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Transformations to Sustainability is a Belmont Forum-NORFACE Joint Research Programme

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Transformations 2019 in Santiago, Chile, to focus on 'Learning from Transformative Action and Thinking'

The Transformations to Sustainability community will be active at the forthcoming Transformations 2019 conference, which begins on 16 October in Santiago, Chile.

On 15 October, T2S programme researchers will convene a pre-conference workshop on Transformation Laboratories as spaces for co-designing social-ecological transformation: learning from different contexts and approaches.

Further information about the T2S sessions in Santiago can be found here - keep an eye on the ISC's twitter account for news from the conference.

Local knowledge and ideas are key to action on climate disruption

Vulnerable coastal areas of South Asia face a ‘perfect storm’ of increasing climate uncertainties combined with threats to livelihoods from inequality, industrial development and marginalisation, according to researchers from the TAPESTRY project working with local partners in India and Bangladesh. But the region can adapt to climate change more effectively if it recognizes the …
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Assessing the impacts of Pavagada, soon to be Asia's largest solar park

Two members of the GoST: Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations project team have been assessing the impacts of the Pavagada Solar Park – Asia’s soon-to-be largest solar park …
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Members of the GoST team were also involved in 'The Politics of Uncertainty', an international symposium which took place this July. Videos from the event are now online.
T2SGS Randullabad_1

Towards a sustainable way of living with and sharing groundwater resources

Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability (T2GS) investigates promising grassroots initiatives of people organizing around groundwater in places where pressures on the resource are particularly acute — India, Algeria, Morocco, USA, Chile, Peru and Tanzania. As these initiatives often defy or challenge conventional wisdom, the project’s hypothesis is that they contain creative insights …
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Find out more about how T2GS is exploring two contrasting case studies in India.

AGENTS project meets with stakeholders and rural communities in the state of Pará, Brazil

The AGENTS project team held their first co-production meeting in Belém, Brazil, followed by a series of visits to rural communities across five municipalities in the northeast of Pará state…
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Waterproofing Data: pilot study in Brazil

Researchers from the Waterproofing Data project tested methods in study sites in Rio Branco and São Paulo, and explored the flood mitigation measures currently being taken by local authorities and citizens affected by flooding. School students also got involved …
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Convivial conservation in Tanzania on the agenda for CONVIVA workshop

In June 2019, the University of Sheffield, one of the institutions involved in the CONVIVA project, hosted a workshop bringing together diverse scholars working on political ecology in the global South and North. Four researchers affiliated with CONVIVA…
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Blogs and opinion from the T2S community:

Garimpeiros and Gold along Highway BR163

Garimpeiros and gold along highway BR163

By Jorge Calvimontes, Raissa Resende de Moraes and Carlos Henrique Xavier Araujo. In July we travelled along highway BR163 searching for garimpeiros (miners) and gold. Recognizing miner mobilities, and how important the highway has been for access to some of the most important gold deposits in the …
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What is transformation anyway?

By Kate Massarella. Since the Brundtland report was published over 30 years ago, sustainable development has held its place as the goal for many concerned with both environmental protection and economic development. This powerful idea that we can eliminate global poverty while preserving the natural world has captured …
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Human-jaguar relations in the Atlantic Forest: an opportunity for conviviality!

By the Brazilian CONVIVA team. Interdisciplinarity as a goal and starting point. The Brazilian team implementing the CONVIVA – convivial conservation project – is a highly diverse group of enthusiastic researchers from different institutions and disciplines, working in collaboration towards jaguar conservation in the Atlantic rainforest through …
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Conserving what, how, and for whom? Unpacking SDG 15 “Life on land” and its links to convivial conservation

By Judith Krauss. What does the 15th Sustainable Development Goal, dubbed “Life on Land”, mean for CONVIVA, our research project investigating how conservation can be made more convivial, socially just, transformative? This blog post hopes to offer some initial, non-exhaustive thoughts …
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Resources round-up: latest publications from the T2S community

Articles, book chapters, media coverage and more from the T2S programme projects and related research...
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Recommended reading

Transformative Water Relations: Indigenous Interventions in Global Political Economies, Kate J. Neville and Glen Coulthard, Global Environmental Politics, Vol.19:3, August 2019
Kate Neville says

"With attention to historical relationships of colonialism and the ongoing contestation of governance systems within and across nations, the Special Issue articles collected here address both the limits to and the opportunities for change. Through critical political economy lenses, particularly as understood in Indigenous politics and thought, these articles offer theoretically and empirically novel contributions to GEP."

Smart as Democratically Transformative? An Analysis of ‘Smart City’ Sociotechnical
Imaginary in India, Bipashyee Ghosh and Saurabh Arora
Franziska Krasemann says

"This is an interesting article of ‘Smart cities’ as sociotechnical imaginaries in India showing how, despite considerable efforts to engage the broader public, an uneven and technocratic approach to smart transformation for the upper- and middle-class leaves behind the voices of the poor."

Transdisciplinary Pathways for Sustainability Transformations – a Sustainability Learning Lab in Seychelles, Pius Krütli, Danny Nef, Michael Stauffacher, Seychelles Research Journal.
Sarah Moore says:

"I found this report on the implementation of a sustainability lab in the Seychelles interesting for demonstrating the value of long-term institutional relationships between partners in a transdisciplinary research initiative. Such a set up seems to reduce, if not entirely eliminate, the problem of abrupt ‘exiting’ after relatively short-term research partnerships."

Principles, priorities and pathways for inclusive green economies: Economic transformation to deliver the SDGs, Partners for Inclusive Green Economy

Sustainability governance and transformation, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Darla K. Munrow, Ariane de Bremond, COSUST Special Issue (Vol 38, June 2019).
All articles in this Global Land Project Special Issue are available free of charge for individual download until December 2019.

Deliberation and the Promise of a Deeply Democratic Sustainability Transition, Michael B. Wironen, Robert V. Bartlett and Jon D. Erickson, Sustainability 2019, 11(4), 1023.

Uncertain superlatives, 9 September 2019, Emery Roe

Uncertain futures and the politics of uncertainty, 3 September 2019, Richard Bronk

Funding calls and other opportunities:

Pre-announcement: a joint transnational call on “Enabling Societal Transformation in the Face of Climate Change” (SOLSTICE)

In the framework of the JPI Climate, the French National Research Agency (ANR) will launch a joint transnational call for proposals in October 2019.

SOLSTICE seeks interdisciplinary contributions from consortia led by the Social Sciences and Humanities who will address societal aspects of climate change. Given the pressing nature of global climate change, SOLSTICE aims at producing knowledge that can have an impact on society and policy; impact should not be limited to scientific publications, but should have the potential to trigger change in behaviour and attitudes at any level of society.

The call will address three themes:
  • Social justice and participation
  • Sense making, cultural meaning and risk perception
  • Transformative finance and economy
Find out more.

Call for article(s): A new article collection on 'Expertise in Integration and Implementation for Transformative Research' has been launched by the open access journal Palgrave Communications. Gabriele Bammer leads the team of editors. This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed at any point up until December 2020.

Call for abstract(s): Authors are invited to respond to a call for abstracts for a special issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability on “Slow Onset Events related to Climate Change”. Abstracts should be submitted no later than 15 October 2019.

Call for paper(s): The T2S team are looking for authors interested in addressing an aspect or aspects of social transformation in relation to ‘frameworks and models to capture social-ecological interactions – resilience and complexity’, to fit into a special issue of the journal Current Opinion on Environmental Sustainability (COSUST) on that topic. The special issue is due for publication in August 2020, with a paper deadline of 1 December 2019. The paper(s) would also form part of a virtual special issue of COSUST on the ‘State of knowledge on social transformation’. A possible angle for a paper could be ‘trade-offs and conflicts in integrative approaches to management of social-ecological systems for sustainability’, but other ideas are welcome. Please contact Sarah Moore for more information or to make a proposal.

Call for nominations of experts for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to assist with the scoping of a thematic assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health. Interested experts wishing to be nominated by a Government are encouraged to contact their IPBES National Focal Point regarding any country-specific processes or deadlines and are requested to fill out their application form by 15 October 2019.

Connect with the T2S Community

Transformations 2019: Learning from Transformative Action and Thinking
16-18 October
University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

Join us at Transformations 2019 - see the top of this email for more information.

Third Biennial Conference of the Political Ecology Network Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration
24-26 June 2020
Brighton, United Kingdom

The contested notion of ‘nature’ is one of the central themes in political ecology, and the third biennial conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN), Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration, aims to explore plural natures and plural futures as sites of struggle and possibility whilst critically engaging with and ‘unpacking’ multiple and overlapping crises of our times.

A call for session proposals has now been released – all proposals must be submitted online by 31 October 2019.

Sustainability Research & Innovation 2020
14-17 June 2020
Brisbane, Australia

Future Earth, which supports systems-focused sustainability researchers and innovators, and the Belmont Forum, the world’s largest consortium of transdisciplinary global change and sustainability research funders, are joining forces to establish an annual congress in which the world’s foremost research and innovation communities come together to share successes, exchange views, and work across disciplines and sectors to support a global transformation to sustainability.

See our website for all forthcoming events.
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