Unsustainable Systems Research Articles

Exploring uncharted wilderness: a new conceptualization of transformative leadership education

AbstractIn this explorative essay, we ask how to integrate current development in entrepreneurship education with an education for societal transformation towards sustainability, more explicitly phrased as what and how educators should teach to make students develop transformative capabilities and build action competence for leading societal transformation. We conclude that entrepreneurship education has much to offer and that educators and students ought to transgress institutional borders and explore wilderness together to learn how to create transformative leadership education. Current knowledge indicates that a purposeful education for this end should address seven complementary competencies where students learn to take action, collaborate, engage with society, manage own growth, ground themselves, scout the future, and reframe the system. Due to its inherent qualities, entrepreneurship education, built on engagement in real-world transformative problems, can be considered the most potent foundation for such aspirations. However, as current educational institutions are formed by the malfunctioning and unsustainable system they serve, today’s institutions might not be the best forerunners of change in any pedagogical practice. This is why we also conclude that progressive educators need to leave their ivory towers, classrooms, and lecture halls behind and engage in real transformative problems head-on with their students by their sides.

Chains of Currency: Manilla Money Bracelets, Early Modern Africa and the Ties That Bind

Manilla money bracelets emerged during the early modern period (ca. fifteenth century AD) as a form of currency between western Europe and West Africa, and continued to circulate until the early twentieth century. While there has been little formal scholarship on manillas, narratives abound: some histories cast the bracelets as the blood money of the transatlantic slave trade; others highlight them as the copper source used to make the Benin Bronzes; and still others uphold the manilla as a symbolically important West African cultural object in and of itself. This study begins with a history of the manilla, from its rapid proliferation to its eventual obsolescence. The term “metastasizing symbol” is proposed to describe objects like the manilla, whose propagation is underwritten by unsustainable systems of cultural difference, and thereby contains within itself the seeds for the object’s transition to disuse. The authors also describe a portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysis of nine manilla bracelets from the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG). When compared to manilla composition data from previous studies and projected into PCA space, the nine YUAG manillas appear most similar to specimens produced in England during the mid-nineteenth century and traded extensively in British West Africa throughout the colonial period. KEYWORDS: Manilla Money Bracelets; pXRF; Transatlantic Slave Trade; Europe; West Africa; Early Modern Period; European Imperialism; Provenance

Global vocabulary and regional divides: representations of the environmental crisis of young adults in Ireland and Uruguay

A triple environmental crisis marks the current century: the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies that challenge¡ societies around the world and require global dialogue. Consequently, it seems worth assessing across international strata, whether young adults living in different regions would share social representations of the environmental crisis. Built on findings from 16 focus group discussions held in Ireland and Uruguay, comprising 109 participants, the objective of this article is to uncover and compare between countries: which environmental issues remain crucial for young citizens of diverse backgrounds and affiliations; how coincidental issues of concern are articulated across countries; and how structural factors are perceived as key to an environmentally unsustainable system. Let alone the case of Climate Change, the main findings point to shared topics of concern, such as Waste Generation and Disposal or Food Production and Consumption, with contrasting social representations of them between the two regions, which shed light on how environmental risk is socially built in dialogue with the context despite global discursive trends, in a highly mediatized and glocal era. Unlike university students focused studies, the paper offers a qualitative approach to the perceptions of young adults of diverse backgrounds in both countries.

Technology, International Stability and Culture (TECIS) – TC9-5 Exploring the Alignment of Control and Automation Systems with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)

Unstable, non-viable and unsustainable systems, whether they are environmental, political, technological, social or economic systems, create serious challenges and place even humanity itself at risk. At IFAC we believe that scientists and technologists, especially control and automation systems researchers and practitioners, can contribute to making the world a more stable place for everyone. Technological proliferation contributes significantly to these systemic and structural effects. The application of global systems of information, finance, energy and other resources has both negative and positive consequences. The diversity of TC 9-5 makes it a unique Science and Engineering community within which to explore the role of UN SDGs. This paper sets out the historical development of TC9-5 in light of the UN SDGs, and demonstrates some key aspects of the current alignment of TC9-5 with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Can Docked Bike-Sharing Systems Reach Their Dual Sustainability in Terms of Environmental Benefits and Financial Operations? A Comparative Study from Nanjing, 2017 and 2023

In this paper, we investigate the sustainability of docked bike-sharing in Nanjing in terms of environmental benefits and financial operations by comparing the data of March 2017 and March 2023 in Nanjing. We modify a community detection method, give and prove dynamic boundary conditions for the objective function of the heuristic algorithm, and realize the estimation of the rebalancing coefficients for this mega-system, thus obtaining more accurate emission factors. We find that there are significant differences in the results obtained from environmental benefit assessments over time. Further, there are also significant differences at the national level. This may signify that the assessment data of one country’s system cannot give a direct reference for another country’s system. Second, we considered the economic basis required for the environmental benefits of docked bike-sharing systems. We have calculated the sustainability of the system’s financial operations by considering its revenues over the next nine years, including the cost of facility inputs, facility upgrades, dispatching costs, labor costs, maintenance costs, and the time value of money. The results show a 4.6-fold difference in emission factors between 2017 and 2023; comparing 2017 to 2023 (when demand loss has been severe), the investment in 2017 will be recouped 2 years later than in 2023. Switching distribution vehicles from fuel vehicles to electric trikes would severely deteriorate the operator’s key financial metrics while only reducing the emission factor value by 8.64 gCO2 eq/km, leading to an unsustainable system. This signals the potential for the financial unsustainability, or even bankruptcy, of operators if the requirements for sustained emissions reductions from the bike-sharing system are divorced from the form of the economy on which it is sustainably operated. Finally, we consider the geographical patterns between environmental benefits and financial operations. We find that financial sustainability varies across geographic locations. Under financial sustainability, we gave emission factors under the mix distribution vehicle scenario.

Unsustainabilities: A study on SUVs and Space Tourism and a research agenda for transition studies

While transitions research has pursued a successful research agenda around how to improve established socio-technical systems in terms of sustainability, it has missed out, among other things, on innovations that make, or keep, societies less sustainable. In our paper, we explore two innovations in different stages of development: Sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and space tourism. SUVs entrench an existing socio-technical system and reproduce problematic practices, while space tourism might create a whole new, unsustainable system. We make three contributions. First, we introduce ‘unsustainabilities’ as a new term for technologies, institutions and practices that make, or keep, societies less sustainable. With this we direct attention to developments and structures that undermine ongoing sustainability transitions. Second, we distinguish unsustainabilities associated with socio-technical configurations, socio-technical systems, and meta-structures (spanning multiple systems). Third, we argue that precautionary policies will be needed in early stages of innovation, when there is still room to avoid unsustainable transitions.

Prioritas Hambatan Green Management Terhadap Industri dan UMKM dalam Perspektif Lingkungan, Sosial dan Ekonomi

Many companies have been consuming natural resources and energy in unsustainable systems in recent years. This has released many greenhouse gases and has caused various problems, especially for the environment, social and economic, originating from waste disposal and climate change, especially at the local level. However, many organizations have started implementing their work system with Green Management. This is due to the growing concern over pollution, depletion of natural resources and global warming. The application of Green Management to the world of work currently has various obstacles. These bottlenecks can be reduced by prioritizing bottlenecks as critical so that higher priority constraints can be used first to address issues more effectively with resources. Priorities like this are crucial, especially for developing MSMEs with minimal resources. This paper specifically aims to identify the factors hindering Green Management's implementation. The TOPSIS fuzzy method is used in making decisions by prioritizing obstacles from an environmental, social, and economic perspective. The results of the investigation indicated that lack of awareness/information, technology risks and weak policies were obstacles to implementing GM. Prioritizing barriers with different perspectives is one way to assist in making decisions or policies, especially for industry and MSMEs, in mitigating these obstacles more effectively.

A Strong Sustainability Paradigm based Analytical Hierarchy Process (SSP-AHP) method to evaluate sustainable healthcare systems

The recent studies signify the growing concern of researchers towards monitoring and measuring sustainability performance at various levels and in many fields, including healthcare. However, there is no agreed approach to assessing the sustainability of health systems. Moreover, social indicators are less developed and less succinct. Therefore, with this work, authors seek to map sustainable reference values in healthcare and propose a conceptual and structured framework that can guide the measurement of the social sustainability-oriented health systems. Based on a new multi-criteria method called Strong Sustainability Paradigm based Analytical Hierarchy Process (SSP-AHP), the presented approach opens the availability for systems’ comparison and benchmarking. The Strong Sustainability Paradigm incorporated into the multi-criteria evaluation method prevents the exchangeability of criteria by promoting alternatives that achieve good performance values on all criteria, implying sustainability. The research results offer insights into the core domains, sub-domains, and indicators supporting a more comprehensive assessment of the social sustainability of health systems. The framework constructed in this study consists of five major areas: equity, quality, responsiveness, financial coverage, and adaptability. The proposed set of indicators can also serve as a reference instrument, providing transparency about core aspects of performance to be measured and reported, as well as supporting policy-makers in decisions regarding sectoral strategies in healthcare. Moreover, the presented approach can be helpful while performing cross-national comparisons. Our findings suggest that the most socially sustainable systems are Nordic countries. They offer a high level of social and financial protection, achieving very good health outcomes. Furthermore, their social sustainability is safeguarded by balancing all identified values. On the other hand, the most unsustainable systems, located in central and eastern European countries, have a high level of unmet needs, experiencing shortages in the workforce and underfunding of healthcare. A key challenge for them is to achieve sustainability by increasing the share of public expenditure on health and limiting the substantial dependence on out-of-pocket payments.

Digital innovation's contribution to sustainability transitions

Digital innovation is increasingly mentioned as a potential key contributor to sustainability transitions. However, there has been little theoretical discussion of this topic. In this conceptual paper, the authors draw on literature on both sustainability transition studies and innovation studies to explore critically the contribution of digital innovation in sustainability transitions. They conceptualize transitions as fundamental changes in patterns of production and consumption, such as those relating to energy. Radical innovation leads to changes in the structure of socio-technical systems underlying such patterns, while incremental innovation contributes to maintaining the structure and current patterns. The authors suggest that digital innovations may contribute positively to sustainability transitions through couplings with sustainable innovations. They propose the following typology of such couplings: incremental twin innovations, sustainability supported digital innovations, digitally supported sustainable innovations, and radical twin innovations. Radical twin innovations may possess the greatest potential for sustainability transitions, as they are linked to structural change and thus open new pathways for sustainability transitions, whereas incremental twin innovations merely optimize current unsustainable systems. The typology is illustrated with examples from shipping and from electricity systems, and some of the complexities of twin transitions encountered by researchers and practitioners alike are discussed.

Sustaining a network by controlling a fraction of nodes

Multi-stability is a widely observed phenomenon in real complex networked systems, such as technological infrastructures, ecological systems, gene regulation, transportation and more. Thus, even if the system is at equilibrium in a normal functional state, there might exist also a potential stable state having abnormal activity, into which the system might transition due to an external perturbation. Such a system can be regarded as unsustainable, due to the danger of falling into the potential undesired abnormal state. Here we explore, analytically and via simulations, how supporting the activity of a small fraction of nodes can turn an unsustainable system to become sustainable by eliminating the undesired potential stable state. We unveil a sustaining phase diagram in the presence of a fraction of controlled nodes. This phase diagram could provide how many controlled nodes are required for sustaining a given network as well as how strong the connectivity of the network should be for a given fraction of controllable nodes.

Introduction to the special issue on mobility, climate change, and economic inequality

Introduction to the special issue on mobility, climate change, and economic inequality

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.

Interview Without Harm: Reimagining Medical Training's Financially and Environmentally Costly Interview Practices.

The looming threat of climate change urgently calls for reimagining unsustainable systems and practices, including academia's culture of emissions-intensive travel. Given that medical educators are uniquely invested in the future of the trainees they represent, this reimagination can and should begin with medical education. Making significant reforms to the application process has historically been challenging, but the COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual interviews for medical school, residency, and fellowship. Programs and applicants alike demonstrated resilience, innovation, and satisfaction in adapting to virtual interviews during 2 full application cycles. This restructuring has prompted consideration of the necessity of environmentally costly, expensive, and time-consuming cross-country travel for single-day interviews. However, evolving conversations about the future of medical training interviews have not prioritized environmental impact, despite the sizeable historical emissions generated by interview-related travel and the incompatibility between ecological damage and population health. Beyond environmental impact, virtual interviews are more equitable, with significantly fewer financial costs, and they are more efficient, requiring less time off from school or work. Many concerns associated with virtual interviews, including interview inflation and limited applicant exposure to programs and their surrounding areas, can be addressed via creative and structural solutions, such as interview caps and in-person second-look programs. The medical training interview process underwent a forced restructuring due to the unprecedented disruption caused by COVID-19. This moment presents a strategic inflection point for medical education leadership to build on the momentum and permanently transform the process by focusing on sustainability and equity.

EVALUACIÓN DE LA SUSTENTABILIDAD DE LOS SISTEMAS DE PRODUCCIÓN DE LA AGRICULTURA FAMILIAR, CANTÓN PENIPE, ECUADOR 2021

<p><strong>Background:</strong> the agricultural production system, its operation, monitoring and execution, requires formulating new evaluation schemes. Integrating the vast majority of social, cultural, ecological, economic, geopolitical characteristics and factors related to the technology applied in production systems. Through the use of associated indicators in each of its dimensions and attributes, to analyze its sustainability. The <strong>objective:</strong> This research is the evaluation of the sustainability of the production systems of family farming in the Penipe canton. That demands the selection, transformation and aggregation of economic, environmental, geopolitical, cultural and social indicators, which allow determining trends of the system, using a systemic, participatory, interdisciplinary and flexible approach called the MESMIS framework. <strong>Methodology:</strong> MESMIS was applied to nine representative farms of diversified, specialized and subsistence family farming production system. By determining the critical points, the indicators were applied once standardized and weighted. <strong>Results:</strong> Specialized family farming production system is sustainable with a score of (1.56), diversified family farming is moderately sustainable with a score of (1.32) and subsistence family farming, with a value of (0.77) is considered an unsustainable system within the locality. <strong>Implications:</strong> It was found that there are some aspects that limit the farms to be considered as sustainable systems, identifying the attributes to improve.<strong> </strong>In order to improve subsistence family farming, it is necessary to work on the following parameters:<strong> </strong>productivity, stability, resilience, reliability, adaptability, equity and self-management; diversified family farming expresses the following attributes to improve: productivity, stability, resilience, reliability, equity and self-management and specialized family farming has to improve in: Productivity, resilience, stability, equity. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> This evaluation responds to a cyclical process that, by effectively integrating the evaluation in the decision-making process, improves the probability of success in the design of alternatives to improve the productive systems in the Penipe canton.</p>

How to monitor the progress towards a circular food economy: A Delphi study

Within the food sector, the implementation of a circular economy (CE) can reduce resource consumption and emissions to the environment by moving away from a linear and unsustainable system. This necessitates a clear vision on what circularity for food means, which will provide a much-needed foundation to develop a monitoring tool that reveals insights into the progress being made towards a CE, and to expose the bottlenecks and opportunities. This research study contributes to the development of a shared vision for circularity within the food system, and defines and prioritizes a set of indicator themes to monitor a circular food economy (CFE). A two-round Delphi study was performed, including a brainstorming session with experts and the construction of a consensus ranking of indicator themes, considering the production and processing and the consumption stage. The Delphi results provide a shared vision on a CFE, and a blueprint for researchers and policy-makers on its monitoring, which will stimulate the progression from a linear to a circular system.

Socio-Environmental Complexities of the Global South: a Historical, Decolonial, Eco-Socialist and a Freirean Environmental Educational View

This paper aims to analyze contemporary socio-environmental complexities, such as climate change and the increasing socio-environmental impacts on different social classes. Moreover, it addresses the systematic way in which the Global North exploits natural and human resources, which oppresses the populations of the Global South, increasing social inequality and potentiating the climate crisis. The historical context of environmental degradation is a key driver of the analysis, aligned with the perceived idealization of infinite economic development, which shapes the capitalist system’s exacerbated productivism and industrial development in order to expand its profit through increased consumption and perpetuate inequality. By raising fundamental questions in the context of the climate crisis, which disproportionately affects the populations of Global South countries, –whether in the realization of environmental disasters or the recovery time after a catastrophe–we seek to analyze how the organizational logic of asymmetry between Global North-South countries is driven by years of colonization and imperialism. And we present, as options in the attempt to break with this unsustainable system, eco-socialism and Freirean environmental education.

Towards Sustainable Food Consumption: Emerging Tensions Behind the Plate in a Colombian University Community

ABSTRACT The study of sustainable food consumption is key in the transformation of current unsustainable food systems. We explore the tensions that emerge between individual motives and sustainability spheres when making food consumption choices in a university community in Bogotá, Colombia. This complex phenomenon is addressed through a qualitative methodology based on observations, visual diaries, and a game-based protocol, which allow us to delve into food consumption motives while trying to avoid social desirability bias. Our results show a plate that is high in cereals, roots, tubers, plantains, and animal-based protein, and low in vegetables, fruits, and plant-based proteins. Behind this plate, most tensions emerge between family traditions and other sustainability spheres. These tensions are related to socio-affective risks, animal suffering, time constraints, effort, and monetary costs. Integrating sociocultural elements such as family traditions in public policy becomes fundamental when promoting sustainable diets in similar contexts. This study contributes to the discussion about the sociocultural changes required in the transition toward sustainable food systems.

Unsustainable Systems: Externalization as a Nonviable Form of Migration Management in the Face of Climate Change

Climate change has recently emerged as a major factor informing people’s decision to migrate and has increased the urgency of traditional reasons behind migration such as economic hardship, political turmoil, repression, and unjust social conditions. Indeed, given the increasing gravity of climate change, every single individual could become a migrant and every single country could be a source of migration. Regarding the management of migration, which impacts more and more places, a more equitable sharing of responsibility would not only protect the rights of migrants but also create a fair system for all nations. This study addresses climate change along with the more traditional reasons behind migratory movements. It tackles the role of externalization policies, which are expected to gain further momentum due to the growing diversity of push factors, on migratory movements. It also analyzes the functions and implementation of border control, repatriation agreements, and other legal arrangements intended to make it harder for migrants to access international protection.

Challenges in the development of digital public health interventions and mapped solutions: Findings from a scoping review.

Background“Digital public health” has emerged from an interest in integrating digital technologies into public health. However, significant challenges which limit the scale and extent of this digital integration in various public health domains have been described. We summarized the literature about these challenges and identified strategies to overcome them.MethodsWe adopted Arksey and O’Malley's framework (2005) integrating adaptations by Levac et al. (2010). OVID Medline, Embase, Google Scholar, and 14 government and intergovernmental agency websites were searched using terms related to “digital” and “public health.” We included conceptual and explicit descriptions of digital technologies in public health published in English between 2000 and June 2020. We excluded primary research articles about digital health interventions. Data were extracted using a codebook created using the European Public Health Association's conceptual framework for digital public health.Results and analysisOverall, 163 publications were included from 6953 retrieved articles with the majority (64%, n = 105) published between 2015 and June 2020. Nontechnical challenges to digital integration in public health concerned ethics, policy and governance, health equity, resource gaps, and quality of evidence. Technical challenges included fragmented and unsustainable systems, lack of clear standards, unreliability of available data, infrastructure gaps, and workforce capacity gaps. Identified strategies included securing political commitment, intersectoral collaboration, economic investments, standardized ethical, legal, and regulatory frameworks, adaptive research and evaluation, health workforce capacity building, and transparent communication and public engagement.ConclusionDeveloping and implementing digital public health interventions requires efforts that leverage identified strategies to overcome diverse challenges encountered in integrating digital technologies in public health.

Making “good food” more practicable? The reconfiguration of alternative food provisioning in the online world

Food production, distribution and consumption are necessary dimensions of existence and simultaneously exposed to a number of ecological and social fragilities, especially in the contemporary crisis. The reconfiguration of unsustainable systems of food provisioning is thus a priority, geared towards resilience, ecology and equity. Alternative forms of procurement have been part of this effort and a debate is now emerging on whether digital platforms might promote access to them. Yet, an in-depth interrogation of the ways in which digital food consumption becomes part of everyday routines is largely missing. The objective of our article is to understand if and how digitalisation makes alternative provisioning more “practicable”, allowing consumers to engage in what they consider healthier and more sustainable food practices. In so doing, we also look at platforms’ transformative potentials. Their design and ongoing practicing, in fact, not only capture existing needs, but actively shape the overall meanings, material organisation and embodied interactions with everyday food. Our analysis is based on 23 in-depth ethnographic and multimedia interviews with consumers living in Milan, who utilise online alternative forms of food provisioning.