Abstract
At the very moment that humanity is facing a broadening ecological crisis, and that both policy makers and civil society are calling for a transition towards more sustainable societies, modern science seems incapable of providing operational solutions for managing this transition. In this context, both Noble prize laureates and high-level science officials have stressed the need of an in depth transformation of the modes of organization of scientific research for governing the transition to sustainable societies. However, existing analyses of on-going initiatives show that most of the barriers to a major, consolidated effort in sustainability science will not be removed without far-reaching institutional change. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an incremental institutional change approach, based on a gradual institutionalization process of existing initiatives. The analysis in this paper shows that strategic research for sustainability and reform of research funding mechanisms will only be effective if they are supported at the same time by reforms of career and training paths at higher education institutions. To promote this vision, the paper proposes a set of capacity building measures that can be undertaken at the level of research funding, higher education institutions and networking.
Highlights
Research over the last two decades has shown that human influences on global life-support systems have reached a magnitude unprecedented in human history [1]
By depleting the world‘s stock of natural wealth on a global scale—often irreversibly—the prevailing, and predominant, economic and development models have increasingly detrimental impacts on the wellbeing of present generations, in particular leading to a broadening ecological crisis and ever widening social disparities [4]
These models present tremendous risks and challenges for future generations [5]. In response to these evolutions, the current debate on environmental sustainability has led to a growing consensus amongst policy makers and scientists of the need to adopt a strong sustainability ethics, which is characterized by the duty to preserve certain critical forms of natural capital, in order to preserve the capability of choice of present and future generations [5,6]
Summary
Research over the last two decades has shown that human influences on global life-support systems have reached a magnitude unprecedented in human history [1]. At the very moment that humanity is facing these major global sustainability crises, with wide-ranging impacts of an economic, environmental and social nature, and that both policy makers and civil society are calling for a shift in the functioning of our societies, modern science seems incapable of providing guidance for governing the large-scale transformations needed to address the global sustainability challenges [7]. In response to the first need, sustainability scholars have developed a new field of research over the last two decades that combines a descriptive-analytical and a transformational mode of research for supporting the transition to sustainable societies [13].
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