Skip to main content
Top

Open Access 2020 | Open Access | Book

Framing in Sustainability Science

Theoretical and Practical Approaches

Editors: Prof. Dr. Takashi Mino, Dr. Shogo Kudo

Publisher: Springer Singapore

Book Series : Science for Sustainable Societies

insite
SEARCH

About this book

This open access book offers both conceptual and empirical descriptions of how to “frame” sustainability challenges. It defines “framing” in the context of sustainability science as the process of identifying subjects, setting boundaries, and defining problems. The chapters are grouped into two sections: a conceptual section and a case section. The conceptual section introduces readers to theories and concepts that can be used to achieve multiple understandings of sustainability; in turn, the case section highlights different ways of comprehending sustainability for researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders.

The book offers diverse illustrations of what sustainability concepts entail, both conceptually and empirically, and will help readers become aware of the implicit framings in sustainability-related discourses. In the extant literature, sustainability challenges such as climate change, sustainable development, and rapid urbanization have largely been treated as “pre-set,” fixed topics, while possible solutions have been discussed intensively. In contrast, this book examines the framings applied to the sustainability challenges themselves, and illustrates the road that led us to the current sustainability discourse.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Theoretical Approaches to Sustainability Issues

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 1. Framing in Sustainability Science
Abstract
This chapter discusses multiple understanding of sustainability by examining the process to identify what must be framed as sustainability challenges. The chapter first provides a summary of past development of sustainability science as a new interdisciplinary filed that sets its primary purposes in understanding complex human-nature system and academic knowledge contribution to the pursuit of sustainable development. To elaborate some of the educational features of sustainability science, brief history and curriculum design of Graduate Program in Sustainability Science – Global Leadership Initiative (GPSS-GLI) of The University of Tokyo is introduced. One central question in sustainability science is “what to frame as sustainability challenges?”. The chapter employs the concept of framing to examine what topics to be included and how they should be discussed in sustainability science. Framing explains how people perceive and interpret particular topics or events with the social norms, values, and assumptions that they apply in all situations. Being self-aware about what type of framing is used when discussing particular sustainability challenge is critically important. At the last, the chapter proposes a conceptual framework that includes holistic treatment, resilience, and trans-boundary thinking to depict multi-level dynamics of sustainability challenges. This framework serves as a guideline to (i) analyze the complexity of sustainability issues through multiple framings, (ii) apply holistic treatment and trans-boundary thinking in the process of developing action plans, and (iii) evaluate the proposed actions from the perspectives of both top-down approaches and bottom-up approaches. The authors believe that sustainability experts must be trained with knowledge and skills to utilize this framework in sustainability research and action projects.
Shogo Kudo, Takashi Mino

Open Access

Chapter 2. Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in Sustainability Science
Abstract
Sustainability science is an integrative scientific field embracing not only complementary but also contradictory approaches and perspectives for dealing with an array of sustainability challenges.
In this chapter we distinguish between pluralism and unification as two main and distinctly different approaches to knowledge integration in sustainability science. To avoid environmental determinism, functionalism, or overly firm reliance on rational choice theory, we have reason to promote pluralism as a way to better tackle sustainability challenges. In particular we emphasise two main benefits of taking a pluralist approach in research: it opens up for collaboration, and ensures a more theoretically informed understanding of society.
After a brief introduction to how we interpret the field of sustainability science, we discuss ontology, epistemology and ways of understanding society based on social science theory. We make three contributions. First, we identify important reasons for the incommensurability between the social and natural sciences, and propose remedies for how to overcome some of the difficulties in integrative research. Second, by suggesting a frame that we call ‘social fields and natural systems’ we show how sustainability science will benefit from drawing more profoundly on – and thus more adequately incorporate – a social science understanding of society. As such, the frame is a foundation for pluralism. Third, by suggesting a new theoretical typology, we show how sustainability visions and pathways are associated with particular theoretical and methodological perspectives in geography, political science, and sociology; and how that matters for research and politics addressing sustainability challenges. The typology can be used as a thinking tool to frame and reframe research.
Anne Jerneck, Lennart Olsson

Open Access

Chapter 3. Approaches for Framing Sustainability Challenges: Experiences from Swedish Sustainability Science Education
Abstract
Sustainability challenges are defined by their complex and multifaceted interactions between nature and society and contention as to how and where to direct problem-solving efforts. This chapter presents four different approaches that exist for framing sustainability challenge areas that are introduced and worked with by students in LUMES International Master Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University in Sweden. The approaches include the (1) Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, (2) causal loop diagrams (CLDs), (3) multi-scale and level perspective, including transition theory and management, and the SES framework. Each approach is described and critically assessed, especially from the perspective of student mastery. The outcome of the chapter is a more comprehensive understanding of which approaches are useful for different sustainability problem constellations and a deeper comprehension of how the framing tools can be taught in sustainability science education.
Barry Ness

Practical Approaches to Sustainability Issues

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 4. The Value of Grey
Abstract
Modern urban planning, initiated in Western Europe and North America at the dawn of the twentieth century, framed the concept of “city” as an area where no agricultural land uses should be included. In Japan, however, the demarcation between the city and countryside was ambiguously “grey” in comparison to that of Western cities. This ambiguous mixture of urban and rural land uses characterized both the fringe and the interior of Japanese cities as well. Edo, the former name of Tokyo, was already the largest city in the world in the eighteenth century with more than one million people; but at the same time, welcomed and was quite compatible with a vast amount of agricultural land that covered more than 40% of the city.
Detesting an ambiguous “grey” mixture and adoring homogeneity and clear “black-and-white” separation of land were the precepts of modern urban planning; that is, how modern urban planners framed the problem of building sustainable cities. According to such an urban planning concept, the Japanese mixed land use has long been regarded as a premodern and deniable use of land. One key feature of the 1939 Comprehensive Parks and Open Space Plan of Tokyo was developing a greenbelt surrounding Tokyo to clearly differentiate the central core of the city with its urban land uses from the surrounding countryside with its rural land uses. The City Planning Act in 1968 also aimed at achieving a clear separation of urban and rural land uses by designating Urbanization Promotion Areas (UPA) and Urbanization Control Areas (UCA) in each local municipality.
Cities are regarded as an entity that never creates but merely absorbs natural resources, especially food. The threat of natural disasters in Western European and North American cities is extremely low in comparison to Asian cities, and thus systems to transport food can be expected to operate with virtually little or no disruption. Cities in Asia, including those in Japan, are not afforded this luxury. They frequently suffer from sudden disruptions in transportation infrastructure caused by earthquakes, tropical hurricanes, and other natural disasters that are part of everyday life. Such a situation should therefore motivate Asian cities to maintain a redundant food supply system that can supply food even in emergencies, when logistics are disrupted for an inordinate period of time, by planning for both internal and external food supplies. Agricultural land in the city – the land likely perceived as an ambiguous “grey” mixture from the non-Asian perspective – should therefore be regarded as a reasonable and prudent land use rooted in the Asian environment. Agricultural lands also provide ecological services and are thus a crucial element for creating a sustainable city.
One conventional framing of modern civilization is its “digital approach”, which tries to deductively identify fundamental elements in a “black or white” manner and then inductively synthesize such elements to re-build the entity. From such a two-value approach, the multi-value approach of “grey” has been regarded as an incomplete stage that should further be analytically identified as an entity composed of black or white elements. However, the land use mixture identified in Asian cities conveys the need for a new framing that restores and nurtures the value of grey, especially when planning for the sustainable future of the city and its surrounding region by respecting their vernacular landscapes.
Makoto Yokohari, Akito Murayama, Toru Terada

Open Access

Chapter 5. Framing in Placemaking When Envisioning a Sustainable Rural Community in the Time of Aging and Shrinking Societies in Japan
Abstract
This chapter examines the concept of rural sustainability in the time of an aging and shrinking society. The chapter first introduces the demographic change that Japan is experiencing, a shift from young and growing population to an aged and declining population. Affected by this change, rural regions are facing numerous challenges affecting living conditions of individuals and downscaling socioeconomic activities at regional and communal scales. The multifunctionality framework is applied to understand the past pattern of rural transition. This allows to illustrate subsequent possible phases in the transition driven by an aging and shrinking population. The chapter then provides a review of the placemaking concept, followed by one case study of a placemaking workshop called Monogatari workshop in Gojome, Akita prefecture, Japan. This case study describes how a group of local youth envisioned the future state of their community. The chapter proposes a conceptual illustration of new perspective that the workshop participants gained. The illustration introduces four types of stories, which are story of the past, story of the present, story of the future, and story of oneself. The workshop provided the process to learn personal and collective memories of particular places from older residents of the town. By reflecting on their stories, the participants discussed how they would like to change the same places in the future. The workshop corresponds to the social capital component in the multifunctionality framework which emphasizes intergenerational ties. The chapter suggest the future research should aim to link intergenerational ties to other two capital components of the multifunctionality framework. By doing so, a vision of stable transition to relocalized system will be established even though rural regions continue to experience aging and shrinking of population.
Shogo Kudo

Open Access

Chapter 6. Role in Framing in Sustainability Science — The Case of Minamata Disease
Abstract
This chapter discusses multiple framings employed in Mainamata disease. Minamata disease is one of the major health problems caused by industrial pollution during Japan’s high economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s. By conducting a historical review of Minamata disease, this chapter discusses typical framings applied in sustainability discourses in Japan, which have been led by pollution discourses. Two typical interpretations of Minamata disease are identified. One is that Minamata disease is a past event in Japanese history. It was a bitter experience, however thanks to this experience, the once-damaged Japanese environment became clean as environmental governance became stricter, regulations were established, and new environmental technologies were developed. Thus, one framing to Minamata disease is a historic event that Japan has learned lessons from the event, and something can be proud of how quickly Japan has recovered from such disaster. In contrast, even today, large-scale health examinations to understand the overall picture of methylmercury-derived health damage and to discover people with unrecognized symptoms continue. Therefore, Minamata disease remain unresolved and the local and national governments as well as Japanese society ignore the potentially hidden victims. The gap between these two framings is widening as the majority of the general public is unaware of the existence of the latter and some even believe that such humanitarian-conscious people are exaggerating their claims in an effort to obtain excessive compensation. To move forward, it is necessary to careful examine which part of framings people agree and disagree. By doing so, the essential nature of Minamata disease becomes clearer and collaboration among the people having different views may be possible. The ability to elicit and understand the true feelings of different stakeholders, the ability to apply different types of framings, and the ability to connect the people with different views, are critical when discussing a sustainability challenge that can be framed in diverse ways.
Motoharu Onuki

Open Access

Chapter 7. Time-Scale in Framing Disaster Risk Reduction in Sustainability
Abstract
Disaster Risk Reduction is one of the most important topics in sustainability science, seeking to examine the vulnerability and resilience of human life and society to natural hazards through the reduction and management of risks. However, disasters are caused by many different types of natural hazard events that take place in exposed and vulnerable areas across time spans. The size of the area and times-scale of the impact can also differ greatly. Possible actions to improve preparedness, countermeasures, actors or stakeholders involved, and person(s) in charge of these measures vary depending on the type of disaster. This chapter describes two different types of coastal issues, namely tsunamis and sea level rise, and the types of countermeasures available to either Japanese coastal towns or small coral islands. How these issues are perceived and dealt with will then be discussed from the point of view of time-scales, which affect the human perception of the problem.
Miguel Esteban, Lilian Yamamoto, Lau Jamero, Takashi Mino

Open Access

Chapter 8. Framing Food Security and Poverty Alleviation
Abstract
This chapter addresses current problems of food security, which is considered as one of the most important factors in development strategies to alleviate poverty, by examining relevant policies on agriculture and by discussing different ways to frame food security strategies. The commonly applied framing of development strategies–including strategies for food security–has been the enhancement of market function, even though actual approaches have been changing with the recognition of unexpected results such as environmental degradation and nutrition problems. Implementation of these policies has caused a decoupling of production and consumption. As a result, agricultural policies that represent the production or supply side have been implemented apart from nutrition policies, which are relevant to the consumption or demand side. In other words, because agricultural policies and nutrition policies have their own framings and because these framings are not integrated, many problems have occurred. It must be considered how decoupled production or supply can be combined with consumption or demand. In this connection, people’s understanding of value that should reflect the shadow price must be transformed. Psychological strategies of providing proper information must be implemented with the SDGs, which are assumed to combine selected aims and targets based on particular contexts by stakeholders such as national governments, local municipalities, private companies, and international organizations.
Hirotaka Matsuda, Makiko Sekiyama, Kazuaki Tsuchiya, Chiahsin Chen, Eri Aoki, Rimbawan Rimbawan, Tai Tue Nguyen

Epilogue

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 9. Linking Framing to Actions for Sustanability
Abstract
This chapter first introduces the aim of this book and explains the book structure that provides chapters on theoretical discussions and practical applications of different framing in specific cases. Secondly, the chapter provides summaries of all previous chapters. Thirdly, the chapter describes that sustainability science has two main roles based on a premise that sustainable development as a trajectory-based concept, that are (i) examining the past patterns of trajectories that have brought societies to their present state, and (ii) designing the future based on the actions of the current generation. Reflecting these roles, the authors argue that sustainability science examines the intended and unintended consequences of actions taken by various actors. Lastly, the authors remark that an attitude to be flexible and accepting to other’s framings is extremely important in order to have collaborative actions for sustainability.
Takashi Mino, Shogo Kudo
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Framing in Sustainability Science
Editors
Prof. Dr. Takashi Mino
Dr. Shogo Kudo
Copyright Year
2020
Publisher
Springer Singapore
Electronic ISBN
978-981-13-9061-6
Print ISBN
978-981-13-9060-9
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9061-6