Twelve transnational research projects starting in 2018 have been awarded 11.5 million euros from the Belmont Forum and NORFACE joint programme Transformations to Sustainability (T2S). The twelve teams with 56 principal investigators will undertake research in transformations to sustainability areas ranging from groundwater, mining, urban areas and land-registration, to the role of migration and intellectual property rights in sustainability transitions. The projects involve researchers from a wide variety of disciplines working together across the globe, from Brazil to Sweden and from Japan to Burkina Faso.

Innovative research with an impact

The Belmont Forum, a global partnership that mobilizes funding of environmental change research, and NORFACE, an European research network for the social sciences, jointly developed the research programme Transformations to Sustainability (T2S). The programme aims to restructure the broad field of sustainability research by placing social science, as well as the humanities, at the heart of interdisciplinary research in a step change in scale and scope for research programming on this topic.

The twelve three-year projects will conduct theoretically and methodologically innovative research on transformations to sustainability in different locations experiencing pressing socio-ecological challenges. The knowledge produced by the projects will be of relevance to researchers, practitioners and policymakers across a multitude of sectors and will contribute to advancing transformative change around the globe. To enhance the relevance of the knowledge being produced, the project teams will integrate stakeholder and community-based partners in the research process.

The following Belmont Forum and NORFACE member countries provide funding to the twelve projects: Belgium, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. In addition, the International Social Science Council (ISSC), with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), funds the participation of researchers from six low and lower-middle income countries – namely Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, India, Nicaragua and Tanzania. The European Commission provides top-up funding to T2S.