Social economic environmental research in Austria

Abstract

Overall the results of this paper show that social economic environmental research in Austria is an area undergoing a highly dynamic development. Scientific potential and resources are expanding substantially and an emerging trend towards scientific co-operation can be noticed. This is all the more astonishing since the scientific community in this field is still fledgling and most researchers active in the area think of themselves less as members of a ‘new’ community of scientists than as being on the fringes of traditional research areas. The most obvious result is the ‘typical Austrian’ method of social economic environmental research: regional approaches and strategies. Research into the regional context, its structures and forms, potentials and possibilities, bottlenecks etc forms a main focus of Austrian research activities in this area. Austria's scientists see these topics as interesting from the research point of view as well as constituting an efficient and concrete contribution to sustainable development itself. The characteristic of this method is the emphasis on the holistic approach concerning content and methodology of research as well as in the proposed solutions to problems. Purely technological solutions are seen as less important than organizational and participatory solutions. This focus, however, has to be seen against the background of an already very active research in the technological sector that is of importance to sustainable development. Austria commands a prominent role in research on biomass utilization, alternative energy supply and biologic–dynamic agriculture. These fields add to the attraction of Austrian research on sustainable development. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.