behavior is sometimes addressed as having negative antecedent-instigators (fear, guilt, shame), activated to avoid undesirable outcomes from environmental degradation. Also, psycho-environmental researchers often visualize negative psychological consequences (discomfort, inconvenience, sacrifice) of SB. Yet, a number of studies reveal that positive psychological antecedents (capacities, emotions, virtues and strengths) as well as positive psychological consequences (satisfaction, psychological well-being, and happiness) of SB are also significant determinants of pro-environmental actions. In this paper, I argue that SB is positive behavior originated by positive dispositional factors, and maintained by psychological benefits. By combining the emergent fields of positive psychology and the psychology of sustainability, an alternative approach for the study of the positive psychology of sustainable behavior is outlined.     

The disappearing sustainability triangle: community level considerations

This article challenges the application of the sustainability triangle to conceptualise sustainable development by looking at how weak sustainability can be obtained via the reinforcing increase in social capital and natural capital. Sustainable development is often visualised as a triangle consisting of social, environmental, and economic aspects. Would it be possible to conceive a flattened system, with diminishing economic resources or without refilling financial resources? The possibility involves mutual reinforcement between social capital and natural capital. The consideration of the diminishing economic dimension relates to the concept of development without economic growth, such as degrowth, zero-growth, and sustainable growth, that has been revived in the face of the recent economic crisis. Several countries have imposed extreme budget cuts in development collaboration and in other government expenditures. When the economic resource is not at a satisfactory level, can we rely on the reinforcement between social and environmental aspects for sustainability? Although it is not new to acknowledge the contribution of social capital to environmental conservation, research has long ignored the reinforcing relationship between environmental and social dimensions. This article provides a prototype model to demonstrate how social capital and natural capital can reinforce each other. The prototype is studied and verified at the community level using a comparative method. This article concludes with principles and practices that may encourage sustainability with merely the reinforcement between social capital and natural capital.     

The sustainability of positive environments

Inspired by the emergence of the positive psychology (PP) movement, recent environmental psychology studies have identified a need for further inquiry into “positive environments” (PEs). Recognizing that PP has largely neglected the role of environmental factors in the appearance of positivity, this paper proposes the study of person–environment relations in order to explain human well-being, psychological growth, sustainable behaviors, and other psychological positive factors, in addition to studying the material and social well-being that a positive environment provides. The traditional view of environmental positivity (i.e., the environment as an inexhaustible and infinite source of resources that satisfy human needs) is contrasted against an ecological vision of PE in which the conservation of the quality of the environment is as important as the satisfaction of human needs. A definition of positive environment is presented and discussed, which conceives PE as a context that promotes individual and collective benefits and that also influences human predispositions to conserve—in the long run—the sociophysical structures on which life depends.