Global Sustainability, an Open Access journal dedicated to sustainability research, has recently released a call for papers for a forthcoming special collection dedicated to Transformations. The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2021, and the full call is copied below.
In both the scientific and policy worlds, work on the challenges of global sustainability is infused with calls for transformation: calls for shifts in thinking away from business-as-usual and reformist approaches; for action towards profound changes in the social, economic, political, cultural and technological systems that sustain contemporary sustainability problems, from pollution to pandemics; and calls for radical innovation in the way we do science and communicate science with a view to making its results more rigorous, relevant and actionable.
Business as usual is a dead-end pathway to recurring crises and collapse of vital life-support systems. The pressure to transform mounts as the 2030 Agenda deadline approaches and as the world takes stock of the causes and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential and appetite for transformation may never be this great again. We now have an unprecedented window of opportunity to advance the agenda and the impact of research on transformations to sustainability.
But that research remains fragmented and, in many ways, contested. We work with different understandings and definitions of transformation; we fail to integrate the wealth of existing knowledge about past processes of social change and transition. We need to confront remaining gaps in our understanding on how transformations can be catalysed, steered in ways that are socio-politically feasible and desirable, and scaled up towards achieving global sustainability.
A forthcoming Collection of Global Sustainability aims to bring together theoretical and practical knowledge from systematic research in transformations towards sustainability. Contributions re welcomed in areas such as:
• Analysing, conceptualising and understanding transformations to sustainability
• Modelling transformations and quantifying future outcomes
• Research on transformations within and across systems
• Systems innovation and transformation, including of science itself
• Cultural and societal change towards transformation
• Planning, implementing and governing transformations
• Studying examples of past, present and emerging transformations
We invite authors to submit research papers or intelligence briefings sharing their research on transformations towards sustainability (see Instructions for Authors for information on different article types). For intelligence briefings, please can you reach out to Alison Paskins with a proposal in the first instance (Publishing Editor for Global Sustainability).
When you formally submit your paper or briefing, please do so via the journal’s ScholarOne site, and select the ‘Transformations’ collection from the list of dropdown options. Please also indicate in the cover letter that your submission is in response to this Call for Papers on Transformations.
The deadline for submissions to the collection is 31st March 2021.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Wiedmann (Guest editor, Editorial Board member)
Heide Hackmann (Guest editor, Chief Executive Officer of the International Science Council)
Header photo by Becca Lavin on Unsplash