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"Sustainability science"
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Science and sustainability : learning from indigenous wisdom
\"This book is about indigenous science: sustainable knowledge and practice of Indigenous peoples around the world which has usually been developed and handed down for generations, but which was often largely ignored by settlers in their lands. Such science has been passed on in performance, art, stories, and in embodied practice, so the book will necessarily examine the meaning of science, problematizing the idea that Western science is the only type that deserves that name, and drawing attention to some of its shortcomings. Methods of acquiring \"science\" are also examined, notably including a personal account of the author's dissatisfaction with her own undergraduate training, and a realization much later of the reasons for this disillusionment. Throughout the book, the author takes the reader with her on the learning process that brought its content to her attention, and therefore introduces the reasons for wanting to share the examples gathered\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A feminist ethos for caring knowledge production in transdisciplinary sustainability science
Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science has emerged as a viable answer to current sustainability crises with the aim to strengthen collaborative knowledge production. To expand its transformative potential, we argue that Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science needs to thoroughly engage with questions of unequal power relations and hierarchical scientific constructs. Drawing on the work of the feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine a feminist ethos of care which might provide useful guidance for sustainability researchers who are interested in generating critical-emancipatory knowledge. A feminist ethos of care is constituted by three interrelated modes of knowledge production: (1) thinking-with, (2) dissenting-within and (3) thinking-for. These modes of thinking and knowing enrich knowledge co-production in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science by (i) embracing relational ontologies, (ii) relating to the ‘other than human’, (iii) cultivating caring academic cultures, (iv) taking care of non-academic research partners, (v) engaging with conflict and difference, (vi) interrogating positionalities and power relations through reflexivity, (vii) building upon marginalised knowledges via feminist standpoints and (viii) countering epistemic violence within and beyond academia. With our paper, we aim to make a specific feminist contribution to the field of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science and emphasise its potentials to advance this field.
Journal Article
Pursuing sustainability : a guide to the science and practice
\"Sustainability is a global imperative and a scientific challenge like no other. This concise guide provides students and practitioners with a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable development, and serves as an invaluable companion to more narrowly focused courses dealing with sustainability in particular sectors such as energy, food, water, and housing, or in particular regions of the world. Written by leading experts, Pursuing Sustainability shows how more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives can help you achieve your sustainability objectives. It stresses the need for understanding how capital assets are linked to sustainability goals through the complex adaptive dynamics of social-environmental systems, how committed people can use governance processes to alter those dynamics, and how successful interventions can be shaped through collaborations among researchers and practitioners on the ground. The ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students and an invaluable resource for anyone working in this fast-growing field, Pursuing Sustainability also features case studies, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading. Provides a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action Draws on the latest cutting-edge science and practices. Serves as the ideal companion text to more narrowly focused courses. Utilizes interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives. Illustrates concepts with a core set of case studies used throughout the book. Written by world authorities on sustainability. An online illustration package is available to professors\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins
The three-pillar conception of (social, economic and environmental) sustainability, commonly represented by three intersecting circles with overall sustainability at the centre, has become ubiquitous. With a view of identifying the genesis and theoretical foundations of this conception, this paper reviews and discusses relevant historical sustainability literature. From this we find that there is no single point of origin of this three-pillar conception, but rather a gradual emergence from various critiques in the early academic literature of the economic status quo from both social and ecological perspectives on the one hand, and the quest to reconcile economic growth as a solution to social and ecological problems on the part of the United Nations on the other. The popular three circles diagram appears to have been first presented by Barbier (Environ Conserv 14:101, doi: 10.1017/s0376892900011449, 1987), albeit purposed towards developing nations with foci which differ from modern interpretations. The conceptualisation of three pillars seems to predate this, however. Nowhere have we found a theoretically rigorous description of the three pillars. This is thought to be in part due to the nature of the sustainability discourse arising from broadly different schools of thought historically. The absence of such a theoretically solid conception frustrates approaches towards a theoretically rigorous operationalisation of ‘sustainability’.
Journal Article
Design as future-making
\"Design as Future-Making is a collection of essays by an international roster of leading designers and theorists who share a new understanding of design as a socio-material practice embedded within a multiplicity of ways of making the world.Issues such as social justice, environmental health, political agency, education, and even the right to pleasure and play, are customarily thought of as dematerialised ideas and values. Yet, each of those realms of daily life are affected by - indeed, determined by - their physical and virtual contexts. Design as Future-Making argues that design is not only integral to social issues, but it is also an integrated mode of thought and action - one that variously draws on and informs disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, and psychology\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Landscape sustainability science: ecosystem services and human well-being in changing landscapes
The future of humanity depends on whether or not we have a vision to guide our transition toward sustainability, on scales ranging from local landscapes to the planet as a whole. Sustainability science is at the core of this vision, and landscapes and regions represent a pivotal scale domain. The main objectives of this paper are: (1) to elucidate key definitions and concepts of sustainability, including the Brundtland definition, the triple bottom line, weak and strong sustainability, resilience, human well-being, and ecosystem services; (2) to examine key definitions and concepts of landscape sustainability, including those derived from general concepts and those developed for specific landscapes; and (3) to propose a framework for developing a science of landscape sustainability. Landscape sustainability is defined as the capacity of a landscape to consistently provide long-term, landscape-specific ecosystem services essential for maintaining and improving human well-being. Fundamentally, well-being is a journey, not a destination. Landscape sustainability science is a place-based, use-inspired science of understanding and improving the dynamic relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being in changing landscapes under uncertainties arising from internal feedbacks and external disturbances. While landscape sustainability science emphasizes place-based research on landscape and regional scales, significant between landscape interactions and hierarchical linkages to both finer and broader scales (or externalities) must not be ignored. To advance landscape sustainability science, spatially explicit methods are essential, especially experimental approaches that take advantage of designed landscapes and multi-scaled simulation models that couple the dynamics of landscape services (ecosystem services provided by multiple landscape elements in combination as emergent properties) and human well-being.
Journal Article
Smart cities : governing, modelling, and analysing the transition
\"Smart city development has emerged a major issue over the past 5 years. Since the launch of IBM's Smart Planet and CISCO's Smart Cities and Communities programmes, their potential to deliver on global sustainable development targets have captured the public's attention. However, despite this growing interest in the development of smart cities, little has as yet been published that either sets out the state-of-the-art, or which offers a less than subjective, arm's length and dispassionate account of their potential contribution. This book brings together cutting edge research and the findings from technical development projects from leading authorities within the field to capture the transition to smart cities. It explores what is understood about smart cities, playing particular attention on the governance, modelling and analysis of the transition that smart cities seek to represent. In paving the way for such a representation, the book begins to account for the social capital of smart communities and begins the task of modelling their embedded intelligence through an analysis of what the \"embedded intelligence of smart cities\" contributes to the sustainability of urban development.This innovative book offers an interdisciplinary perspective and shall be of interest to researchers, policy analysts and technical experts involved in and responsible for the planning, development and design of smart cities. It will also be of particular value to final year undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in Geography, Architecture and Planning\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Landscape sustainability science (II): core questions and key approaches
ContextA background assumption of landscape approaches is that some landscape patterns are more sustainable than others, and thus searching for these patterns should be a unifying theme for all landscape-related studies. We know much about biodiversity, ecosystems, and human wellbeing in our landscapes, but much less about how their interactions influence, and are influenced by, landscape patterns. To help fill this knowledge gap, landscape sustainability science (LSS) has emerged. However, the core research questions and key approaches of this new field still need to be systematically articulated.ObjectivesThe main objectives of this paper were: (1) to propose a set of core research questions for LSS, and (2) to identify key cross-disciplinary approaches that can help address these questions.MethodsI took a qualitative and subjective approach to review and synthesize the literature relevant to landscape sustainability, based on which I developed core questions and identified key cross-disciplinary approaches.ResultsEight core questions were proposed to focus on understanding the relationships among landscape pattern, biodiversity, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, and human wellbeing, assessing the impacts of environmental and socio-institutional changes on these relationships, and fusing knowledge and action through landscape design/planning and governance processes. Ten inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches were identified, and their key characteristics were discussed in relation to landscape sustainability.ConclusionsLSS has emerged as an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research field that aims to understand and improve sustainability by focusing on landscape scales, while considering local and global scales in the same time. To advance LSS, future research not only needs to emphasize the relationships among landscape pattern, ecosystem services, and human wellbeing, but also to proactively integrate complementary approaches across natural and social sciences. Landscape sustainability is inevitably connected to the broader regional and global context; but if global sustainability is to be achieved, our landscapes must be sustained first. It is not the other way around.
Journal Article
Citymakers : the culture and craft of practical urbanism
\"Drawing on six years as the editor of Urban Omnibus, one of the leading publications charting innovations in urban practice, Shepard explores a broad variety of projects in New York, a city at the forefront of experimental and practical research: a constructed wetland in Staten Island, a workforce development and technology program in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a public art installation in a Bronx housing project, a housing advocacy initiative in Jackson Heights, Queens. These and a wide variety of other examples in Citymakers comprise a cross-disciplinary, from-the-ground-up approach that encourage better choices for cities of the future\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Prioritising SDG targets: assessing baselines, gaps and interlinkages
The sustainable development goals (SDGs) provide an integrated, evidence-based framework of targets and indicators to support national planning and reporting. For countries to begin implementation of the SDGs, it is critical to build the evidence base for action. The integrated nature of the SDG targets mean that progress towards one target is also linked through complex feedbacks to other targets, placing demands on science and research to support national implementation. A range of different tools and approaches are recommended by experts, and an emerging challenge is to coherently apply and combine these different approaches to support decision-making. This study makes a significant contribution to filling this knowledge gap, adopting a novel integrated assessment approach to support the prioritisation of SDG targets through a case study for 22 countries in the Arab region. The research adopts a multi-criteria analysis decision framework which assesses and prioritises SDG targets based upon their ‘level of urgency’, ‘systemic impact’, and ‘policy gap’. A range of complementary evidence- and science-based approaches are applied within the assessment framework, including baseline assessment and benchmarking of indicators, systems and network analysis of target interlinkages, and mapping of policy alignment and gaps. The study highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each of these analytical approaches, and demonstrates how they can be rapidly combined and applied.
Journal Article