Reconstructing Sustainability Science

Knowledge and action for a sustainable future

Thaddeus R. Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135960179
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Economía del desarrollo

The growing urgency, complexity and "wickedness" of sustainability problems—from climate change and biodiversity loss to ecosystem degradation and persistent poverty and inequality—present fundamental challenges to scientific knowledge production and its use. While there is little doubt that science has a crucial role to play in our ability to pursue sustainability goals, critical questions remain as to how to most effectively organize research and connect it to actions that advance social and natural wellbeing.

Drawing on interviews with leading sustainability scientists, this book examines how researchers in the emerging, interdisciplinary field of sustainability science are attempting to define sustainability, establish research agendas, and link the knowledge they produce to societal action. Pairing these insights with case studies of innovative sustainability research centres, the book reformulates the sustainability science research agenda and its relationship to decision-making and social action. It repositions the field as a "science of design" that aims to enrich public reasoning and deliberation while also working to generate social and technological innovations for a more sustainable future.

This timely book gives students, researchers and practitioners a valuable and unique analysis of the emergence of sustainability science, and both the opportunities and barriers faced by scientific efforts to contribute to social action.

PART I

Constructing sustainability science

1

PLANET UNDER PRESSURE

In the spring of 2012, during a run of unseasonably warm weather, 3,000 scientific experts and decision makers gathered in London at the ‘Planet under Pressure: New Knowledge towards Solutions’ conference. Convened by the Global Environmental Change Programmes and the International Council for Science, the goal of the conference was ‘to assess the state of the planet and explore solutions to impending global crises’ (Brito and Smith 2012: 1). ‘Planet under Pressure’ was timed to deliver a powerful message to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, to be held that summer. The ‘State of the Planet Declaration’, summarizing the key messages from the proceedings, was issued at the conference. The declaration provided a clear and urgent call to global action to meet the world’s sustainability challenges. New scientific understandings of the Earth system, it declares, ‘demand a new perception of responsibilities and accountabilities of nation states to support planetary stewardship’ (ibid.: 2). Recent research and the large-scale action required by society, urge the authors of the declaration, require drastic changes in political and scientific organization:

The scientific community must rapidly reorganize to focus on global sustainability solutions. We must develop a new strategy for creating and rapidly translating knowledge into action, which will form part of a new contract between science and society, with commitments from both sides

(ibid.: 4).

I begin with this brief dispatch from London to illustrate the ways in which scientific discourse and knowledge claims, particularly around sustainability concerns, are intertwined with socio-political and normative claims and visions of social, political and ecological order. This gathering of scientific delegates sought to bring the power of scientific knowledge to bear on the social and political barriers to achieving sustainability. Insights provided by scientific knowledge, according to the Declaration, are a cause to reconsider our ethical and moral positions. In this case, a call for ‘planetary stewardship’ that requires radical changes to social and political organization to be put into practice. Both normative claims about what we ought to value and how, and visions of social and political order – ‘interconnected problems require interconnected solutions’ (ibid.: 2) – are positioned as stemming from insights gained through acquisition of scientific knowledge.

The Declaration contends that financial and political support for a reorganization of scientific research are necessary. Knowledge must be more rapidly generated and translated to social and political action. This requires a focus on solutions to global sustainability by scientists. They cite the International Council for Science Future Earth research initiative, which will ‘develop the knowledge… for supporting transformation toward global sustainability’ (Future Earth 2013), as the type of support and organization that is needed. Global sustainability challenges, then, should drive changes in research organization and priorities and to the more effective use of scientific knowledge.

Scientific discourse and knowledge making are inextricably linked to visions of social, political and ecological order (Jasanoff 2010; Latour 1988). The State of the Planet Declaration and the proceedings of the ‘Planet under Pressure’ conference demonstrate how knowledge claims about the sustainability of interconnected, socio-ecological systems are also claims to the proper social, political and scientific organization that is necessary to promote sustainability. These knowledge claims are also claims to norms and values that ought to be pursued and upheld. This relationship between science and society is not unique to the sustainability arena and has been explored extensively by science and technology studies (STS) scholars (e.g. Jasanoff 2005; Latour 2004; Shapin and Schaffer 1985). Science produces beliefs not only about how the world is, but also how it ought to be (Jasanoff 2004; Latour 1993). As scientists describe social or ecological dynamics, they influence beliefs about what dynamics are sustainable – what society ought to do in order to be sustainable. Scientists attempt to respond to social and environmental concerns by researching problems identified by society as important. How sustainability science influences the social, political and normative dimensions of sustainability may render the concept of sustainability and the problems it encapsulates more or less tractable in terms of social action.

Sustainability challenges are reshaping scientific research and education at multiple scales, yet global science and policy organizations and national and regional research and education institutions are ill-equipped to deal with integrative knowledge generation and the management of complex science – policy interfaces (Crow 2007; Reid et al. 2010; Miller et al. 2011). From well-established disciplines such as ecology and geography to emerging, interdisciplinary fields such as earth systems science and sustainability science, scientists are moving to find ways to contribute more directly to the resolution of society’s most pressing problems (Lubchenco 1998; NRC 1999). Central to these efforts is the following question: How can science and technology inform and foster social action for sustainability? Or, put slightly differently, how is scientific knowledge to be connected to actions and decision making that advance our visions of natural and social well-being?

This question has spawned a variety of efforts by members of the scientific community to contribute to the resolution of pressing social and environmental problems (Lubchenco 1998; NRC 1999; Palmer et al. 2005; Reid et al. 2010). Perhaps the most prominent and wide-ranging of these efforts, and the one that this book will focus on, has been sustainability science – an interdisciplinary, problem-driven field that addresses fundamental questions on human – environment interactions (Clark 2007; Clark and Dickson 2003; Kates et al. 2001; Levin and Clark 2010). Sustainability scientists aim to support sustainability transitions by linking scientific knowledge to societal action (Cash et al. 2003; Clark and Dickson 2003). The field is both problem-oriented and ‘focus[ed]… on understanding the complex dynamics that arise from interactions between human and environmental systems’ (Clark 2007: 1737). Carpenter et al. (2009: 1305) note that sustainability science ‘is motivated by fundamental questions about interactions of nature and society as well as compelling and urgent social needs.’ They define progress in sustainability science as those areas where ‘scientific inquiry and practical application are comingled.’ Carpenter et al. (2009) go on to stress ‘the urgency and importance of an accelerated effort to understand the dynamics of coupled human – natural systems.’ This argument is representative of a major theme in sustainability science: The fundamental understanding of the dynamics of human – environment interactions (e.g. Turner et al. 2003a, b).

Sustainability and scientific efforts to contribute to it are rich territory for analyzing the complex interplay between science and society and examining how scientists are responding to twenty-first century sustainability challenges. This analysis, then, will provide insight into how to develop a more effective role for science in pursuing sustainability goals. Utilizing theories and insights from STS, this book explores the construction of a new, and to some, radically interdisciplinary, use-inspired field of scientific research – sustainability science. Sustainability science provides an important window through which to examine how scientific knowledge production – its organization and institutions – are being (re)shaped to respond to complex, urgent and value-laden problems related to sustainability. Through interviews and discourse analysis, I explore how sustainability scientists perform boundary work (Gieryn 1983), establishing credibility and epistemic claims and demarcating areas of normative and socio-political concern. This will contribute to STS analyses of the relationship between science and society as well as inform developments in sustainability science and allied fields. In so doing, the purpose is not to simply critique sustainability science, but to lay the foundation for a deeper dialogue amongst sustainability scientists, decision makers and other concerned stakeholders over the role of science in sustainability and future directions for the field.

This book will also explore the implications of transforming the contested and value-laden concept of sustainability into the subject of fundamental scientific analysis. Sustainability can act as a platform for communities to articulate visions of social and natural well-being, including responsibilities to nature and future generations (Norton 2005; Thompson 2010). In its broadest sense, one can view sustainability as an effort to formulate visions of the collective good. Science has, on one hand, brought many environmental problems to the world’s attention, including ozone depletion, acid rain and climate change, which have in turn become the subject of normative and political concern. On the other hand, in offering objective and epistemically powerful explanations of natural phenomena, science can also constrain what is considered appropriate, legitimate or necessary discourse and debate. Exploring these issues, this work will contribute to our understanding of the complex relationship between science and the normative dimensions of sustainability and point to areas where dialogue may be ‘opened up’ to allow for discussion of alternative pathways to and meanings of sustainability (Stirling 2008).

Finally, I will explore the following question: How can science shift from identifying and describing problems in the biophysical realm to contributing to potential solutions in the social and political realm? It is this issue as well as the nature of sustainability problems as complex and contested that challenges the practice of sustainability science and its usefulness. In Part II, I develop a framework that pushes sustainability science toward focusing on the study and design of solutions, rather than the identification of problems. This is a new, explicitly normative vision of sustainability science that, I argue, will be more effective in advancing visions of natural and social well-being.

Before reviewing the structure of the book, I briefly discuss how the wickedness of sustainability problems presents specific challenges to the production and utilization of scientific knowledge, and how this analysis can provide an opportunity for sustainability science to address these challenges more effectively.

Wicked sustainability

Sustainability issues are often wicked – that is, they are problems the solutions to which are not obvious, wherein complexity is high, uncertainty is rampant, values are in dispute and trade-offs are the norm (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993; Miller et al. 2011; Rittel and Webber 1973). Many of the problems that fall under the rubric of sustainability – ensuring adequate access to clean water supplies, developing alternative energy systems, evaluating intergenerational trade-offs in natural resource use, and advancing solutions to widespread poverty – not only are difficult to define but rarely yield to simple, one-time solutions. As the coiners of the term, Rittel and Webber (1973: 161) note: ‘The formulation of a wicked problem is the problem! The process of formulating the problem and of conceiving a solution (or re-solution) are identical, since every specification of the problem is a specification of the direction in which a treatment is considered.’¹ Tame or benign problems, on the other hand, are those in which the goal is clear and it is easy to determine whether the problem has been solved (Norton 2005; Rittel and Webber 1973). Often, as we will see below, tame problems may be amenable to scientific or technological fixes.

Wicked problems are not just empirically challenging, they are linked to normative criteria (Fischer 2000; Hoppe and Peterse 1993). A central characteristic of such problems is that they are defined by value pluralism and that these values are highly contested. Consensus over problem definitions or the identification of solutions is very difficult. In the case of tame or benign problems, convergence on policy and technical solutions is possible in part because the proposed solutions can satisfy multiple value positions (at least for a time). In other words, wicked problems are just as political as they are scientific or technical. In order to understand such problems conceptually, we must consider how scientific or technical inputs allow for or impede the convergence of divergent and conflicting values on pathways that lead to resolution, even if it is momentary or unstable.

Richard Nelson’s (1977) moon and the ghetto metaphor highlights why distinguishing between tame and wicked problems is critical. Though technologically complicated, landing on the moon is a relatively tame problem. The mission is straightforward and it is clear when the objective has been achieved. It is a matter of economic investment and technological capability. Success here is a testament to the capacities of science and technology to solve such problems. When there is broad agreement on the nature of the problem and what will comprise a satisfactory solution, science and technology can be powerful tools to inform our decisions and generate action (Allenby and Sarewitz 2011).

Nelson then asks, ‘[i]f we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we solve the problems of the ghetto?’ The problems of the ghetto are difficult to define and rarely give way to scientific or technological applications. How can we provide decent and affordable health care? How can high school graduation rates be improved? Addressing these issues is infinitely more complex. The solutions to such problems are often highly contextual and contingent on social, cultural, political and economic factors. In order to understand how science and technology might contribute to sustainability, scientists, engineers, practitioners and decision makers would do well to consider the degree to which a given problem is more like the moon or the ghetto – that is, is it amenable to a technological solution or does the problem lie in socio-political complexity? If the latter, are there elements of the issue that might be clarified with additional scientific knowledge?

This should not, however, be taken to mean that technological solutions are always overly simplistic or insufficient since they are perceived...