Good afternoon, as most you know my name is Matai
Blacklock. Today I will be presenting
Dr. Fred Luks’ and Dr, Bernd Sibenhuner’s article:
Transdisciplinarity for social learning? The contribution of the
German socio-ecological research initiative to sustainability
governance.
The article was published in the journal of Ecological
Economics in January 2007.
I chose to present this article because of its relevance to
numerous topics we have discussed in class and also to some of
my personal interests about German sustainability.
Both authors are very distinguished and are of German
decent so please forgive any mispronunciations of names or
Universities.
Dr. Frank Luks studied at the Hamburg University of
Economics and Policy and at the University of Hawaii at
Manoa.
He has held US based research posts as well as two
professorships at universities. Luks has authored and coauthored numerous articles and published two books.
Luks’ background, combined with the main focuses of his
work, add to his credibility and have made him a respected
authority on numerous sustainability topics.
Dr. Bernd Seibenhuner received his PH.D from Martin-Luther
University Halle-Wittenberg and Master’s degrees in Economics
and Political Science from the Free University Berlin. He has
also had a distinguished research career in sustainability related
fields and holds prestigious positions at elite institutions.
.
The authors support their case by citing relevant and
supporting information from other research articles.
The authors also draw upon their personal data basses,
using their insight from participant observation which occurred
while they were actively involved in the Socio-Ecological
Research Program in Germany to illustrate the many aspects of
the program.
Their first-hand, working knowledge of the material, as
well as their academic and professional backgrounds give their
research excellent credibility.
Dr. Luks and Seibenhuner’s research is aimed conveying four
main topics:
-They describe the current debates concerning the role of
science for social learning, in the context of sustainable
development.
- They illustrate five specific challenges associated with modern
scientific activities.
- Then they introduce the German Socio-Ecological Research
Initiative and analyze the program based on the aforementioned
criteria.
- Finally; they articulate the relevance of the relation between
socio-ecological research, ecological economics and sustainable
development.
To aid in familiarizing you with their research I will first
define several key terms based on their context to the research.
- Ecological economics is defined as the science and
management of sustainable development and the
governance processes which it promotes.
The authors claim, that an ecological economist must grasp
the connection between the economy, society and the natural
environment while accounting for the role that numerous
societal actors play.
- The authors emphasize that old views have become obsolete
while novel perspectives on science are necessary in order to
facilitate sustainable development.
The proposed novel science methods are highly complex
and aim to tackle multidimensional problems that face our
society.
The authors also propose that the new perspective on
science can cope with changing modes of governance and
adequately promote social leaning.
Social learning is described as the prime governance
process to approach the objectives of sustainable development.
The authors claim that the generation of new related knowledge
can induce societal norms which aim to correct sustainability
problems.
The article demonstrates how science has been
transitioning from conventional methods to more modern ones.
This has promoted social learning, knowledge generation,
and resulted in practical solutions to problems.
The authors illustrate four ways in which science has
undergone changes in order to facilitate social learning.
The first one mentioned is mode-2 science, a term coined
by a prominent scientist Michael Gibbons. Mode 2 science is
defined as being concerned with problems that are characteristic
of numerous uncertainties. The delineation of boundaries
between science, politics and society, typical of conventional
methods; does not allow for the realization of the benefits
generated from multidisciplinary scientific approaches.
The next example of how sciences roles’ are changing to
adapt to societies needs is that the co-production of knowledge
is becoming increasingly important. This shows that the
involvement of multiple societal actors is needed in order to
generate adequate scientific knowledge, which can then be
applied to sustainable development issues. Once applied, its goal
is to improve the governance and policy making process and
ultimately generate practical solutions.
Another prominent researcher and scholar, Sheila Jasanoff,
proposes four key theoretical areas of co-production.
The four key areas of co-production are:
One, that the identities of engineers and scientists are
formed within the processes of scientific knowledge production.
Two, that beneficial institutions can be formed through
scientific debates resulting from diverse stakeholder interaction.
Three, that the discourse process between scientists,
engineers and societal actors assigns meaning to certain aspects
of society
And four, that the political and social worlds combine to
create scientific concepts and theories which influence culture,
politics and ultimately history.
These four key areas of co-production demonstrate the need
for the collaboration of diverse societal stakeholders in the
process of knowledge generation.
Sustainability science is shown by the authors to
promote the attainment of sustainable development goals,
through the generation and application of sustainability
knowledge.
The authors claim that this knowledge is crucial for
the development of sustainability oriented policies and
incentives; which aim to advance the transition toward
sustainable ecosystems.
Due to these specific goals, the authors portray how
scientific research can no long focus on objectivity, but
must instead strive to become normative.
The authors describe normative research as one that
evokes key social norms which aim to promote certain
goals. In this case, sustainability.
Post-Normal science is described by the authors as an
attempt to increase the problem solving ability of scientific
work and research.
It focuses on specific types of problems where the
scientific input has not yet been fully developed, but the
decisions that need to be made based on the input have
grave consequences.
The authors refer to this situation as one where “soft”
scientific inputs are present, and “hard” value decisions
need to be made.
The easiest way to comprehend this notion is by
assigning the scientific knowledge about climate change, to
be perceived by climate change opponents as “soft” or
deficient; yet the overarching consequences of the topic are
“hard” or severe.
Post-normal science requires new methodologies to
actively work at implementing normative policy changes
which allow for the increasingly threatening stakes, in
scientific work, to be handled by quality research findings.
The article outlines how in order to include diverse
stakeholders into the knowledge generation process,
scientists must develop new methodologies and ways of
communicating with the non-scientific community.
The German Socio-Ecological Initiative was established in
1999 by the German Federal Ministry for Education research.
Its main goal was to incorporate Transdisciplinarity, or the
collaboration between diverse societal actors, into sustainable
development related research projects.
Most projects exhibit some of the novel science practices
that were previously described.
The socio-ecological research program categorizes its
projects in one of four categories.
One group of projects deals with networks of supply and
disposal systmems. The reasearchers are concerned with the
causes of change to the systems, and aim to develop knowledge
which can make the systems more sustainable.
Sustainable food and agriculture systems ecompasses the
entire supply chain of food production and investigates
alternative agriculture and lifestyle methods.
Urban and regional development analyzes alternative
means of the reconstruction of urban areas, focusing on
improving their sustainability.
The evaluation of transdisciplinary research is the most
significant one which makes up the smallest category of
miscelanoues projects.
The authors analyze the Socio-Ecological Reseach
Program in Germany, based on the criteria of 5 main challenges
that they believe Sustainability focused scientific work is
plagued with:
Transdisciplinarity, Policy integration, Normativity, Learning
approaches to governance, and International dimension
Transdisciplinarity is essentially the collaboration between
scientific and non-scientific societal actors attempting to
generate scientific knowledge which will envoke policy change
and benefit sustainable development.
The article demonstrates that the German socio-ecological
research program accomplishes the goal of developing complex
interdisciplinary research teams due to diverse teams being
required by all project proposals.
However, the program still has room for inprovement since
the authors claim that the projects are still mainly dominated by
social sciences.
The authors illustrate that Active Policy Integration is a
challenge facing the entire scientific community. The authors
state that all sustainable development focused scientific work
should aim to create knowledge which will affect the political
decision making process.
In order for the knowledge to be robust enough it must be
formed by collaboraiton and be credible within scientific and
scoietal communities.
The authors predicted that the socio-ecological research
program would not succesfully overcome this challenege. Even
though the program constitutes diverse research teams,
contributing actor groups are selected from a relatively small
pool and region.
The program could be made more robust if a broader range
of societal actors were chosen.
The authors state that all project participants of the socioecological research initiative were aware that the basic
normativity of their work was intended to elicit practical
solutions to sustainble development problems.
The socio-ecological initiative was able to to somewhat
achieve normativity, however it is quite difficult.
Normativity requires good communication skills between
scientific and non-scientific actors. These skills are part of
practicing post-norm science and are essential toward gaining
the widespread acklowledgement of scientific knowledge.
From the inception of the socio-ecological initiative, the
authors acknowledged that its goal was to promote sustainability
related learning, and apply the new found knowledge to improve
governance systems.
The initiative even forsaw potential changes due to the
uncertain nature of sustainble development and established two
institutions which could facilitate any necessary changes.
The challenege of internationaly approaching socioecological research was not overcome by the program.
The program’s projects were too locally focused on regions
throughout Germany and not within other nations.
The authors saw this as a crucial failure of the project at the
time, but stated that it could be improved if project propossals
were accepted from foreign nations.
However, due to the fact that the program was funded by
the German Ministry, the funding of forgeing projects would
most likely not be taken into consideration.
In conclusion, science faces many challenges that connot
be met by perpetuating conventional methods. New tehcniques
are needed to produce quality scientific knowledge that can
overcome the main challenges facing sustainble development.
The German Socio-Ecological Research Program was a
noteworthy attempt at implementing novel scientific practices
with the goal of developing applicable sustainability oriented
knowledge. The program had its flaws and benefits, but overall
definitely impacted Germany for the better do to the learning
nature of the program.
The authors conclude by discusing how socio-ecological
research programs in genreal relate to ecological economics.
They differ due to the interal communicaiton goal of
ecological economics, and the external communicaiton goal of
socio-ecologic research.
However, they both envision science as a transdisciplinary
field where quality knowledge is attempted to be produced and
applied to relevant practical uses in the field of sustainable
development.
Thank you very much for your time and please feel free to ask
questions.