European Research on Sustainable Development

This book brings together a unique cohort of scholars and practitioners who examine the practical meaning of sustainability for science and for policy in interaction with wider publics in the face of global change. The contributions that follow address the transformations required in mental framings, institutional settings, and research practices to support the vast societal transition towards sustainable development. The interdisciplinary background of the authors means that the concepts, arguments, and ideas advanced in this volume are not based on one single approach or scientific perspective, but draw from a wide variety of personal and professional experiences. Most of the chapters in this book are built on the lessons learnt from major international research efforts on environmental issues and sustainability, in areas like community-based resource conservation, climate change, water, or land planning. Because of the pragmatic orientation of this book, which focuses on articulating an in-depth reflection for the implementation of concrete changes and decisions, we have explicitly avoided excessive academism. Our main goal is to contribute to the discussion for a practical and positive vision of science, policy, and public interactions in the face of global environmental change and unsustainable development.

On the face of things, the idea of sustainable development has something paradoxical about it, yet I think it has been very useful.

My work on sustainability has been guided by some basic principles including the recognition that all members of the Earth community, human and non-human, have the right to sustenance, to food and water, to a safe and clean habitat, to security of ecological space. Resources vital to the sustenance must stay in the commons. The right to sustenance is a natural right because it is the right to live. These rights are not given by states or corporations, nor can they be extinguished by state or corporate action. No state or corporation has the right to erode or undermine these natural rights or enclose the commons that sustain life.

The opinions expressed are those of the author only and should not be considered as representative of the European Commission’s official position.

In recent years the social dimension (or ‘social sustainability’) has gained increased recognition as a fundamental component of sustainable development, becoming increasingly entwined with the delivery of sustainable communities discourse and the urban sustainability discourse. Environmental and economic issues dominated the sustainable development debate at its beginning whilst it is only in the late 1990s that social issues were taken into account within the sustainability agenda. Although its growing recognition has spurred an emerging body of literature on social sustainability, our understanding of this concept is still fuzzy and limited by theoretical and methodological constraints stemming from its context and disciplinary-dependent definitions and measurements. As Sachs (1999) puts it, at a fundamental level, it is still unclear whether the concept of social sustainability means the social preconditions for sustainable development or the need to sustain specific structures and customs in communities and societies.

On December 1, 2008, flood waters inundated Venice once more, reaching a 20-year high of 156 cm above normal. The event scared tourists a lot more than Venetians. They have learned to adapt. Of course, Venetian authorities have seen it coming for 20 years. A massive flood barrier has been planned for decades. It was due to become operational in 2011, but financial problems once again have delayed installation by a perennial couple of years. The flood barrier is known by the apt biblical acronym MOSES. Venice is full of biblical reminders and works of art referring to doom and salvation abound. In fact, Venice has been a city of doom and salvation long before the floods started to become serious. It lost its position as a global power two centuries ago. It lost two thirds of its population in the past century and now it seems to be sinking for good. No wonder that many books have been written on the death of Venice. Yet, the city survives. Visitors keep coming in droves and Venice seems to be a place of merry wealth rather than sad poverty. The city has been courting doom for ages, yet it seems splendidly sustainable in the sense of being able to adapt resiliently. They turned doom into their own brand of sustainability. The fate of Venice invites reflection on the essence of doom and thereby the essence of sustainability. It provides an admittedly crude, yet appropriately warning, symbol for Europe’s future. The Venetian story is a harsh reminder, that Europe must develop its own brand of sustainability. The Venetian story also tells that sustainability may have more to do with surviving doom smartly than with attaining salvation purposefully. How doom and sustainability are intimately connected, and what this implies for a European brand of sustainability, are in fact the major themes of this analysis of the energy related faces of doom.

In this chapter we present the transitions approach as an integrated perspective to understand and possibly orient our society towards sustainable development. Since the concept of sustainability is inherently normative, subjective and ambiguous, we argue that (unlike some more traditional approaches to sustainable development) we should focus on an open facilitation and stimulation of social processes towards sustainability. The transitions approach and transition management specifically, seek to deal with ongoing changes in society in an evolutionary manner so as to influence these ongoing changes in terms of speed and direction: towards sustainability. A transitions approach to explore sustainability transitions poses novel challenges for research: there are no unequivocal answers, nor it is clear how these processes should be governed. We conclude our analysis by formulating the basic research questions central to the search for governance for sustainability, and by reflecting on the role of science in sustainability transitions.

Sustainability has emerged as the newly ascendant policy issue of the twenty-first century. While we continue to argue about the true definition of “sustainability” – particularly since it has become a fashionable buzzword for the policy community and related funding agencies – the challenge of converting our present socio-technical system to a “sustainable” system has developed as a new master narrative, inspiring policy discourses both in Europe and the United States.

Amongst the challenges facing us in New Zealand, three questions are relevant to the theme of this conference. First, what is the relevance of a Sustainable Development research agenda to an island nation of 4 million people in the grip of a global economic crisis? Second, how may our precious investment in research, science and technology be guided so as to maximise the return to the nation? Third, what are priorities for investment in sustainable development research? This paper explores some possible answers.

The contemporary concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) was primarily conceived for the purpose of promoting sustainable water management. There are many elements included in modern IWRM perceptions, e.g., natural resource utilization planning combined with at strategy to balance between social, economic and environmental objectives based on an overall sustainability concept. However, the concept behind IWRM is not new. The historical development of the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) can be found in Rahaman and Varis (2005).

In the words of Tim O’Riordan, sustainable development is a ‘tough nut to crack’ because it does not fit easily with the normal political model of analysis and decision. The urgent need for sustainable development is evident, but the concept is vague, contradictory and confusing. O’Riordan points out that there is no agreement on what sustainability actually is, where we have to go to get it, and what it would look like in a multi-national world of nine plus billion people demanding more and more from a stripped and stressed planet (O’Riordan 2008). O’Riordan is right in that it is difficult to pin down what sustainable development is and what sustainability transitions will imply, for reasons which include that sustainability transitions are dynamic, systemic, configuration dependent, and indeterminate.

This chapter explores some of the issues around the topic of “sustainability science”. In doing so, it attempts to draw a distinction between the wide variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research that can be called “research to support sustainable development” and an approach, here referred to as “sustainability science”, that is much more strongly oriented towards the development of strategies and the implementation of measures to deal with problems of unsustainable development. Before discussing the different approaches, however, the chapter examines the need for this kind of research, which arises because of the increasing amount of evidence that despite international agreements and action plans at all scale levels, there has been no success over the past few decades in reconciling human development with the environmental limits of Planet Earth and in securing well-being for all people on this planet now and in the future.