Recent publications resulting from the T2S projects or from relevant research by members of the T2S community:

Properties and projects: Reconciling resilience and transformation for adaptation and development. Carr, E.R., 2019. World Dev. 122, 70–84.

The article is aimed at better linking the concept of socio-ecological resilience to transformation, framing such resilience not as an emergent property of a complex system, but as an intentional project steering diverse actors and ecological processes toward safety and stability. This framing of resilience allows for a coherent theorization of many observed outcomes in socio-ecological systems, including 1) disturbance in socio-ecologies does not create transformation, but generally produces rigidity that limits innovation and transformation in the name of safety and stability, 2) disrupting resilient socio-ecologies via development or adaptation interventions opens space for transformation, but creates risk by removing existing sources of safety, 3) reinforcing existing socio-ecological projects through development and adaptation interventions reduces opportunities for transformation by legitimizing their practices and social orders, and 4) interventions seeking to build resilience while achieving transformative goals can catalyze change by easing stress on livelihoods.

The Human Security of Migrants is Key to Sustainability for Growing Cities
Neil Adger, Ricardo Safra de Campos and Tasneem Siddiqui. 3 April 2019. Urban Transformations

The promises and pitfalls of ecosystem- based adaptation to climate change as a vehicle for social empowerment. Woroniecki, S., Wamsler, C. and Boyd, E., 2019. Ecology and Society, 24(2).

Empathy, place and identity interactions for sustainability. Brown, K., Adger, W.N., Devine-Wright, P., Anderies, J.M., Barr, S., Bousquet, F., Butler, C., Evans, L., Marshall, N. and Quinn, T., 2019. Global Environmental Change, 56, pp.11-17.

Straßheim H. & Beck S. (eds.) (2019). Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy. (Handbooks of Research on Public Policy, ed. by Frank Fischer). Cheltenham, UK/Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Behavioural change has become a core issue of public policy. Behavioural instruments such as ‘nudging’ apply insights from behavioural economics and behavioural sciences, psychology and neurosciences across a broad range of policy areas. Behavioural insights teams and networks facilitate the global spread of behavioural public policies. Despite an ever-growing amount of literature, research has remained fragmented. This comprehensive Handbook unites interdisciplinary scholarship, with contributions critically assessing the state and direction of behavioural public policies, their normative implications and political consequences.

Participation and inclusiveness in the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Díaz-Reviriego, I., E. Turnhout & S. Beck (2019), Nature Sustainability. Vol.2, Issue 5: 1-8.

The Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) aims to bridge between science and policy by assessing and synthesizing diverse forms of knowledge about biodiversity. With its explicit ambition to include not just natural science, but also social science and humanities as well as indigenous and local knowledge systems, IPBES is operating as a pioneer in uncharted territory. This Review assesses the state of research on IPBES processes in order to identify the challenges and lessons to be drawn from its efforts to include different kinds of experts, stakeholders and knowledge systems. The Review discusses both procedural and substantive dimensions of inclusiveness and identities a paradox between on the one hand IPBES’ demand for diversity and on the other hand its aim of achieving consensus. Specifically, it illustrates how IPBES’ orientation towards consensus in decision-making and in assessment work shapes and constrains diversity and inclusiveness. This finding has implications for environmental assessment processes within and beyond IPBES and suggests a need to open up procedures and practices of participation and inclusion in order to accommodate pluralism, contestation and incommensurable perspectives and knowledge systems.

In the media…

What city needs: Tree musketeers
Leo Saldanha, 27 May 2019, Bangalore Mirror.

To beat air pollution, redesign Bengaluru’s action plan
Bhargavi S. Rao, 5 June 2019. Citizen Matters, Bengaluru.

Nuclear: Energy bills ‘used to subsidise submarines’ 5 June 2019
BBC Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin cites comments by GoST: Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations Principal Investigator Andy Stirling highlighting the role of military sociotechnical imaginaries in the entrenchment of civil nuclear power in the UK energy sector, and in resisting transformations away from nuclear towards renewables-based low-carbon imaginaries. These comments, cited in evidence given to the UK Government Select Committee on Business by Andy Stirling and Philip Johnstone (University of Sussex), were also covered by the Independent and Scotsman newspapers.