Transforming Knowledge for Sustainability: Towards Adaptive Academic Institutions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that the types of and ways in which academic institutions produce knowledge are insufficient to contribute to a transition to sustainability.Design/methodology/approach – Reflecting on experiences at the School of Sustainability, the authors contend that a different kind of knowledge is needed, what we call sustainability knowledge. A conceptual approach is taken wherein the authors propose several characteristics of sustainability knowledge and offer some proposals on how academic institutions must be structured to produce it.Findings – Sustainability knowledge has several characteristics including social robustness, recognition of system complexity and uncertainty, acknowledgement of multiple ways of knowing and the incorporation of normative and ethical premises. In order to produce sustainability knowledge, the knowledge production process itself must be changed to be more adaptive and engaged with society. Two organizing characteristics for institutions...

[1]  T. Kuhn.  The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. , 1996 .

[2]  M. Gibbons,et al.  Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty , 2003 .

[3]  Clark A. Miller.  Civic Epistemologies: Constituting Knowledge and Order in Political Communities , 2008 .

[4]  Glenda H. Eoyang,et al.  Facilitating Organization Change: Lessons from Complexity Science , 2001 .

[5]  H. Longino.  Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry , 1990 .

[6]  B. Norton.  Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management , 2005 .

[7]  J. Lubchenco.  Entering the Century of the Environment: A New Social Contract for Science , 1998 .

[8]  C. S. Holling,et al.  Panarchy Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems , 2002 .

[9]  D. E. Stokes.  Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation , 1997 .

[10]  C. Tebaldi,et al.  Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030 , 2008, Science.

[11]  C. S. Holling,et al.  Resilience and adaptive cycles , 2002 .

[12]  Kai N. Lee.  Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment, Kai N. Lee. 1993. Island Press, Washington, DC. 290 pages. ISBN: 1-59963-197-X. $25.00 , 1993 .

[13]  Michael Gibbons,et al.  Science's new social contract with society , 1999, Nature.

[14]  Heather Douglas.  Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal , 2009 .

[15]  A. Stirling.  Precaution, Foresight and Sustainability: Reflection and Reflexivity in the Governance of Science and Technology , 2006 .

[16]  Roger A. Pielke,et al.  Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate , 2005 .

[17]  T. Sisk,et al.  Reframing the grazing debate: Evaluating ecological sustainability and bioregional food production , 2001 .

[18]  Thaddeus R. Miller,et al.  Epistemological Pluralism: Reorganizing Interdisciplinary Research , 2008 .

[19]  S. Healy,et al.  Epistemological pluralism and the ‘politics of choice’ , 2003 .

[20]  C. S. Holling.  Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems , 1973 .

[21]  S. Funtowicz,et al.  Science for the Post-Normal Age , 1993, Commonplace.

[22]  W. Clark.  Sustainability Science: A room of its own , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[23]  A. Grunwald.  Strategic knowledge for sustainable development: the need for reflexivity and learning at the interface between science and society , 2004 .

[24]  J. Anderies.  Robustness, institutions, and large-scale change in social-ecological systems: the Hohokam of the Phoenix Basin , 2006, Journal of Institutional Economics.

[25]  Thomas J. Wilbanks,et al.  Bridging scales and knowledge systems: concepts and applications in ecosystem assessment , 2006 .

[26]  J. Barnett.  Adapting to climate change: three key challenges for research and policy–an editorial essay , 2010 .

[27]  Elinor Ostrom,et al.  Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems , 2007, Science.

[28]  A. Kinzig,et al.  Resilience of past landscapes: Resilience theory, society, and the Longue Durée , 2003 .

[29]  W. Clark,et al.  Sustainability science: The emerging research program , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[30]  C. Michael Barton,et al.  Resilience Lost: Intersecting Land Use and Landscape Dynamics in the Prehistoric Southwestern United States , 2006 .

[31]  S. Epstein.  Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge , 1998 .

[32]  Mark W. McElroy,et al.  The New Knowledge Management: Complexity,Learning,and Sustainable Innovation , 2002 .

[33]  Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson,et al.  Linking Ecosystem Health Indicators and Collaborative Management: a Systematic Framework to Evaluate Ecological and Social Outcomes , 2007 .

[34]  H. Rittel,et al.  Dilemmas in a general theory of planning , 1973 .

[35]  Mark W. McElroy,et al.  The New Knowledge Management , 2000 .

[36]  David Salt,et al.  Resilience Thinking : Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World , 2017 .

[37]  Julian D Marshall,et al.  Framing the elusive concept of sustainability: a sustainability hierarchy. , 2005, Environmental science & technology.

[38]  Michael Quinn Patton,et al.  Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed , 2008 .

[39]  W. Reid,et al.  Millennium Ecosystem Assessment , 2005 .

[40]  Arnim Wiek,et al.  Challenges of transdisciplinary research as interactive knowledge generation experiences from transdisciplinary case study research , 2007 .