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Sustainability Science: Science for, with and in Society?Society for and with Science?

Sustainability Science: Science for, with and in Society?Society for and with Science?

Dr. Joachim H. SpangenbergHelmholtz Centre for Environment ResearchDepartment Community Ecology, Halle, GermanySustainable Europe Research Institute SERI Germany e.V., Cologne, Germany

presented at the Agro Biotech CampusGembloux, Belgium, December 2014

SERSustainable EuropeResearch InstituteJoachim.Spangenberg@gmail.com

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A. Ecosystem Service research, and Sustainability Science in general…

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... are not l’art pour l’art, but

• dedicated to identifying and analysingunsustainability problems and their causes;

• geared at finding solutions to those problems;

• have to address all the dimensions and levels on which problems of unsustainability manifest themselves, and those from which they emerge;

• need to be integrative, applicable, problem solving, interdisciplinary

• and transdisciplinary, involving stakeholders as partners on an equal footing.

Sustainability is multi-dimensional

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The Basic Elements of Sust. Sciencethe integration of economic, social, environ-mental and institutional issues into a coherent framework, safeguarding the essential interests of each dimension,

the (re-)introduction of explicit normative targets into the discourse (justice, responsibility).

the extension of the perspective to include local and distant regions, past and future generations, monitoring our impacts and accepting responsibility for them.

Embedded system levels: Disembedding as crisis (Polany)

Environment

Economy

Society, Institutions

People, Population

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B. Ecosystem Service researchas if people mattered

A focus on the process: attributing values, mobi-lising, appropriating, commercialising services

The ESS cascade –a social science perspective

A multi-level governance challengeOrders of system complexity, after M.A.K Halliday (2005)

Physical system

Biological system… plus life

Social system… plus usefulness

Purposeful organization

Semiotic system… plus meaning

Articulation of values, world views

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Transdisciplinarity: integrating actors

Interdisciplinary research provides insights. To become knowledge and understanding offering solutions, the context and the relevance of individual aspects must be evaluated.

This is no scientific process, but a societal one.

Consequently, sustainability science needs Extended Peer Communities: the experts to be involved are from all stakeholder groups involved in the issue. Their knowledge is as relevant is the scientific, but different.

Transdisciplinarity requires involving the experts for relevance, i.e. the stakeholders.

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C. For instance, economics

Economics and Ecosystems• The economy is (like society, environment

and population) a complex evolving system.

• Economics works with (mental and electronic) models which are valid only with strong limitations in scope and time.

• Describing ecosystems as part of the economy (“internalisation”) applies all the economic simplifications to systems where they do not fit (e.g. scarce = valuable, demand induces supply, substitutes always exist, …).

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Capital stocksA misguiding metaphorMan made capital is machinery, equipment, infrastructure, including guns, bombs, computer viruses, …Human Capital is all personal skills, dedication, creativity, experience, including the skills to cook the books.Social Capital is all interpersonal relations, e.g. social security systems, justice, solidarity, including the mafia.Environmental capital is bio-geochemical systems, their components and ecosystem services, including invasive speciesThe capital stock approach counts quantities,but is unable to measure, assess or value qualities.

Human made capital

Human capital Social capital

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Ecosystem services: No need for monetisation and accounting

The key argument is that ecosystems are not protected because their value is not recognised.

Values have diverse measurement units (if any), but a value measured in money is a price or an offer, and pricing implies commodification.

Economists tend to assume that no economic value is the same as an economic value of zero,

but this is a logical mistake: no monetary value implies there are other than monetary values.

Confusing quality and price…

B Phili i

Orders of system complexity…or just fooling clients?

Ulanbataar, Mongolia

Ecosystem services are no free gifts of naturebut a human view on nature’s riches

Namibia

Kenya Guatemala

Sinai desert, Egypt

Ecosystem services are no free gifts of naturebut a human view on nature’s riches

Gansu

GansuShanxi

Sichuan

In ecosytem service analysis, understanding the system and its multiple service potentials must come first

monetisation is often not helpful or necessary

The anathema:

Distribu-ting dis-benefits

Ogoniland, Nigeria

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D. Gains and Risks

Science benefits from…Involvement in definition of research questions enhancing the relevance of research

Regular consultation during the research process opportunity to have a real impact on the research

Interim results evaluation, incorporate in research assurance of quality and relevance

Pre-assessment of final results ownership feeling

Common presentation credibility of the research work, enhanced outreach and acceptability

Transfer process according to actors’ needs significant only if decision makers accept relevance

CSOs benefit from…Research results responding to their questions enhancing the precision and credibility of demands

Regular consultation during the research process opportunity to prepare for results to come – for lobbying, often preliminary results are good enough

Interim results evaluation, incorporate in research assurance of relevance of knowledge to be generated

Pre-assessment of final results ownership feeling

Common presentation credibility of the lobbying work, enhanced outreach and acceptability

Transfer process according to actors’ needs significant only if decision makers accept relevance

Participation effects for science

Positive : Better definition of societally relevant research questions, broader definition of strategies to be pursued, improved policy suggestions due to reality check, support for proposals through feeling of ownership

Negative: Risk of short term orientation, dominated by acute problems, taboos for proposals not deemed adequate at the moment, intervention into the research process to enforce desired results.

Participation effects for CSOs

Positive : Strengthening the argumentation in times of “evidence based decision making”, early awareness of new challenges, emerging networks promising access to science on demand. Basis for law cases, lobbying, campaigning, PR,…

Negative: Significant investment of time and resources, with uncertain benefits. Risk of damage to the most important assets, the credibility, in case of “wrong” results. Risk of “participation overkill”.

Stakeholdersrisk losing

influence and public attention if participation

overkill absorbs more power

than projects generate.

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E. Down to Earthin Nigeria, Vietnam and Sweden

Land management: Up the stairways

Whose values count?• Lobbyists’ and politicians’?• Expert scientists’ and

economists’?• The local people’s who live from

the ESS, and will have to live with the results?

Stakeholders, Ogoniland, Nigeria Experts, Finland

Administrators, Moscow

Consulting authorities: Raising the awareness of administrative and political stakeholders

Consulting business and science: Explaining threats&options, understanding opportunities

Consulting farmers: learning about reality ingroup discussions, interviews, gender groups

Consulting farmers as the group most knowledgeable about farming practices and restraints, and what they say

• In Africa and Asia, most stakeholders clearly articulate non-monetary values, in particular identity values, bequest values and existence values.

• No one described the loss of “natural” resources in monetary terms.

Objective & frame of the studyin Skåne, Sweden

• Role of biocontrol in supressing aphids on cereals.

• Assessing the pest suppression potential.

• Identifying the values associated with management types.

• Evaluating potentials for substituting biocontrol for insecticide use.

11 qualitative interviews, asking for the kind of management, motivations, the role of biocontrol and explicitly for financial considerations and criteria.

In Sweden

Results: by landscapeKnown from literature:• Higher infestation rates in homogenous,

lower in heterogenous landscapes.• Conventional farmers prefer homogenous,

organic farmers heterogenous landscapes.Finding: • no difference in responses and

management choice by landscape, farmers were not aware of its role in infestation/biocontrol.

Results: by management type

• Flower strip farmers were conventional, but with different motivations.

• All farmers are loss-averse; conventional farmers were risk-averse, practicing preventive spraying explicitly for reasons of risk avoidance.

• None of them based this decision on comparing potential harvest losses to spraying cost.

Results: by management type• Organic farmers did not undertake a CBA either, as in their business model, insecticide use was no option, and

• a cost calculation for this non-option recognized as useless.

• They relied on biocontrol for mini-mising pest damage, knowing it would not be avoided completely.

• They managed fields following a “whole system” approach, not one component.

Results: value types indicatedValues mentioned in the interviews include • existence, aesthetic and heritage value

of natural compounds (components of the Total Economic Value TEV), and

• hedonic values (self-esteem, life satisfaction, etc.) beyond the TEV.

• Except for aesthetics, they matched farmers in Vietnam, Philippines, and Kenya (Kyrgyzstan was different).

Conclusion 1: diverse values• The values mentioned by farmersincluded some elements of the TEV, but without reconising them aseconomic values, and others beyondthe TEV.

• Monetary values were important for thebase line, without detailed CBAs.

• Decision makers would be well advisednot to rely only on financial incentivesfor the implementation of agropolicies.

Conclusion 2: in capitalism, money always plays a role

Farms are enterprises and must survive in a competitive environment: permanent losses must be avoided or limited to what can be externally earned.Thus economic concerns as a necessity are never far away.Economic concerns as a motivation, however, seemed to play a minor role.

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E. Conceptual lessons

ESS Cascade & StairwaysThe transdisciplinary view

Ecosystemmanagement, ESS supplymanagement, landscape planningUse value attribution

ESP mobilisation

ESS appropriation

ESS commercialisation

(e.g. contribution toFunctions enjoyed without recognitionprovide benefits, but are no ESS

Final services enjoyed withoutmobilisation and appropriationare public goods, such as sunshine

AnthroposphereExchangevalue

Biosphere

Use Value* NPP: Net Primary Production

Value, Exchange Value(e.g. payments for 

harvestable products such as construction 

material or biofuels, formore woodland, andfor its management)

Benefit, Use Value

aspects of well‐being such as having a house, fire for 

cooking, or aesthetic amenities from art)

Service ESS (e.g.collecting or harvesting 

firewood, carving or biofuel raw material)

Service Potentials ESP (e.g. wood use for carving, heating, or fuel production)

Biophysical structure or process (e.g.

habitat type, NPP*)‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐Function (e.g.

wood production)

Stakeholders are game changers

i. They provide the context giving meaning to data;

ii. They decide if a framing suggested and a question formulated by science is relevant;

iii. They are the driving forces for an orientation towards a problem solution focus, as

iv. Their gain is not from analysis (publications etc.) but from implementation (mitigation, solutions.

Core lessons: no silver bullet• Successful participation requires processes

adapted to the respective societal and cultural context.

• This includes adaptation to the political system and its mechanisms if the project aims at providing policy relevant information.

• What are adequate means and modes of participation changes in the course of the project; this change must be managed.

• For research projects, exit strategies are an essential requisite for lasting impact.

Core lessons: integration• As value attributions differ, there is often no

common denominator between social groups when describing objects identical in their biophysical characteristics (or even the same object).

• If according to the respective group’s value system, each of these descriptions is legitimate, but not each one is sustainable.

• This is typical for complex situations, defined as cases where “different legitimate but mutually exclusive descriptions co-exist”.

Distinct value systems of different social groups lead to different service potentials attributed to the same functions, different values and benefit definitions. Environmental conflicts begin right here.

Dialogue can help, but it can also fail.

In some cases,• compromising may not be possible

due to technical reasons (figure 1), or• compromises are not acceptable due

to ideological reasons, or because they do not serve sustainability purposes (figure 2).

Then a political process is needed for informed democratic decision making.

“We have become far too cleverto survive without wisdom”

E. F. Schumacher

Thank you foryour attention

For this presentation, and more, see

http://seri.academia.edu/JoachimHSpangenberg