Ontology and integrative research on Global Environmental Change: towards a critical GEC science

Emmenegger, Rony; Rowan, Rory; Zuppinger‐Dingley, Debra; Krug, Cornelia B.; Parreño, María Alejandra; Korf, Benedikt

doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2018.02.001

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The integration of natural science and social science was, in particular, a major challenge, and the desire for bridging this gap mobilized a transition to Future Earth (Lahsen, 2016). However, there are criticisms that Future Earth does not sufficiently engage with critical social science, by prioritizing natural science agendas (Emmenegger et al, 2017;Lövbrand et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Genesis Of Future Earth: From Earth System To Global Susmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, such an approach can also create a 'shadow' by seeking consensus. The commitment to consensus necessarily involves a practice of inclusion and exclusion, which in turn conceals the ontological politics of knowledge (Emmenegger et al, 2017;. When the debate is characterized more by disagreement than agreement, pursuing consensus is problematic because it will eliminate or oppress the dissenting opinions that might be valuable for addressing complex problems (Sarewitz, 2011).…”

Section: Between Consensus and Conflict: Governing Tensions In Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond solutionist science for the Anthropocene: To navigate the contentious atmosphere of solar geoengineering

Asayama

Sugiyama

Ishii

et al. 2019

The Anthropocene Review

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The emerging narrative of the Anthropocene has created a new space for changes in global environmental change (GEC) science. On the one hand, there is a mounting call for changing scientific practices towards a solution-oriented transdisciplinary mode that can help achieve global sustainability. On the other hand, the scientists’ desire to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries has broken a taboo on researching solar geoengineering, a dangerous idea of deliberately cooling the Earth’s climate. Whilst to date the two features have been discussed separately, there is a possible confluence in the future. This paper explores this close yet precarious relationship between transdisciplinary GEC science and solar geoengineering in the context of Future Earth, a new international platform of Earth system science. Our aim is to understand how a transdisciplinary mode of science can navigate the contention over solar geoengineering and its course of research without breeding polarization. By seeking the immediacy of ‘problem-solving’, Future Earth is drawn into the solutionist thinking that orders the mode of engagement in pursuing consensus. However, because conflict is inescapable on the solar geoengineering debate, transdisciplinary engagement might as well aim at mapping out plural viewpoints and allowing people to disagree. In transdisciplinary engagement, as co-design signifies the engagement of stakeholders with decision-making in science, a fair and transparent procedure of making decisions is also needed. From our own experience of co-designing research priorities, we suggest that, if carefully designed, voting can be a useful tool to mediate the contentious process of transdisciplinary decision-making with three different benefits for collective decision-making, namely, efficiency, inclusivity and learning. For the future directions of transdisciplinary GEC science, since the Anthropocene challenges are truly uncertain and contentious, it is argued that the science for the Anthropocene should move away from a solutionist paradigm towards an experimentalist turn.

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Section: The Genesis Of Future Earth: From Earth System To Global Susmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Between Consensus and Conflict: Governing Tensions In Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond solutionist science for the Anthropocene: To navigate the contentious atmosphere of solar geoengineering

Asayama

Sugiyama

Ishii

et al. 2019

The Anthropocene Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Recently, along with global environmental issues, co-creation principles have become prominent also in the scientific disciplines that aim to respond to global sustainability challenges [7][8][9]. Emmenegger et al [10] have recognised the need for integrative research initiatives as scientific knowledge targets various social aims and is inherently situated within networks of social and institutional power. This paper examines the process of co-creation for global change research in the national context of Finland.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the field of global change research, complex sustainability problems, such as water scarcity, epidemics and climate change, especially in the global south require new ways of knowledge production and decision-making (e.g. [9][10][11][12][13]). While the focus of global change research may have been in the global south, research on urgent future sustainability challenges in terms of global change is called for in the northern context as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Co-creating transdisciplinary global change research agendas in Finland

et al. 2020

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Co-creation principles have become prominent in the scientific disciplines that aim to respond to global sustainability challenges especially in the global south. This paper analyses a co-creation pilot of global change research in the novel context of a Nordic country, Finland. The pilot was organised to learn how to create a future agenda for a complex and transdisciplinary research field of global change. This paper analyses its conceptualisation in Finland, how did the series of engagement events increase the capacities of participants and how did the process contribute to a change towards a new, societally responsible way of co-creating global change research. The study found that co-creation suits well for the translation of important societal questions into global research agendas and for networking actors to cocreation activities. Based on the study, we argue that co-creation offers a socially acceptable approach to address socially critical topics to design transdisciplinary social and sustainability research.

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Transdisciplinary transformative change: an analysis of some best practices and barriers, and the potential of critical social science in getting us there

et al. 2023

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Biodiversity experts now widely acknowledge that transformative change is best supported through transdisciplinary collaborations. Yet, such collaborations rarely successfully occur in major biodiversity research institutions and those that do rarely achieve the paradigmatic effects they aim to deliver. To gain some insight into this global phenomenon, we surveyed Swiss-based researchers and non-academic stakeholders addressing global change and biodiversity. In this article, we connect our findings to global patterns in transdisciplinary transformative change initiatives (TTCIs) and heuristically divide collaboration barriers into two categories: lack of resources and lack of vital functional elements. Two of the major themes that emerged from this research were the continued difficulties with (1) establishing a common ‘language’, understanding, and goals, and (2) meaningful pluralization of knowledge in transdisciplinary collaborations aimed at addressing global change and biodiversity loss. The former is widely cited in the literature as contributing to the failure of TTCIs in the form of incoherent problem-framing, while the latter is often identified as contributing to the lack of structural transformative change (e.g., paradigmatic shifts) in completed initiatives. Another major theme reflected in TTCI literature was limited time. Moreover, based on our own extensive inter- and transdisciplinary experience, we agree with other experts that there is a persistent lack of understanding of the potential contributions of critical social science (CSS) to TTCIs. We thus argue that enhancing resource availability for TTCIs, especially tools for improving CSS literacy, could save time and support both problem-framing alignment and delivery of the structural/paradigmatic changes we aspire to.

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Ontology and integrative research on Global Environmental Change: towards a critical GEC science

Cited by 8 publications

References 45 publications

Beyond solutionist science for the Anthropocene: To navigate the contentious atmosphere of solar geoengineering

Beyond solutionist science for the Anthropocene: To navigate the contentious atmosphere of solar geoengineering

Co-creating transdisciplinary global change research agendas in Finland

Transdisciplinary transformative change: an analysis of some best practices and barriers, and the potential of critical social science in getting us there

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