Sustainability Science

There is emerging agreement that sustainability challenges require new ways of knowledge production and decision-making. One key aspect of sustainability science, therefore, is the involvement of actors from outside academia into the research process in order to integrate the best available knowledge, reconcile values and preferences, as well as create ownership for problems and solution options. Transdisciplinary, community-based, interactive, or participatory research approaches are often suggested as appropriate means to meet both the requirements posed by real-world problems as well as the goals of sustainability science as a transformational scientific field. Dispersed literature on these approaches and a variety of empirical projects applying them make it difficult for interested researchers and practitioners to review and become familiar with key components and design principles of how to do transdisciplinary sustainability research. Starting from a conceptual model of an ideal-typical transdisciplinary research process, this article synthesizes and structures such a set of principles from various strands of the literature and empirical experiences. We then elaborate on them, looking at challenges and some coping strategies as experienced in transdisciplinary sustainability projects in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. The article concludes with future research needed in order to further enhance the practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research.

Over the last decade, sustainability science has been at the leading edge of widespread efforts from the social and natural sciences to produce use-inspired research. Yet, how knowledge generated by sustainability science and allied fields will contribute to transitions toward sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. This article explores the limitations of sustainability science research to move the field beyond the analysis of problems in coupled systems to interrogate the social, political and technological dimensions of linking knowledge and action. Over the next decade, sustainability science can strengthen its empirical, theoretical and practical contributions by developing along four research pathways focused on the role of values in science and decision-making for sustainability: how communities at various scales envision and pursue sustainable futures; how socio-technical change can be fostered at multiple scales; the promotion of social and institutional learning for sustainable development.

International aid is increasingly focused on adaptation to climate change. At recent meetings of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the developed world agreed to rapidly increase international assistance to help the developing world respond to the impacts of climate change. In this paper, we examine the decision-making challenges facing internationally supported climate change adaptation projects, using the example of efforts to implement coastal protection measures (e.g. sea walls, mangrove planting) in Kiribati. The central equatorial Pacific country is home to the Kiribati Adaptation Project, the first national-level climate change adaptation project supported by the World Bank. Drawing on interview and document research conducted over an 8-year period, we trace the forces influencing decisions about coastal protection measures, starting from the variability and uncertainty in climate change projections, through the trade-offs between different measures, to the social, political, and economic context in which decisions are finally made. We then discuss how sub-optimal adaptation measures may be implemented despite years of planning, consultation, and technical studies. This qualitative analysis of the real-world process of climate change adaptation reveals that embracing a culturally appropriate and short-term (*20 years) planning horizon, while not ignoring the longer-term future, may reduce the influence of scientific uncertainty on decisions and provide opportunities to learn from mistakes, reassess the science, and adjust suboptimal investments. The limiting element in this approach to adaptation is likely to be the availability of consistent, long-term financing.

This is the inaugural blog of the newly launched sustainability and education web portal Bifrost Online.(www.bifrostonline.org) Two years ago 195 nations came together to ensure that our children, and their children after them, could continue to live and prosper on the only home we have, the earth. Bifrost Online launched on 12 December 2017 in observance of the two year anniversary of the landmark Paris climate accord. The web portal offers thought-provoking stories, art work, interviews and the wisdom of individuals with knowledge to share, whether in the form of scientific expertise or lived personal experience. The aim is to promote the bridging of knowledge and action to help make a difference in our changing world.  Bifrost Online's inaugural blog looks back, and forward, at the meaning of the Paris Agreement, while acknowledging that we live in times of increasing uncertainty. "The glut of white noise inundating social media, amid competing reports of fake news and alternative facts, can easily make the challenges facing the planet seem distant, abstract, overwhelming. We need to face our challenges. But we also need new forms of action, new ways of organizing ourselves, new ways of taking responsibility for the state of the world that we belong to."

The debate about sustainable development (SD) in higher education institutions has expanded over the past decades. It has been recognised that universities play a pivotal role in promoting sustainability principles, contributing to the paradigm shift towards a more sustainable present and future. Campus sustainability – commonly understood in a broad sense that includes the physical, educational (teaching, curricula, research), and institutional dimensions – is an evolving study field, as indicated by the growing number of articles in academic journals, conferences, awards, and books (like the present one) dedicated to the subject.
From the academic point of view, the emergent fields of sustainability science and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) have advanced the efforts of mainstreaming sustainability and implementing concrete practices in universities. But despite some progress and good examples, only a few institutions follow a SD implementation process holistically. A one-sided trend of "going green", driven by market requirements, marketing advantages, and economic benefits, increases the risks of greenwashing. Reductionist models and misconceptions may cause sustainability initiatives to be wrongly reduced to single aspects of SD like environmental initiatives, losing meaning and credibility.
This chapter addresses the question of what role the emerging fields of sustainability science and Education for Sustainable Development can play within the transition to more sustainable universities. It aims to contribute to a more holistic perception of SD and examines some of the trends being observed in the higher education sector. Universities are challenged to reflect about educational objectives and strategic goals in their sustainability implementation processes, if they aim to educate the academic community beyond eco-efficiency and recycling. ESD and sustainability science are normative academic fields, action-oriented and close to society. Along with universities as democratic institutions, these fields constitute essential vehicles to investigate, test, and develop conditions for truly transformative change.

Sustainability science is being developed in constructive tension between a descriptive-analytical and a transformational mode. The first is concerned with analyzing problems in coupled human-environment systems, whereas the second conducts research on practical solutions to those problems. Transformational sustainability research is confronted with the challenges of generating actionable knowledge, incorporating knowledge from outside academia, and dealing with different values and political interests. This study approaches the theory and promise of sustainability science through a comparative appraisal of five empirical sustainability science projects. We exemplarily appraise in how far sustainability science succeeds and fails in yielding solution options for sustainability problems based on an evaluative framework (that accounts for the particularities of sustainability science). The selected sustainability projects cover a range of topics (water, bioenergy, land use, solar energy, urban development), regions (from coastal to mountainous, from rural to urban areas, in several countries in Africa, Europe, and South and North America), spatial levels (from village to country levels), and research approaches. The comparative results indicate accomplishments regarding problem focus and basic transformational research methodology, but also highlight deficits regarding stakeholder participation, actionable results, and larger impacts. We conclude with suggestions on how to fully realize the potential of sustainability science as a solution-oriented endeavor, including advanced collaborative research settings, advances in transformational research methodologies, cross-case generalization, as well as reducing institutional barriers.

There is growing demand among stakeholders across public and private institutions for spatially-explicit information regarding vulnerability to climate change at the local scale. However, the challenges associated with mapping the geography of climate change vulnerability are non-trivial, both conceptually and technically, suggesting the need for more critical evaluation of this practice. Here, we review climate change vulnerability mapping in the context of four key questions that are fundamental to assessment design. First, what are the goals of the assessment? A review of published assessments yields a range of objective statements that emphasize problem orientation or decision-making about adaptation actions. Second, how is the assessment of vulnerability framed? Assessments vary with respect to what values are assessed (vulnerability of what) and the underlying determinants of vulnerability that are considered (vulnerability to what). The selected frame ultimately influences perceptions of the primary driving forces of vulnerability as well as preferences regarding management alternatives. Third, what are the technical methods by which an assessment is conducted? The integration of vulnerability determinants into a common map remains an emergent and subjective practice associated with a number of methodological challenges. Fourth, who participates in the assessment and how will it be used to facilitate change? Assessments are often conducted under the auspices of benefiting stakeholders, yet many lack direct engagement with stakeholders. Each of these questions is reviewed in turn by drawing on an illustrative set of 45 vulnerability mapping studies appearing in the literature. A number of pathways for placing vulnerability mapping on a more robust footing are also identified.

It is increasingly acknowledged that, in order to achieve sustainability, there is an urgent need for
radical and transformative restructuring of socio-technical systems that meet our needs. These
transformations are referred to as system innovations for sustainability or transitions. Transitions and
system innovations cover not only product and process innovations but also changes in user practices,
markets, policy, regulations, culture, infrastructure, lifestyle and management of firms and have
significant implications for design and innovation activity aiming to contribute to the societal
endevour of achieveing sustainability. Even though theory on system innovations and transitions is
now extensive, it provided explanations regarding how companies and design and innovation
activities fit into the big and long-term picture of system innovations and transitions only to a certain
extent. In addition, there have not been many efforts in the design for sustainability field to learn
from the theories of transitions and system innovations. In this paper, we make an initial theoretical
contribution into the design and innovation for sustainability field by integrating relevant insights
from sustainability science and system innovations and transitions theories. The result of this
integration is a proposal for a prescriptive conceptual framework which explains how wider-scale
systemic changes can be addressed at smaller elements of socio-technical systems specifically
focusing on the design and innovation level within companies.

Hydropower developments along the main stem of the Mekong River and its tributaries cause transboundary effects within the Mekong Basin Region, which comprises parts of six countries. On the one hand, the provision of hydropower triggers economic development and helps to meet the rising energy demand of the Mekong riparian countries, especially China, Thailand, and Vietnam. On the other hand, the negative impact of dam construction, mainly altered water flow and sediment load, has severe impacts on the environment and the livelihoods of the rural Mekong population. Several discrepancies exist in the needs, demands, and challenges of upstream versus downstream countries. Against the common apprehension that downstream countries are powerlessly exposed to mainly negative impacts whereas upstream countries unilaterally benefit from hydropower, the authors argue that upstream-downstream relations are not really clear-cut. This conclusion is based on a consideration of the complex power play between Mekong riparians, with a focus on recent power trade interactions. The article investigates the consequences of hydropower dams for the Mekong region as well as the role of supranational players, such as the Mekong River Commission and the Greater Mekong Subregion Initiative, on the hydropower debate. It is not nations that are the winners or losers in the hydropower schemes in the Mekong, but rather parts of the riparian population: a few influential and powerful elites versus the large mass of rural poor.

Most academics, who as researchers and teachers dedicate their lives to information sharing, would likely agree with much of the hacker ethic, which is a belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good and there is an ethical duty to share expertise by writing free and open-source code and facilitating access to information wherever possible. However,  despite a well-established gift culture similar to that of the open source software movement in academic publishing and the tenure process many academics fail to openly provide the “source” (e.g. data sets, literature reviews, detailed experimental methodologies, designs, and open access to results) of their research. Closed research is particularly egregious when it could be used to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world and this transition is hobbled by antiquated research methodologies that slow the diffusion of innovation. To overcome this challenge, this paper reports on several experiments to embrace the use of open source methodologies in research for applied sustainability. Open-access and open-edit Internet technologies were used as both real-time research tools and a means of disseminating findings on appropriate technology and sustainability-related research to the broadest possible audience. The results of experiments on open source research found that more rapid deployment of sustainability technologies is possible by building on the foundations of the hacker ethic with i) massive peer-review in the development of background material and experimental design, ii) increased visibility, which leads to iii) increased funding opportunities and improved student recruitment, and iv) improved student research-related training and education.

Research on social–ecological systems (SES) is scattered across many disciplines and perspectives. As a result, much of the knowledge generated between different communities is not comparable, mutually aggregate or easily communicated to nonspecialists despite common goals to use academic knowledge for advancing sustain- ability. This article proposes a conceptual pathway to address this challenge through outlining how the SES research contributions of sustainability science and researchers using Elinor Ostrom’s diagnostic SES frame- work (SESF) can integrate and co-benefit from explicitly interlinking their development. From a review of the literature, I outline four key co-benefits from their potential to interlink in the following themes: (1) coevolving SES knowledge types, (2) guiding primary research and assessing sustainability, (3) building a boundary object for transdisciplinary sustainability science, and (4) facilitating comparative analysis. The origins of the SESF include seminal empirical work on common property theory, self- organization, and coupled SES interactions. The SESF now serves as a template for diagnosing sustainability challenges and theorizing explanatory relationships on SES components, interactions, and outcomes within and across case studies. Simultaneously, sustainability science has proposed transdisciplinary research agendas, sustainability knowledge types, knowledge co-production, and sustainability assessment tools to advance transformative change processes. Key challenges for achieving co-beneficial developments in both communities are discussed in rela-tion to each of the four themes. Evident pathways for advancing SES research are also presented along with a guideline for designing SES research within this co-aligned vision.

The proceedings of the National Science Foundation supported WIS2DOM workshop state that sustainability scientists must respect the “protocols” of practitioners of Indigenous sciences if the practitioners of the two knowledge systems are to learn from each other. Indigenous persons at the workshop described protocols as referring to attitudes about how to approach the world that are inseparable from how people approach scientific inquiry; they used the terms caretaking and stewardship to characterize protocols in their Indigenous communities and nations. Yet sustainability scientists may be rather mystified by the idea of protocols as a necessary dimension of scientific inquiry. Moreover, the terms stewardship and caretaking are seldom used in sustainability science. In this case report, the authors seek to elaborate on some possible meanings of protocols for sustainability scientists who may be unaccustomed to talking about stewardship and caretaking in relation to scientific inquiry. To do so, the authors describe cases of Indigenous protocols in action in relation to scientific inquiry in two Indigenous-led sustainability initiatives in the Great Lakes/Midwest North American region. We claim that each case expresses concepts of stewardship and caretaking to describe protocols in which humans approach the world with the attitude of respectful partners in genealogical relationships of interconnected humans, non-human beings, entities and collectives who have reciprocal responsibilities to one another. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of Indigenous protocols for future dialog between practitioners of sustainability and Indigenous sciences.

Over the last decade, sustainability science has been at the leading edge of widespread efforts from the social and natural sciences to produce use-inspired research. Yet, how knowledge generated by sustainability science and allied fields will contribute to transitions toward sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. This article explores the limitations of sustainability science research to move the field beyond the analysis of problems in coupled systems to interrogate the social, political and technological dimensions of linking knowledge and action. Over the next decade, sustainability science can strengthen its empirical, theoretical and practical contributions by developing along four research pathways focused on the role of values in science and decision-making for sustainability: how communities at various scales envision and pursue sustainable futures; how socio-technical change can be fostered at multiple scales; the promotion of social and institutional learning for sustainable development.

There is growing demand among stakeholders across public and private institutions for spatially-explicit information regarding vulnerability to climate change at the local scale. However, the challenges associated with mapping the geography of climate change vulnerability are non-trivial, both conceptually and technically, suggesting the need for more critical evaluation of this practice. Here, we review climate change vulnerability mapping in the context of four key questions that are fundamental to assessment design. First, what are the goals of the assessment? A review of published assessments yields a range of objective statements that emphasize problem orientation or decision-making about adaptation actions. Second, how is the assessment of vulnerability framed? Assessments vary with respect to what values are assessed (vulnerability of what) and the underlying determinants of vulnerability that are considered (vulnerability to what). The selected frame ultimately influences perceptions of the primary driving forces of vulnerability as well as preferences regarding management alternatives. Third, what are the technical methods by which an assessment is conducted? The integration of vulnerability determinants into a common map remains an emergent and subjective practice associated with a number of methodological challenges. Fourth, who participates in the assessment and how will it be used to facilitate change? Assessments are often conducted under the auspices of benefiting stakeholders, yet many lack direct engagement with stakeholders. Each of these questions is reviewed in turn by drawing on an illustrative set of 45 vulnerability mapping studies appearing in the literature. A number of pathways for placing vulnerability mapping on a more robust footing are also identified.

Among the most pressing energy and environmental strategic challenges today is to identify and deploy viable alternatives to fossil-fuel-based energy systems  The barriers to deployment are systematic, leading to a state of affairs described as ‘carbon lock-in’ (Unruh
2000; Neuhoff 2007). Simply stated, even if alternative energy systems are cost-competitive in theory, the prime movers that control their diffusion throughout society –
for example, conversion and distribution infrastructure; financing mechanisms; skilled labour force; attitudes toward particular kinds of energy production activities and energy services – exhibit a preference for incumbent carbon-intensive fossil energy resources. Carbon lock-in represents path dependencies within energy systems including sunk-cost in prevailing infrastructure and entrenched political interests along with positively reinforcing relationships with broader system dynamics, from global financial logics that continue to monetise unburned carbon through energy
futures contracts to our everyday practices and expectations about mobility, comfort, and overall
well-being that underpin regular visits to the gasoline station. All of this is to say that energy systems are sociotechnical in nature, characterised by deep and often subtle interdependencies between technological, social, political-economic, and cultural processes which operate across the energy supply chain and at all scales of energy system operation (Miller, Richter, and O’Leary 2015).

This paper examines the contribution of resilience thinking for social-ecological systems (SESs) in understanding sustainability and the need to preserve natural resources in the face of external perturbations. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, the literature survey shows the increased importance of resilience and its integration into the interdisciplinary area of sustainability studies. By exploring the links between resilience and sustainability, the analysis finds that these two concepts share some similarities and also highlight the differences. The discussion of resilience indicators, measuring criteria, models and management issues reveals how resilience contributes to sustainability science and in what ways the concept can be used to measure resilience in terms of sustainability. Most existing studies emphasise the ecological aspects of resilience, but only by including human activities in the modelling can resilience thinking inform sustainability in a meaningful way. The paper concludes defining issues requiring further investigation, such as identifying and managing the drivers and key elements of resilience in SESs, exploring the dynamics between critical variables of SESs and the system feedbacks to external perturbations, as well as evaluating policies and engaging stakeholders for building resilience.

Coastal vulnerability assessments still focus mainly on sea-level rise, with less attention paid to other dimensions of climate change. The influence of non-climatic environmental change or socio-economic change is even less considered, and is often completely ignored. Given that the profound coastal changes of the twentieth century are likely to continue through the twenty-first century, this is a major omission, which may overstate the importance of climate change, and may also miss significant interactions of climate change with other non-climate drivers. To better support climate and coastal management policy development, more integrated assessments of climatic change in coastal areas are required, including the significant non-climatic changes. This paper explores the development of relevant climate and non-climate drivers, with an emphasis on the non-climate drivers. While these issues are applicable within any scenario framework, our ideas are illustrated using the widely used SRES scenarios, with both impacts and adaptation being considered. Importantly, scenario development is a process, and the assumptions that are made about future conditions concerning the coast need to be explicit, transparent and open to scientific debate concerning their realism and likelihood. These issues are generic across other sectors.

Human communities in the Trans-Himalayan region depend on the dynamics of the agro-pastoral system for survival. Humans, livestock and wild predators share common resources in the region, and this leads to humanwildlife interactions that have the potential to threaten the continued viability of this fragile ecosystem and impact the local economy. This study explored the interaction between livestock and predators in the upper Mustang region of Nepal in terms of economic and ecological impacts. A total of 1,347 km 2 of pasture land were grazed by 30,217 livestock belonging to local people from six village development committees. It was found that the seasonal movement patterns of livestock, from higher to lower elevations (closer to villages), coincided with elevation movements of wild ungulate prey and snow leopards into this smaller land area. due to livestock predation. These losses of livestock to snow leopards and other carnivores provoked retaliatory killings by villagers, and this in turn may significantly affect the viability of predator populations in this region. We suggest four approaches to mitigate human-carnivore conflict in the region: (a) introduce a livestock insurance policy, (b) promote the use of predator-proof livestock corrals and sheds, (c) involve local people in alternative income generating activities, and (d) increase conservation education in these regions.

Sustainable development is a ubiquitously used concept in public decision-making: it refers to an ideal vision of global society where human development and environmental quality go hand in hand. Logically, any decision-supporting process aiming at facilitating and steering society toward a sustainable future then seems desirable. Assessing the sustainability of policy decisions is, however, influenced by what sustainable development is believed to entail, as different discourses coexist under the umbrella of the sustainable development meta-discourse. This paper proposes a typology of sustainable development discourses, and, subsequently, applies a discourse-analytical lens on two practical cases of sustainability assessment in different institutional and geographical contexts (in Belgium and in Benin). The results indicate that sustainability assessments tend to be influenced mainly by the consensual 'sustainable development as integration' discourse, while also providing a forum for dialogue between different discourses. The results shed light on context-specific discursive and institutional dynamics for the development and application of sustainability assessment. Acknowledging these dynamics as well as sustainable development's inherent interpretational limits can lead to an improved use of sustainable development as a decision-guiding strategy.

Societal adaptation to climate change requires measures that simultaneously reduce poverty, protect or restore biodiversity and ecosystem services, and remove atmospheric greenhouse gases. Ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change is the type of adaptation that aims to combine these outcomes and is particularly relevant to developing nations that safeguard most of the planetary biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. Although conceptually new, ecosystem-based adaptation is fastly gaining traction both as a research arena and as an integrated policy instrument. This paper aims to revisit this concept and to discuss the science and policy challenges faced by it. It argues that ecosystem-based adaptation is a policy mix that promotes adaptive transition, which is a step towards sustainability transitions. It faces two major challenges in promoting transitions towards adaptation and sustainability. First, research on ecosystem-based adaptation mostly takes place within the socio-ecological systems framework, which is often carried out in isolation from socio-technical systems research. It is widely recognized that both types of research should be integrated, for the benefit of science and policy-making, and the paper discusses the potential of ecosystem-based adaptation in providing such bridge. Second, there is a divide between global and local research and policy, while at local level this divide is related to the setting (e.g., coastal, urban, rural). The resulting mosaic of information lacks integration, which hinders scalability of actions and policies. Finally, I examine the opportunity for ecological and conservation scientists to interact with social, economic and political scientists on ecosystem-based adaptation research, and discuss how timely this opportunity is for Brazil.

Practitioners and scholars of environmental communication need practical, applied methods to enhance creative collaboration around sustainability science. I make a case for transmedia as an integrated approach to these complex challenges. First, I overview the emergence of integrated transmedia storytelling in media production and research, sharing examples that illustrate how it promotes engagement. I then provide a case study of my own applied transmedia project, a website called Safe Beaches, Shellfish, & You that demonstrates the potential for this method to engage publics with communication about and for environments. Finally, I call for a turn from storytelling to storymaking. I find that transmedia, as an ecology of storymaking, enhances efforts to connect researchers and stakeholders through sustainability science.

Structuring integrated social-ecological systems (SES) research remains a core challenge for achieving sustainability. Numerous concepts and frameworks exist, but there is a lack of mutual learning and orientation of knowledge between them. We focus on two approaches in particular: the ecosystem services concept and Elinor Ostrom's diagnostic SES framework. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each and discuss their potential for mutual learning. We use knowledge types in sustainability research as a boundary object to compare the contributions of each approach. Sustainability research is conceptualized as a multi-step knowledge generation process that includes system, target, and transformative knowledge. A case study of the Southern California spiny lobster fishery is used to comparatively demonstrate how each approach contributes a different lens and knowledge when applied to the same case. We draw on this case example in our discussion to highlight potential interlinkages and areas for mutual learning. We intend for this analysis to facilitate a broader discussion that can further integrate SES research across its diverse communities.

Sustainability has many dimensions, including various aspects of environmental, social and economic sustainability. This paper proposes an analytical framework of risk-related governance for sustainability, based on literature review, focusing on two dimensions-knowledge integration and multi-actor governance. Knowledge integration necessitates wider coverage of predicted and anticipated risks and information on those risks. Multiactor governance necessitates mechanisms that enable cooperation among actors. The relevance of this analytical framework is then checked using concrete cases of governance for reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD?), and the possible case of governance for sustainable phosphorus management.

The field of sustainability science aims to understand the complex and dynamic interactions between natural and human systems in order to transform and develop these in a sustainable manner. As sustainability problems cut across diverse academic disciplines, ranging from the natural sciences to the social sciences and humanities, interdisciplinarity has become a central idea to the realm of sustainability science. Yet, for addressing complicated, real-world sustainability problems, interdisciplinarity per se does not suffice. Active collaboration with various stakeholders throughout society—transdisciplinarity—must form another critical component of sustainability science. In addition to implementing interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in practice, higher education institutions also need to deal with the challenges of institutionalization. In this article, drawing on the experiences of selected higher education academic programs on sustainability, we discuss academic, institutional, and societal challenges in sustainability science and explore the potential of uniting education, research and societal contributions to form a systematic and integrated response to the sustainability crisis.

Envisioning how a desirable future might look is a long-standing effort in human evolution and social change. Utopian thought and visions provide direction for actions and behavior; more so, they create identity and community. Accordingly, the discourse on sustainability and sustainable development has recognized that positive visions about our societies' future are an influential, if not indispensable, stimulus for change. Visioning is, thus, considered a key method in sustainability research and problem solving, for instance, in transformational sustainability science or in planning for urban sustainability. Yet, quality criteria for sustainability visions and guidelines on how to rigorously craft such visions are scattered over different strands of the literature and some are insufficiently developed. The goal of this article is to review and synthesize such quality criteria and design guidelines to inform sustainability visioning methodology. The review provides a concise reference framework for sustainability students, researchers, and professionals on how to enhance their sustainability visioning practices.

Over the years rural communities have evolved mechanisms for coping with seasonal stress and recurring disasters using their traditional institutions and practices. External support agents however usually are not aware of these existing mechanisms and have the tendency to descend into disaster affected communities in a ''fire fighting'' mode. Ownership and sustainability of such interventions is often overlooked. The study therefore seeks to identify traditional coping mechanisms that are in place in the study area for disaster management. Methodologies used for data collection includes wealth ranking, group discussions, key informant interviews, questionnaires administration, community institutional and resource mapping and trend analysis. The data analysis employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine key issues.

An integrated understanding of both social and ecological aspects of environmental issues is essential to address pressing sustainability challenges. An integrated social-ecological systems perspective is purported to provide a better understanding of the complex relationships between humans and nature. Despite a threefold increase in the amount of social-ecological research published between 2010 and 2015, it is unclear whether these approaches have been truly integrative. We conducted a systematic literature review to investigate the conceptual, methodological, disciplinary, and functional aspects of social-ecological integration. In general, we found that overall integration is still lacking in social-ecological research. Some social variables deemed important for addressing sustainability challenges are underrepresented in social-ecological studies, e.g., culture, politics, and power. Disciplines such as ecology, urban studies, and geography are better integrated than others, e.g., sociology, biology, and public administration. In addition to ecology and urban studies, biodiversity conservation plays a key brokerage role in integrating other disciplines into social-ecological research. Studies founded on systems theory have the highest rates of integration. Highly integrative studies combine different types of tools, involve stakeholders at appropriate stages, and tend to deliver practical recommendations. Better social-ecological integration must underpin sustainability science. To achieve this potential, future social-ecological research will require greater attention to the following: the interdisciplinary composition of project teams, strategic stakeholder involvement, application of multiple tools, incorporation of both social and ecological variables, consideration of bidirectional relationships between variables, and identification of implications and articulation of clear policy recommendations.

Social-ecological systems research is interventionist by nature. As a subset of sustainability science, social-ecological systems research aims to generate knowledge and introduce concepts that will bring about transformation. Yet scientific concepts diverge in innumerable ways when they are put to work in the world. Why are concepts used in quite different ways to the intended purpose? Why do some appear to fail and others succeed? What do the answers to these questions tell us about the nature of science-society engagement, and what implications do they have for social-ecological systems research and sustainability science? This thesis addresses these questions from an interpretive perspective, focusing on the meanings that shape human actions. In particular, the thesis examines how meaning, interpretation and experience shape the enactment of four action-oriented sustainability concepts: adaptive management, biosphere reserves, biodiversity corridors and planetary boundaries/reconnecting to the biosphere. In so doing, the thesis provides in-depth empirical applications of three interpretive traditions – hermeneutic, discursive and dialogical – that together articulate a broadly interpretive approach to studying social-ecological complexity. In the hermeneutic tradition, Paper I presents a ‘rich narrative’ case study of a single practitioner tasked with enacting adaptive management in an Australian land management agency, and Paper II provides a qualitative multi-case study of learning among 177 participants in 11 UNESCO biosphere reserves. In the discursive tradition, Paper III uses Q-method to explore interpretations of ‘successful’ biodiversity corridors among 20 practitioners, scientists and community representatives in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. In the dialogical tradition, Paper IV reworks conventional understandings of knowledge-action relationships by using three concepts from contemporary practice theory – ‘actionable understanding,’ ‘ongoing business’ and the ‘eternally unfolding present’ – to explore the enactment of adaptive management in an Australian national park. Paper V explores ideas of human-environment connection in the concepts planetary boundaries and reconnecting to the biosphere, and develops an ‘embodied connection’ where human-environment relations emerge through interactivity between mind, body and environment over time. Overall, the thesis extends the frontiers of social-ecological systems research by highlighting the meanings that shape social-ecological complexity; by contributing theories and methods that treat social- ecological change as a relational and holistic process; and by providing entry points to address knowledge, politics and power. The thesis contributes to sustainability science more broadly by introducing novel understandings of knowledge- action relationships; by providing advice on how to make sustainability interventions more useful and effective; by introducing tools that can improve co-production and outcome assessment in the global research platform Future Earth; and by helping to generate robust forms of justification for transdisciplinary knowledge production. The interventionist, actionable nature of social-ecological systems research means that interpretive approaches are an essential complement to existing structural, institutional and behavioural perspectives. Interpretive research can help build a scientifically robust, normatively committed and critically reflexive sustainability science.

Coping with global environmental change demands new forms of civic engagement and interaction able to transform passive audiences attending to the drama of unsustainability into committed actors for sustainability. This entails linking diverse sources of scientific knowledge with personal experiences, emotion and ethical judgments. In this paper, we assess the potential as well as the limitations of innovative theatre-based participatory tools and methods aimed at supporting sustainability learning and agent transformation. To this aim, we first review a series of experiences using theatrical performance and introduce the notion of performative methods. Second, we assess to what extent these new approaches can be of relevance in environmental action research and sustainability science, practice and learning. Finally, we list a series of key research questions to further guide methodological innovation in this promising area of sustainability science and practice. Our findings show a growing and successful use of such methodologies worldwide, both in academia and in implementation-oriented approaches. An increasing number of topics and complexity is being embraced by these methods, offering a fertile ground for innovation in participatory sustainability science.

Care may be a way to engage people in planetary stewardship by connecting their responses to what they notice in everyday life with their effect on larger environmental systems. Care is a deep, pervasive cultural norm that is imposed upon what is noticed and noticeable to others. At the same time, care often evokes an immediate aesthetic response. Both responses provoke behavior to change, maintain, and protect landscape appearance. This essay examines whether the immediacy of the care response can be extended to effect stewardship at broader time and spatial scales. It describes how landscape evidence of care has a halo effect in which an overall impression of the appearance of the landscape affects assumptions about the people who are responsible for providing care, as well as assumptions about resource characteristics. Finally, it suggests that this halo effect of care can contribute to design and planning strategies that benefit environmental health and ecosystem services at broader scales.

Sustainability Science (SS) has, as of today, no explicit agreement on which philosophy of science should be used to guide its research. Though SS is a broad and often diffuse concept, there are certain guiding principles which are generally agreed on. Based on these principles, it has been seen if Critical Realism (CR) could be an appropriate meta-theory for SS. The approach used is therefore primarily practical, as opposed to philosophical. The 1st chapter is an introduction to the research done in this paper. The 2nd chapter introduces some of the main tenets of CR which are for example the three domains of reality, stratification and emergence, agency and structure, retroduction, and emancipation. The 3rd chapter introduces some of the main tenets and themes of SS. These are for example human-environment systems, the importance of spatial and temporal scales, systems and complexity, interdisciplinarity, and
how SS relates to sustainable development. The 4th chapter looks at how possible syntheses of the different aspects of SS and CR may fit together. The methods for looking at possible syntheses are through case examples and arguments of how well viewpoints seem to correspond between CR and SS. Chapter 5 gives a conclusion and provides suggestions for further research.

It was found that there were 1) some issues where CR and SS have similarities, 2) some issues where CR could help deepen the understanding of SS, and 3) other instances where CR can give guidance in which
strand of SS should be pursued. Finally it is concluded that CR can be an adequate meta-theory for SS, because they have several affinities and because CR can help further the work of SS.