Sustainability Discourse Research Articles

Local understandings and global challenges: exploring sense of place in sustainability transitions

The sustainability transitions literature acknowledges the importance of place for building a more sustainable world. Although some researchers have studied place analytically and made contributions toward developing sustainable communities across the globe, and others have directly discussed the structural aspects of places, the sustainable transitions literature has not fully reconciled place specifics with their implications for sustainability. This research explores how members from the small community of Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, link their sense of place to their understanding of sustainability and considers the implications of this for sustainability transitions. Through an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach, this work develops three propositions regarding sustainability as it relates to sense(s) of place. First, we found that within the Campobello community, sustainability was linked directly to individuals’ senses of place, place identities, and place attachments. Second, we found that there were slight variations in islanders’ concepts of sustainability related to these place-related constructs. Third, we found that although this community’s sustainability conversations were dominated by place-specific rather than global sustainability discourse, this was not always the case. As a result, the importance of more deeply exploring the normative nature of sustainability transitions is intensified. Understanding how place specifics connect with views of sustainability in a small island community allows us to deeply explore the role of place in sustainability transitions.

Living artefacts for regenerative ecologies

Abstract Introduced in 2020, the notion of living artefacts encompasses biodesign outcomes that maintain the vitality of organisms such as fungi, algae, bacteria, and plants in the use of everyday artefacts, enabling new functions, interactions, and expressions within our daily lives. This paper situates living artefacts at the intersection of the sustainability discourse and more-than-human ontologies, illuminating the unprecedented opportunities that living artefacts present for regenerative ecologies. These ecologies are characterized by a fundamental inclination toward mutualism, creativity, and coevolution. In regenerative ecologies, the human-nature relationship transcends the binary distinction and it manifests as a single autopoietic system in which the constituent members collaboratively engage in the creation, transformation, and evolution of shared habitats. The paper outlines five pillars, supplemented by guiding questions and two illustrative cases, to aid designers in unlocking, articulating, and critically evaluating the potential of living artefacts for regenerative ecologies.

The experience of cities during the COVID 19 pandemic: What are we going to do now?

The Covid 19 pandemic, taken as a social crisis, has pointed to the high vulnerability of the basic organizational principles of modern society and the inherent inequalities, particularly those related to the urban space. Therefore, the first part of the paper presents ideas and practices initiated by the Covid 19 pandemic regarding (re)conceptualization of urban mobility and (re)organization of urban spaces in searching for more sustainable and resilient solutions, in Europe and the developed world. Secondly, the analysis addresses ecological modernization and the entrepreneurial (smart) city models as conceptual frames that limit considerably the approach to urban sustainability and resilience, both in general and in a pandemic context. The concluding part highlights the missing political will and economic interest to deal with the pandemic as an opportunity to reset existing urban policies/measures and seek to balance the economic, social and ecological dimensions of urban development. By employing critical sociological thinking on contemporary cities, the authors emphasize the need to recognize social and environmental justice issues in urban sustainability discourse and practice.

Old fabrics

The proposed project positions itself within the field of museum, materialculture and heritage studies but at the same time it shifts the attention to the history offashion and fashion industry while drawing on local community and work force. Theinterdisciplinary nature of the idea links together the debate on sustainability andreuse of heritage with the social history of fabrics, retail shops and cloth makers andopens up possibilities for more transparency in the process of cloth making and themanagement of raw materials.First, I look at the discourse of sustainability and link it with heritage and the fashionindustry. Then, I turn to the particular and examine a) the repurposing of theEtmektzoglou silk deadstock produced at the Etmektzoglou silk mill in Volos duringthe 20th century b) the research idea revolving around the art of sewing and the reuseof fabrics and clothes from homes in urban Athens, during 1920-1980.

Corporate sustainability as a hegemonic discourse of globalization: The discourse-historical approach as a critical issues and stakeholder analysis tool

Corporate social responsibility, and its other conceptual variants such as corporate sustainability, encourages businesses to act on a range of issues outside what the law and shareholders require. But what are the limits of the concept and its discursive practices in a globalizing world marked by accentuated asymmetrical power relations between businesses, and the communities they operate in and serve (especially corporations working in less powerful global peripheries), and the regulators who are expected to police them? This study uses the discourse-historical approach (DHA) and corporate sustainability framework (CSF) to analyze a British independent oil production firm’s—Tullow—communication. It illustrates the utility of the DHA and the CSF for doing critical stakeholder and issues analysis from corporate communication texts. Second, it argues that corporate sustainability illustrates the power asymmetry between the global and local, corporations and community. Specifically, we observe how a petroleum firm uses sustainability discourse, as a form of hegemonic globalization, to perpetuate dominant tropes and conceptions about African local communities as homogeneous and lacking agency, commodifying the lived experiences of the locals in the process while entrenching the superiority of the firm’s own position as a ‘benevolent dictator.’ We also illustrate how particular mitigation and intensification discourse techniques are employed to uphold Tullow as a ‘do-good’ actor. The corporation’s discursive strategies have a cumulative effect of cementing the power asymmetry that already exists between the firm as an agent of a dominant center of global power and Ghanaian communities as less powerful interests in the globalization process. Suggestions for disrupting the hegemony are provided.

Daniela Francesca Virdis:Ecological stylistics: Ecostylistic approaches to discourses of nature, the environment and sustainability

Article Daniela Francesca Virdis. 2022. Ecological stylistics: Ecostylistic approaches to discourses of nature, the environment and sustainability. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, xi+242 pp. ISBN: 978-3-031-10657-6 (hbk). was published on January 27, 2023 in the journal Journal of World Languages (volume 0, issue 0).

A Novel Framework for Inner-Outer Sustainability Assessment

Calls for systemic transformations have become prevalent throughout sustainability discourse. Increasingly, these calls point towards consciousness expanding practices and interventions, such as mindfulness, to support the development of individual understandings, skills, and capacities that are conducive to more sustainable ways of being and doing. The growing interest in leveraging inner capacities, including mindsets, worldviews, values, and beliefs for sustainability transformations emerges from concerns that conventional approaches are failing to align social and ecological systems towards long-term viability. Interest in these consciousness-driven transformations is spreading, particularly in governments and prominent organisations. Tempering this enthusiasm are concerns that untethered from moral and ethical guidelines as well as caring understanding of local and global prospects for lasting wellbeing, mindfulness programs, workshops, and interventions for inner transformation can inadvertently strengthen unsustainable systems and deepen inequities. Accordingly, this paper presents an exploratory assessment framework to increase understandings of how events focused on interventions for inner transformation align with broad sustainability requirements. Findings from application of the framework should help to elucidate how these offerings can disrupt normative ways of thinking and doing, and in turn, positively influence multi-scalar transformations. Furthermore, use of the assessment process to plan and/or evaluate inner development offerings is anticipated to help strengthen progress towards sustainability and reduce adverse trade-offs that might undermine positive systemic transformations.

Regenerative economics for planetary health: A scoping review

Introduction: The relationship between humans and our planet is conditioned by an economic system that undermines rather than supports health. There has been an emerging focus on the relationship between economic structures and planetary health, but alternative economic approaches to support health for people and the planet require further development. Regenerative economics offers a compelling approach to transform humankind’s relationships with each other and their environment. Regenerative economics fosters grounded, pragmatic solutions to wider human and ecological crises that moves beyond a sustainability discourse towards one of regeneration. While there are, notionally, large areas of overlap between regenerative economics and planetary health, to date these have not been systematically articulated. Methods: A scoping review was performed to examine the background, principles, and applications of regenerative economics, and their implications for planetary health. Five databases (SCOPUS, Ovid Medline, Web of Science, Geobase, IEEE Xplore) were searched for peer-reviewed literature using key terms relating to regenerative economics and planetary health. Findings were reported using thematic synthesis. Results: The review identified a total of 121 articles and included 30 papers in the final review, from economics, industrial design, business, tourism, education, urban design and architecture, energy, technology, and food and agriculture. The principles of regenerative economics focused on people, place, planet, position, peace, plurality, and progress. Putting these principles into action requires identifying and valuing different forms of capital, taking a dynamic systems approach, applying regenerative design, developing a true circular economy, good governance, and transdisciplinary education and advocacy. Conclusions: While the principles of regenerative economics and planetary health are well aligned, the tools and actions of each field differ substantially. Planetary health can learn from regenerative economics’ grounding in natural design principles, systems-based approaches, actions at the right scale and cadence, respect for diversity, community and place, and mindset that moves beyond sustainability towards a regenerative future.

Decolonizing Sustainability through Indigenization in Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions

Sustainability discourse indicates a need to reconsider our approaches to social, economic, and environmental issues because, without deep transformation, global human survival is in jeopardy. At the same time, post-secondary education institutions in Canada are Indigenizing their settings but have rarely taken up sustainability and Indigenization as related concepts. In this research, participants delivering Indigenous programming in ten colleges and universities across Canada contributed their insights on the relationships between Indigenous worldviews and sustainability in their territories and institutions. The five key findings that emerged from the study are: (1) Indigenous worldviews are based on a belief in the sacred, which orients Indigenous knowledges and responsibilities for sustaining life on Earth; (2) sustainability is expressed as a function of tradition linking Indigenous identity with culture, language, and environmental health; (3) entrenching Indigenous knowledges throughout institutions is to sustain cultural identity; (4) national and international standards supporting Indigenous self-determination are primary drivers for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges and advance the underlying principle of sustainability; and (5) Indigenous holistic learning includes social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability.

A Leap of Faith: Regenerative Agriculture as a Contested Worldview Rather Than as a Practice Change Issue

Regenerative agriculture (RA) is emerging as one alternative model for agricultural production. However, RA has not matured sufficiently for a clear definition to have emerged, or for claimed benefits to be rigorously tested. Thus, numerous competing discourses have emerged around what RA is, and its potential role in the future of farming, leading to a level of contention about is value. This research aimed to better understand RA as a social phenomenon by using Q methodology to explore and evaluate how common discourses around agricultural sustainability, the goals of farming, and RA resonated with different Australian beef farmers. Three perspectives emerged from the data, labelled as the regenerative, environmentally conscious, and productive perspectives and represented diverse views around the goals of agriculture, the role of RA in the future of Australian agriculture, and comfort level producers have with the term and approach to farming it represents. As RA continues to grow as a movement, worldview, and farming approach, understanding the differences in thinking and worldview of proponents will be important for better understanding the goals of RA, how to reach them and measure their impact, and improve communication around RA. This is important to avoid and resolve unnecessary or destructive tensions between the range of agricultural sustainability discourses.

Heroes and villains: children’s stories of Eco-school learning as a scalar social site for sustainability practice

ABSTRACT This research reveals children’s stories of sustainability learning utilising a scalar framework to understand the influence of information flows. Eleven Scottish primary school pupils captured images illustrating their sustainability understanding which informed subsequent interviews. This research contributes to theory by examining the Eco-school curriculum within a scalar framework and providing empirical narratives that illustrate how children understand and assume responsibility for sustainability, as learned within vertical and horizontal scaling. In adopting a novel approach of listening to children, the findings extend scalar frameworks from organisational settings to examine sustainability discourse through their perceptions of who are sustainability heroes and villains. Within this, nuances of emergent activism and the application of local initiatives to ‘save the planet’ provide implications for markets, marketing management and policy development.

The metropolitan production of “urban” sustainability: Exploring industrial regionalism across the Puget Sound

This article engages governance visions for green urbanism and sustainability through the concept of “industrial regionalism”. Bringing together emerging research on the importance of manufacturing to inclusive economies and critiques of “methodological cityism”, we explore the relational production of the iconic “green city” of Seattle. Here we consider how secondary cities, suburbs, and other peripheral spaces get subsumed within the metropolitan production of “urban” sustainability in ways that go unacknowledged and underappreciated. By absorbing tasks of production and social reproduction, such peripheral spaces may enable primate cities like Seattle to claim the mantle of sustainability, highlighting the rain gardens, bike lanes, urban green spaces, and other infrastructures that score high on walkability indices. In contrast, the working-class livelihoods on the periphery are often marginalized from sustainability discourses, if not actively disparaged for their inability to measure up to the green city ideal. This paper aims to offer a corrective by exploring how peripheral spaces are involved in the production of primate city sustainability. Employing the concept of intra-regional relationality, and drawing from census and geospatial data as well as regional planning analyses and reports, we illustrate that “urban” sustainability is produced regionally and relationally. The aim here is to consider how the “industrial region” might gain purchase as an important component of the governance of urban sustainability.

Consumption-Based Accounting for Tracing Virtual Water Flows Associated with Beef Supply Chains in the United States.

Enhancing the environmental sustainability of food systems requires an understanding of both production- and consumption-based impacts. As food supply chains become increasingly complex and connected, they also present a unique context in which to understand the environmental impacts of consumption. This is critical for understanding the disconnect between production- and consumption-based impacts of food systems and ultimately designing, evaluating, and implementing interventions for improving security, resilience, and sustainability of food systems. Using publicly available datasets and an optimization-based framework, we present a county-to-county level network model of beef supply chains in the United States. The model is used to connect and attribute the consumption-based impacts of beef consumption to production in distant locations, specifically focusing on water-based impacts. We specifically focus on the beef system because of its importance in the diet of U.S. consumers and in environmental sustainability discourse. The findings from this work show the spatial disconnect between the consumption and production counties with approximately 22 billion m3 of blue virtual water being transferred for the year 2017, mainly from the northern and southern plains toward the coasts. These results highlight the importance of understanding environmental impacts from both production and consumption perspectives.

Developing an Evidence-Based Framework of Universal Design in the Context of Sustainable Urban Planning in Northern Nicosia

Sustainable urbanism involves a wide range of issues, starting with the building unit and leading up to the city scale under the discourse of sustainability, including the four main dimensions of environmental, economic, cultural, and social. Universal design (UD) can be suggested as one of the significant catalyzers of urban design parameters, which are among the basic elements of social sustainability. UD is significant in terms of providing solutions that meet the common needs of all individuals in built environments. There is a strong relationship between social sustainability and UD. Thus, adopting the concept of UD in the planning of urban spaces is crucial. Within this framework, via the relevant theoretical evaluation, a conceptual framework is constructed in order to explain universal design as a concept within the context of urban design parameters and social sustainability. Alongside discussing universal design as a term, urban design parameters and social sustainability are also discussed in order to explain the development of the theoretical model. Later, in the methodology section of the study, northern Nicosia has been chosen as the study area. A qualitative evaluation regarding the seven dimensions of universal design and a quantitative assessment based on the TSI standards, prepared including European directives/regulations, were applied to the chosen nine urban space items on the avenue. Based on the findings at Şht. Kemal Ünal Avenue, it can be concluded that urban spaces in northern Nicosia do not achieve a convenient environment for all individuals to the greatest extent possible. Further, in the discussion section of the study, several suggestions are presented for the improvement of streets, taking into account UD principles. These suggestions refer to the stops, sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, urban furniture, and equipment on the avenue. In sum, it is expected that the qualitative and quantitative analyses undertaken and the literature review, including a theoretical model, will contribute to the existing knowledge on the terminology of universal design in the context of social sustainability.

Seeing the (in)justice of sustainability: Visualizing inequality at the centre of climate change communication

This Special Issue focuses on issues of sustainability and its (potential) effect(s) on widening inequalities. It does so through discussions on visual and digital communication, including documentary filmmaking, photojournalism, cartography and citizen multimedia journalism, with a broad geographic span. The issue is comprised of two sets of scholarly approaches. The first set includes perhaps more conventionally arranged articles that align with the Special Issue theme, while the second set is steeped in intersections of theory and practice as short essays, revolving around visualizations that articulate veiled senses of inequalities in sustainability discourses.

Local Ontology and Lived Experience of Fashion toward a Gulf Fashion “Sustainability”

Abstract What makes fashion “local”? What makes it “sustainable”? Can non-Western fashion locales have the same definitions of sustainability espoused by the global industry? This article reflects on a fashion “sustainability” for Bahrain and the Arab Gulf that goes beyond a focus on product. Specifically, the article explores how fashion space is used in Bahrain by different groups, as well as equity of experience and phenomenology of these spaces in Bahrain. Fashion spaces—such as the mall or souk—are primary areas of public gathering in the Gulf. Based on the results of qualitative interviews and a Delphi study, this article puts forward the example of fashion spaces and tailoring in Bahrain, where an expanded definition of use is found in Gulf fashion practice when compared to the traditional “life cycle” view used in fashion sustainability discourse. These differences in fashion ontology compared to a Western context impact what could be considered true “innovation” in the case of the Arab Gulf. For instance, cocreation through tailoring in the Gulf is culturally prevalent and a default feature of existing material culture, whereas similar notions are classified in a context of “innovation” in Western discourse. Thus it becomes crucial to explore an Arab Gulf ontology of fashion as a precursor to its “sustainability” and honest discussion of its own transformation toward sustainability.

On sustainability and higher education: Towards an affirmative ethics

Sustainable development has been the dominant focus in sustainability discourses over the past three decades. In 2015, the United Nations Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a blueprint for peace and prosperity. The agenda is to be driven by the now well-known 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The higher education sector has not been left unaffected by these developments. In 2021, we saw Times Higher Education (2021) for the first time introducing its impact rankings, which assess universities against the United Nation’s SDGs. This new category of the university ranking system may see universities increasingly account for their contributions towards both ecological sustainability and social justice. Paradoxically, higher education would have to embrace SDG targets as a social justice imperative, but within a neoliberal performance architecture and by applying the ethics of neoliberal market fundamentalism. In this article, we trouble the underlying normative, economy first (instrumentalist) assumption and anthropocentric approach to sustainability and its relationship with (higher) education. We argue that sustainability is not a means to an end (instrumentalist), but a social and ethical process that is situated, open and forever inbecoming. In doing so, we draw on Rosi Braidotti’s (2019; 2013) critical, posthumanist perspective, which enables us to perform two methodological moves: 1) a critical philosophical exploration of the concept sustainability and 2) generating affirmative propositions for thinking about sustainability education. At the heart of Braidotti’s (2019; 2013) postulations is the affirmation of hope to enable sustainable transformations and futures. In addition, she proposes an ethics of joy and affirmation that functions through transforming negativity into positivity. Through this affirmative ethical philosophy, we offer alternative imaginings of sustainability and generate six affirmative propositions for sustainability in higher education.

“We are the Green Capital”: Navigating the political and sustainability fix narratives of urban greening

With increasing attention on green(ing) cities, urban nature is used to increase liveability, to create new sectors such as tourism, and to boost international investment. What counts as desirable green intervention generally follows internationally accepted practices as cities aim for international recognition. Here, we examine the historic production of a green identity and the ways in which urban leaders have navigated local politics to enact greening. We focus on the mid-sized city Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country, Spain), the 2012 European Green Capital. Based on a critical discourse analysis of archival data and in-depth interviews, we explore the production of a green city-identity over a period of forty years and determine four key processes: (i) early good leadership with a social city being core objective of urban planning, (ii) the need for building shared goals in a context of a violent political conflict in the Basque Country, (iii) policy mobilities and thriving for becoming a green pioneer internationally, and (iv) de-politization of green and sustainability discourses. We argue that the initially perceived social green amenity - an outcome of early progressive urban democratic experimentation - that served as a unifying project across polarized political fractions turned into an economic cultural asset for economic growth, shifting from a political to a sustainability fix.

Mapping 70 Years of advancements in management research on sustainability

Sustainability provides a research paradigm that, when embedded into management language, theory, and method, provides a systems approach to drawing interconnections between business activities and grand societal challenges. With mounting evidence detailing the salience of sustainable business transformations, the gap between conventional management research and practice is stark. With little formal discussion on how this gap can be bridged, this study examines the application of sustainability in top business and management literature and details opportunities for synergizing these research agendas to inform future action-oriented research. Examining 46,856 publications across 27 top management journals, this comparative analysis finds that 800 articles (1.71%) speak specifically to sustainability. Adopting the Poisson burst detection algorithm and interdisciplinary mapping techniques, we trace the evolution and positionality of sustainability discourse in management literature. Though nascent, sustainability management distinguishes itself through a lens of pragmatism versus empirics, as well as through discernible theoretical and methodological approaches. We also find that sustainability discourse is growing at a faster rate, with higher aggregate citation counts and with prominence in select sub-disciplines relative to its conventional counterparts. We conclude with a research agenda - for grand societal challenges to become actionable, a new language is required, engaging a range of disciplines, theories, and methodologies in the form of sustainability management. • Sustainability management literature is better positioned to address grand societal challenges. • This paper examines how sustainability is discussed across 27 top management journals. • Though a small subset, sustainability management literature is increasing and highly impactful. • Key linguistic, theoretical, methodological, and ontological differences are discussed. • Opportunities for future research on the utility of sustainability management are proposed.

Sustainability from the perspective of a Brazilian university: Discourse and relations with the Sustainable Development Goals

This article reports a study of the sustainability discourse manifested by a Brazilian Higher Education Institution, the Federal University of Paraiba. We based the research on comparing documents and institutional media and their influence on discursive formation. We employed Sociological Discourse Analysis as a research method to capture silences amid the speeches and to reveal ideologies that form actions and omissions. This way, we compared the discourse and the Sustainable Development Goals. Discursive positions, narrative configurations, and semantic spaces, considered with the Sustainable Development Goals as a parameter, revealed an organization that seeks to follow sustainability but with efforts on the social field, leaving other aspects linked to the theme in the background. The temporary closure of several organization sectors due to the COVID-19 pandemic muddled the observations and interviews. This fact may have limited our perception, impacting inferences and results. The research focused on the discourse of Higher-Level Institutions are not ordinary. Comparisons between organizational discourse and the Sustainable Development Goals can potentially reveal institutional commitments to the theme, as well as ideas that influence, positively or negatively, contexts and shared ideologies.