Three principles for co-designing sustainability intervention strategies: Experiences from Southern Transylvania

Abstract

Transformational research frameworks provide understanding and guidance for fostering change towards sustainability. They comprise stages of system understanding, visioning and co-designing intervention strategies to foster change. Guidance and empirical examples for how to facilitate the process of codesigning intervention strategies in real-world contexts remain scarce, especially with regard to integrating local initiatives. We suggest three principles to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention strategies that integrate local initiatives: (1) Explore existing and envisioned initiatives fostering change towards the desired future; (2) Frame the intervention strategy to bridge the gap between the present state and desired future state(s), building on, strengthening and complementing existing initiatives; (3) Identify drivers, barriers and potential leverage points for how to accelerate progress towards sustainability. We illustrate our approach via a case study on sustainable development in Southern Transylvania. We conclude that our principles were useful in the case study, especially with regards to integrating initiatives, and could also be applied in other real-world contexts.

Indigenous and local knowledge in environmental management for human-nature connectedness: a leverage points perspective

“…In sustainability science, applying an LP perspective has demonstrated to be a useful tool to generate new insights in diverse contexts. For example in the context of gender equality and human well-being among smallscale farmers in Ethiopia (Manlosa et al 2019), amplification of impact from local sustainability initiatives driven by non-governmental organizations in Southern Transylvania (Lam et al 2020b), or improving coexistence between humans and large carnivores in Europe, Asia and South America (Hartel et al 2019).…”

Scaling the impact of sustainability initiatives: a typology of amplification processes

“…Therefore, we highlight that urban and rural sustainability transformations may be best understood when considering them as place-based societal changes driven by local actors. This includes the development and implementation of sustainability initiatives by local actors that realise local and global worldviews, mind-sets, and values Lam et al 2019).…”

“…Their focus depends on the context and agency (e.g., individual or collective), and can be, for example, on urban agroecology, climate smart cities, or green design (Pereira et al 2018). Sustainability initiatives are crucial for transformations because they can over time coalesce to shift dominant regimes onto more sustainable pathways and thus foster transformative change (Pereira et al 2018;Lam et al 2019). Different research areas refer to sustainability initiatives with unique terms such as grassroots innovations (Seyfang and Smith 2007), seeds of a good Anthropocene (Bennett et al 2016), social innovations (Westley and Antadze 2010;Moore et al 2015), transition experiments (Caniglia et al 2017;Sengers et al 2019), and transition initiatives (Frantzeskaki et al 2016;Gorissen et al 2018).…”

A leverage points perspective on social networks to understand sustainability transformations: evidence from Southern Transylvania

“…They act through numerous initiatives dealing with nature and cultural heritage conservation, supporting small-scale farming, eco-tourism, or rural community development (Fig. 2) Lam et al 2020a). For example, the Mihai Eminescu Trust is an NGO that leads different initiatives to conserve and regenerate villages and communities in Transylvania by, for instance, revitalizing traditional handicrafts, or supporting peasants to access communal pasture land for their livestock (www.mihai emine scutr ust.org).…”

“…Local actors, including individuals or groups of people (e.g., initiatives, projects, communities, organisations, or companies), have agency to act at a local scale and drive bottom-up initiatives as a response to environmental and social challenges (Liehr et al 2017;Schlüter et al 2019). Local actors and their sustainability initiatives can provide multiple and innovative ideas to address sustainability challenges and intervene in systems while representing a diversity of practices, knowledge systems, worldviews, values, and regions (Bennett et al 2016;Lam et al 2020a). Initiatives can focus on, for instance, sustainable production and consumption of food, energy, or water, or the conservation of biodiversity and cultural heritage (Bennett et al 2016).…”