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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 [email protected]
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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.
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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
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
Sust
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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