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Transformations to sustainability
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There is consensus that extensive transformations will be required in order for countries to achieve the goals and targets set out in the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. But what is ‘transformation’? Is it different from ‘resilience’, or ‘sustainable development’? How are they related? What exactly will these transformations require? Will they vary according to country or geographic region? How should they be operationalized? Which stakeholders and partnerships will be critical and why? What are the barriers? Are there limits? What opportunities exist or can be created?

A recent paper by Sachs et al. (2019) argues that there are six transformations that simultaneously synergize several of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and provide an actionable roadmap:

  • Education, gender, and inequality – SDG 1, 5, 7-10, 12-15, 17
  • Health, wellbeing, and demography – SDG 1-5, 8, 10
  • Energy decarbonization, and sustainable industry – SDG 1-16
  • Sustainable food, land, water, and oceans – SDG 1-3, 5-6, 8, 10-15
  • Sustainable cities and communities – SDG 1-16
  • Digital revolution for sustainable development – SDG 1-4, 7-13, 17

This Special Issue of Sustainability will feature research articles, reviews, and case studies that answer the above questions from various theoretical, methodological, conceptual, and geographic perspectives.

Papers will interrogate the extent to which the six transformations are relevant or applicable to the Global South, particularly small island developing states, the least developed countries, and African countries, given their complex histories and varying development circumstances and trajectories. Where the transformations are relevant or applicable, papers will critically engage with ideas around whether one might be more relevant or applicable than others, and the modifications that will be required in the political, economic, social, and environmental spheres at various scales—from individual to international. Also of interest are papers that consider the role of transformations in non-traditional, underrepresented, or otherwise neglected domains, including but not limited to institutional/governance architectures, climate change adaptation and climate-related loss and damage, justice and human rights, and cultural economies/creative industries.

Guest Editor: Assist. Prof. Stacy-ann Robinson

Manuscript submission information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline of 31 December 2021.

All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited.

Find out more on the Sustainability website.

A call for nominations to assist with the scoping of a methodological assessment of business and biodiversity for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is closing soon.

Interested experts wishing to be nominated by a Government are encouraged to contact their IPBES National Focal Point (https://www.ipbes.net/national-focal-points) regarding any country-specific processes or deadlines and are requested to fill out their application form by 25 January 2021. Nominators (Governments or organizations) should approve the applications and submit their nominations by 1 February 2021. Early nominations ahead of the deadline are encouraged.

This assessment is aimed at categorizing how businesses depend on, and impact, biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people and at identifying criteria and indicators for measuring that dependence and impact, taking into consideration how such metrics can be integrated into other aspects of sustainability. See the IPBES website to find out more.

All nominated experts (Nominees) need to be available to attend the scoping meeting that is part of the scoping process, tentatively scheduled for 26-30 April 2021.

Nominees are invited to fill out the application form and attach their curriculum vitae through the dedicated web portal at https://ipbes.net/application/scoping-of-a-methodological-assessment-of-business-and-biodiversity

An online conference to seek early input into the scoping process of the business and biodiversity assessment has been re-scheduled to 3 and 4 March 2021.

A survey to collect information on the use of completed IPBES assessments in policymaking at the national and subnational level is currently open for responses until 14 January 2021.

Governments and non-governmental stakeholders, including individuals, organizations, networks, researchers, and indigenous peoples and local communities are invited to take part in this survey and to  share information on how they have used completed IPBES assessments in their own work related to policymaking at the (sub)national level, by completing the questionnaire below.

You can access the survey here. Completing the survey will take approximately 15-20 minutes.


Heading photo by Cédric VT on Unsplash

A call for applications for the 4th cohort of the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership has now been released.

The Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership is a unique programme that develops the next generation of leaders in sustainability research affiliated with a European research institution. With this year’s focus topic “Pathways for regenerative development in human nature relationships. Building back better?”, the programme provides an intensive training with four seminars in two years that broaden the research competencies of early career researchers and promote their qualification towards transdisciplinary leadership. The programme also offers seed funding to groups of participants planning to initiate research collaborations. Furthermore, an active network of current and former participants of the programme will be established.

The programme is an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and a joint project of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the four academic centres Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (IRI THESys), Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Stockholm Resilience Centre and The Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT), Rotterdam.

For further information on the application process, please see here and refer to the Postdoc Academy Flyer_2021.

Applications can be submitted until 15th February 2021.

The Belmont Forum is seeking an Executive Director to lead its International Secretariat.

The Belmont Forum seeks an accomplished, inspiring, and strategic individual who is genuinely passionate about international cooperation on the ground and the opportunity to make a lasting impact on society. The Executive Director will lead the Secretariat to realize the vision, mission, and goals of the Belmont Forum. This individual will display a genuine intellectual curiosity, an exceptional degree of interpersonal effectiveness, experience leading complex international organizations, and a commitment to support the diverse membership of Belmont Forum.

The Executive Director position is a 3-year appointment based in Montevideo, Uruguay at the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) Offices. There is the possibility of a single renewal period of 3 years subject to satisfactory yearly performance assessments. The position will commence as soon as possible and relocation to Montevideo is expected, but currently contingent upon COVID 19 travel-restrictions.

The successful candidate should have experience in the field of global environmental change, sustainability research, and related policy issues. Furthermore, leadership experience at the executive level of an international organization, program, or project would be an asset. The working language of the Belmont Forum Secretariat and activities is English; thus, it is expected that the Executive Director will be proficient in English. Competency in additional languages is desirable but not essential. The Executive Director reports directly to the Belmont Forum Steering Committee led by the co-chairs and will be accountable to the Belmont Forum Members. The Director will have oversight of Secretariat staff and is responsible for all operations.

The deadline for applications is 15 February, 2021 at 17:00 UTC.

A full announcement is available on the Belmont Forum website.

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

Articles and book chapters

Adger, W.N., Crépin, A.S., Folke, C., Ospina, D., Chapin III, F.S., Segerson, K., Seto, K.C., Anderies, J.M.,
Barrett, S., Bennett, E.M. Daily, G. etyt al., 2020. Urbanization, Migration, and Adaptation to Climate
Change. One Earth, 3(4), pp.396-399.

Bastiaensen Johan, Huybrechs Frédéric, Forcella Davide, Van Hecken Gert. 2020. Microfinance plus for ecosystem services : a territorial perspective on Proyecto CAMBio in Nicaragua, in: Value chain development and the poor : promise, delivery, and opportunities for impact at scale, Rugby,
Practical Action Publishing, p. 263-279.

Carr, Edward R. Resilient livelihoods in an era of global transformation. Global Environmental Change,
Volume 64, September 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102155

Chad S. Boda, Murray Scown, Turaj Faran, Maryam Nastar, Kelly Dorkenoo, Brian Chaffin & Emily Boyd,
2020. Framing Loss and Damage from climate change as the failure of Sustainable Development.
Climate and Development, https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2020.1851640

J. Calvimontes, L. Massaro, C.H.X. Araujo, R.R. Moraes, J. Mello, L.C. Ferreira, M. de Theije, Small-scale gold mining and the COVID-19 pandemic: Conflict and cooperation in the Brazilian Amazon, The Extractive Industries and Society, Volume 7, Issue 4, 2020, pp. 1347-1350, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2020.08.013.

Carton, W., Asiyanbi, A., Beck, S., Buck, H. & Lund, J. (2020). Negative emission and the long history of
carbon removal. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11(6), e671.
https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.671

Roberto Hernandez Chea, Akriti Jain, and Nancy Bocken, A Conceptualization of Firm Activities Toward Sustainability Transitions. Proceedings, 2020.

Hernández-Chea, R.; Vimalnath, P.; Bocken, N.; Tietze, F.; Eppinger, E. Integrating Intellectual Property and Sustainable Business Models: The SBM-IP Canvas. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8871.

Karpouzoglou T, Dewulf A, Perez K, Gurung P, Regmi S, Isaeva A, Foggin M, Bastiaensen J, Van Hecken G, Zulkafli Z, et al. 2020. From present to future development pathways in fragile mountain landscapes. Environmental Science & Policy, 114:606-613.

Jasanoff, S. (2020). Imagined worlds: The politics of future-making in the twenty-first century. In The
Politics and Science of Prevision (pp. 27-44). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003022428

Jasanoff, S. (2020). Knowing Earth. An Insider’s Guide to a Rapidly Changing Planet. In Tortell, P (Ed.).
Earth 2020: An Insider’s Guide to a Rapidly Changing Planet (pp. 169-176). Open Book Publisher.
https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0193.19

Jasanoff, S. (2020). Pathologies of Liberty. Public Health Sovereignty and the Political Subject in the
Covid-19 Crisis. Cahiers Droit, Sciences & Technologies, (11), 125-149.
https://doi.org/10.4000/cdst.2982

Jasanoff, S. (2020). Ours Is the Earth: Science and Human History in the Anthropocene. Special issue of
the Journal of the Philosophy of History. 10.1163/18722636-12341447

Jolivet, D. “Welfare and Migration: Unfulfilled Aspirations to “Have Rights” in the South-Moroccan
Todgha Valley” IMI Working Paper Series, 170. November 2020.

Johnstone, P., Rogge, K. S., Kivimaa, P., Fratini, C. F., Primmer, E., & Stirling, A. (2020). Waves of
disruption in clean energy transitions: Sociotechnical dimensions of system disruption in Germany and
the United Kingdom. Energy Research & Social Science, 59, 101287.

Riedy, C. Discourse coalitions for sustainability transformations: common ground and conflict beyond neoliberalism, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Vol. 45, 2020, p. 100-112.

Stirling, A., & Scoones, I. (2020). COVID-19 and the Futility of Control in the Modern World. Issues in
Science and Technology, 38(4), 25-27.

Siddiqui, T., Szaboova, L., Adger, W.N., Safra de Campos, R., Bhuiyan, M.R.A. and Billah, T., 2020. Policy
Opportunities and Constraints for Addressing Urban Precarity of Migrant Populations. Global Policy.

Vimalnath, P., Tietze, F., Jain, A., & Prifti, V. (2020). IP Strategies for Green Innovations – An Analysis of European Inventor Awards. 

Pratheeba Vimalnath, Frank Tietze, Elisabeth Eppinger, and Jan Sternkopf, 2020: Closed, Semi-Open, or Fully-Open? Towards an Intellectual Property Strategy Typology. Proceedings, 2020.

Eight researchers from the Gold Matters project recently participated as contributing authors for
the book “Global Gold Production Touching Ground: Expansion, Informalization, and Technological
Innovation” edited by Sara Geenen and Boris Verbrugge.

  • Through twelve study cases, the book explores the expansion, informalization and technical innovation of global gold production, demonstrating how large and small-scale gold mining are both integral parts of the global gold production system, and how gold extraction is entrenched in institutional and ecological structures. Find out more and watch the videos from the book launch.

Gemenne, François. 2020. On a tous un ami noir. Fayard, 2020

  • This book by François Gemenne (MISTY project) offers an alternative to the way immigration is currently debated. It builds on facts, research and testimony to show that is possible to engage with the question of immigration in a rational and calm way.

Alizèta Ouédraogo, 2020, « De l’« empowerment » des femmes lobi sur les sites d’orpaillage dans le  Sud-Ouest du Burkina Faso » [On the ’empowerment’ of Lobi women on gold-panning sites in south-west Burkina Faso], in Militance Pour la connaissance des sociétés du Sud-Ouest du Burkina Faso. Hommage à Madeleine Père, coordinated by Yamba Bidima, Michèle Cros et Quentin Mégret, L’Harmattan, pp. 171-180.

Alizèta Ouédraogo also participated in a webinar on 22 October, organized by INSUCO and Chambre des Mines du Burkina Faso on the topic « Quelle responsabilité sociale des mines face à la Covid 19 – partage d’expériences. » Ouédraogo’s presentation was on “L’orpaillage et la Covid-19 dans le sud-ouest du Burkina Faso” [Gold-panning and COVID-19 in the south-west of Burkina Faso”. Please contact Virginie Tallio if you would like to watch a recording of the webinar.

Working papers and knowledge briefs

Anjula Gurtoo and Akriti Jain, IPACST Knowledge brief on sustainability impact assessment

Viola Prifti and Elisabeth Eppinger, IPACST Knowledge brief on Intellectual Property licensing

Nancy Bocken and Roberto Hernandez Chea, IPACST Knowledge brief on Sustainable Business Models

Frank Tietze and Pratheeba Vimalnath, IPACST Knowledge brief on Intellectual Property

Webinars

Debating Development: Reflecting on Decolonial Perspectives
TRUEPATH partner, Johan Bastiaensen, was a presenter in a recent webinar on ‘A decolonial turn for development studies?’, part of a series run by the University of Antwerp Institute of Development Policy (IOB) and University foundation for Development Cooperation (USOS).

Evidence vs Myth – Understanding Displacement in a Changing Climate.
MISTY Partner, François Gemenne, was one of the panel of experts taking part in this dialogue hosted by
the IDMC (internal displacement monitoring centre) on 8 December 2020.

Streamlining Labour Recruitment through Regularisation of Middlemen, RMMRU (MISTY project partners), 29 November 2020.

 

She has also participated in the « Quelle responsabilité sociale des mines face à la Covid 19 – partage d’expériences. » webinar on the 22nd of October, organized by INSUCO and Chambre des Mines du Burkina Faso with a communication on “L’orpaillage et la Covid-19 dans le sud-ouest du Burkina Faso”.

In the press…

François Gemenne (MISTY), Rendre les camps de migrants invisibles ne les fera pas disparaître [Hiding migrant camps from view will not make them disappear], 27 November 2020, The Conversation. 

Maya Goodfellow, How helpful is the term ‘climate refugee’? 31 August 2020, The Guardian.

MISTY project partners Ricardo Safra de Campos and Caroline Zickgraf are cited in this article in relation to their expert roles giving evidence to the House of Lords EU Home Affairs sub-committee on the subject of climate refugees.

Around the web…

Big Climate Movement: Migration & displacement in times of climate change,” Migration Matters, 14 September 2020.

MISTY project partners Caroline Zickgraf and François Gemenne participate in a 12-episode series dissecting the complex interactions between climate change and migration. 

“It’s not easy but our voices and the voices of the marginalised need to be heard.”
Interview with MISTY partner Tasneem Siddiqui, (RMMRU), Asian Forum for Human Rights and
Development, 8 October 2020.

Bruno Jochum, François Gemenne: ‘We need more open borders ahead of the climate crisis’, Geneva Solutions, 11 December 2020.

As told by Milagros Romero, TRUEPATH project team member.

At the beginning of December 2020 the TRUEPATH team and its partner Centro Humboldt implemented a workshop with community climate observers to collectively analyse the rainy season and its
implications for productive activities in the study zone.

Due to the COVID pandemic, the workshops were held in two separate small groups, maintaining all security measures. In these, the team addressed the impact of the two hurricanes, Eta and Iota, that hit Nicaragua in October and November and caused severe damage in the the territory.

It is worth noting that during the hurricanes the WhatsApp group of the network of weather observers
was an excellent platform to communicate useful information about prevention and protection
measures.

Based on the preliminary results of different workshops, such as the photography-based participatory
exercise, the participatory mapping exercise, the Territorial Development Pathways Course for local
actors, and other reflection platforms, the TRUEPATH team selected a set of statements with different
perspectives on the dynamics of the territory and its socio-ecological consequences to develop the Q
methodology. The Q method was conducted the first week of December with people from different
communities and organizations from the study area.

See also: A return to fieldwork in Nicaragua for the TruePATH project.

By Dominique Jolivet and Mumuni Abu (MISTY project team). This post was originally shared on the MISTY project website on 15 December 2020.

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, MISTY had to postpone its plans to conduct a comparative survey in five cities across the globe. Survey plans have resumed eight months later with the launch of face-to-face and online surveys. We have diversified the data collection methods to comply with local institutional biosecurity measures and adjusted our study to the evolution of the pandemic in Accra, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dhaka, London, Maputo and Worcester (US).

The MISTY survey is designed to study changes in sustainable practices (attitudes and behaviours) in individuals’ lives over the life course and the migration trajectory. The survey compares life trajectories of international migrants, internal migrants, and non-migrants in different cities across the globe.

MISTY has readjusted its research design to conduct biographic surveys with retrospective questions in Accra, Maputo and Dhaka and shorter cross-sectional online surveys in the other sites. The compensation of losing the retrospective component in the online survey is the reduced cost of online data collection. This allows MISTY to broaden the geographical scope of the online survey and add London and Brussels to Amsterdam and Worcester. The biographic and online surveys will collect a substantial amount of overlapping information which can be used for comparative research.

MISTY field work resumes with the RIPS team rolling out the qualitative survey in Accra.

The Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) at the University of Ghana is the first to implement the biographic survey face to face in Accra. The fieldwork kicked off in November and the team has already collected data among 878 respondents. Enumerators are extra careful in the field to ensure both their safety and that of respondents and keep to the established COVID-19 protocols. Respondents tend to share their experiences during the initial lockdown in Accra, and how it affected their businesses. Some respondents claim to have lost their capital as a result of the pandemic because of the closure of the borders between Ghana and Nigeria – the major route for their business. In addition, their goods are hardly sold these days because their usual customers are particularly careful with their expenditure due to the economic shocks brought by the pandemic. Most schools are still closed in Accra, which puts additional stress on respondents who spend so much time with their children that it is also affecting their business.

On December 7, MISTY launched its online survey in Amsterdam, Brussels and London. An online remote survey prevents us from gathering respondents’ everyday experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the online approach does allow us to overcome local institutional biosecurity measures and collect without further delays rich data to answer some of our research questions while data collection through face to face and remote interviews is ongoing in the other sites. The next step is to launch the online survey in Worcester while we prepare the fieldwork in Dhaka and Maputo, where we plan to combine face-to-face and mobile phone interviews.

As told by Eleanor Fisher, Gold Matters Project Leader.

In April and May 2020 the Brazilian team of the Gold Matters project collected data on how the COVID-
19 crisis was affecting artisanal and small-scale gold miners (ASGM) in three regions in the Brazilian
Amazon.

The published results of the investigation “Small-scale gold mining and the COVID-19 pandemic: Conflict and cooperation in the Brazilian Amazon” reveal how the impact of COVID-19 has
two sides. On the one hand, the vulnerability of miners is exposed, while on the other, their
capacity to find coping solutions is revealed.

Following this first study, the Brazilian team coordinated further data collection between May and August 2020 in the same three regions. This work was part of the World Bank-led DELVE global data gathering exercise to record specific COVID-19 impacts on ASGM communities. The collaboration included 18 organizations over 22 countries. The results of the survey are accessible on the DELVE platform.

Moreover, the World Bank’s Extractives Global Programmatic Support Fund recently granted funding for project members to propose initiatives that improve the sustainability of gold mining in relation to the use of mercury and to illegal gold trading in the community of Peixoto de Azevedo. The research is intended to contribute to building more resilient ASGM communities after the crisis. It will also inform policy-makers, academics and others about priorities, and the impacts of COVID-19 in these communities. This knowledge is important for understanding how local people can organize the sector in terms of new practices for employee healthcare, and – of course – for environmental and social sustainability.

Find out more:

J. Calvimontes, L. Massaro, C.H.X. Araujo, R.R. Moraes, J. Mello, L.C. Ferreira, M. de Theije, Small-scale gold mining and the COVID-19 pandemic: Conflict and cooperation in the Brazilian Amazon, The Extractive Industries and Society, Volume 7, Issue 4, 2020, pp. 1347-1350, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2020.08.013.

Delve. (2020). Delve COVID-19 Impact Reporting.


All photos courtesy of Jorge Calvimontes.

In mid-November 2020 the GoST project held its third stakeholder workshop on interrogating the governance and financial implications of ‘Smart Cities’ in India. The workshop brought together a diverse set of people working on the conceptualisation, financing and implementation of ‘smart city’ projects across India, in the wider context of urbanization in India. The aim of the workshop was to develop a critical outlook on the ‘smart city’ mission in the overall landscape of governance and planning and to support researchers, activists, media representatives, public administrators, corporate executives, planners, architects, students and academics to develop a critical understanding of the implications of the ‘smart city’ mission.

An overview is available online.

See also:

Report of the Workshop on Interrogating Governance and Financial Implications of ‘Smart Cities’ (Part I) held on 12th November 2020.

Report of the Workshop on Interrogating Governance and Financial Implications of ‘Smart Cities’ (Part II) held on 19th November 2020.

Qamar ZJ & Chandrima Mazumdar, ‘Smart Cities Mission’ is anti-poor, non-inclusive, and against the consitutional mandate: Experts, RW News Network, 30 November 2020.

The workshop was organized by the Environment Support Group (ESG) and Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) in cooperation with Harvard Kennedy School & Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ.


Header photo: The port of Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh (Charu Sharma via Flickr). Kakinada has been identified as part of the Government of India’s ‘Smart City’ mission.

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  • T2S Coordination Office

    Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
    Email: T2S@nwo.nl
    Postal address: PO Box 93461
    NL-2509 AL The Hague
    The Netherlands

  • Visiting address

    Laan van Nieuw Oost-Indië 300
    NL-2593 CE  The Hague
    The Netherlands

  • Grant Agreement

    This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730211.
  • Links

    • www.belmontforum.org
    • www.norface.net