scholarly journals Sustainable Development Requires an Integrated Design Discipline to Address Unique Problems

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35
Author(s):  
Rui Helder Dos Santos Martins
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Engineering Profession ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Linear Complex ◽  
Edge Of Chaos ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
Complex Adaptive

Sustainable development has taken centre stage in our global conscience. Until recently, wehave been focused on economic prosperity, driven by the mechanistic worldviewof the scientific method. Once the cracks appeared, as a society, we have beenlooking for a deeper meaning and approach to life. Through a literature review,the paper proposes that current ‘experts’, using the engineering profession asan example, are not able to address the wicked problems confronting us, sincethey prevail within the reductionist mode of knowledge production. We needdesign thinkers - who are natural systemic practitioners -to solve systemicproblems, which is characterised by sustainable development.A futuresecond paper will draw on the behaviour of non-linear, complex adaptive systemsas self-organising emergence at the edge of chaos and re-interpret the designthinking process in a way which encompasses the intuitive, non-linear andqualitative way in which sustainable development problems need to be addressed. 

scholarly journals Sustainable Development Requires an Integrated Design Discipline to Address Unique Problems

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Helder Dos Santos Martins
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Engineering Profession ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Linear Complex ◽  
Edge Of Chaos ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
Complex Adaptive

Sustainable development has taken centre stage in our global conscience. Until recently, wehave been focused on economic prosperity, driven by the mechanistic worldviewof the scientific method. Once the cracks appeared, as a society, we have beenlooking for a deeper meaning and approach to life. Through a literature review,the paper proposes that current ‘experts’, using the engineering profession asan example, are not able to address the wicked problems confronting us, sincethey prevail within the reductionist mode of knowledge production. We needdesign thinkers - who are natural systemic practitioners -to solve systemicproblems, which is characterised by sustainable development.A futuresecond paper will draw on the behaviour of non-linear, complex adaptive systemsas self-organising emergence at the edge of chaos and re-interpret the designthinking process in a way which encompasses the intuitive, non-linear andqualitative way in which sustainable development problems need to be addressed. 

scholarly journals Sustainable Development Goal Drivers in Food Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Kretschmer ◽  
Johannes Kahl
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Food System ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Linear Processes ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Diagnostic Framework ◽  
Primary Predictor

Interacting driving forces in food systems, resulting in cumulative driver effects and synergies, induce non-linear processes in multiple directions. This paper critically reviews the discourse on driving forces in food systems and argues that mindset is the primary predictor for food system outcomes. In the epoch of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Anthropocene, mindset matters more than ever. Transformative narratives are beginning to transcend the dominant social paradigm, which is still driving the food system's overall trajectory. The psychosocial portrayal of the systemic mindset found in organic food systems presented in this paper “flips the script” and hypothesizes that worldview and paradigm have the most causal linkages with unsustainable driver synergies and reversely the biggest leverage on the mitigation thereof. Borrowing from ecological economics discourses, the paper sharpens the driver definition by applying the DPSIR analytical tool as a modified diagnostic framework and modeling approach for food systems. This research sheds new light on the nature of drivers of change, which are often portrayed as almighty and inevitable trends shaping food systems. Instead, it is proposed that drivers emerge from the actors' mindset, affecting food system behavior in a non-linear way. Mindset drives reinforcing feedback loops, resulting in vicious and virtuous cycles. These driver motives manifest in subsystems and continue to drive their interaction across food system elements. Mindset acts as an encapsulated input of food systems, all the while responding to feedback and releasing new drivers. A transformation framework along leverage points of the food system is presented that features the concept of SDG drivers.

Reflections on Mode 3, the Co-Evolution of Knowledge and Innovation Systems and How it Relates to Sustainable Development

2013 ◽  
pp. 46-55
Author(s):  
Alice B. M. Vadrot
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Innovation Systems ◽  
Quadruple Helix ◽  
Innovation Ecosystem ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Basic Understanding ◽  
Mode 3

This paper is interested in raising the question to which extent the epistemological implications of the Mode 3 concept coincide with the respective knowledge understanding. The argumentation focuses on the article from David F. J. Campbell and Elias G. “Mode 3” and “Quadruple Helix”: Toward a 21st Century Fractal Innovation Ecosystem (2009) and aims to illuminate it from a theoretical perspective. The starting point is the elaborated basic understanding of knowledge as well as the interpretation of knowledge production.

The Role of Evolutionary Studies in Education for Sustainable Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin Eirdosh ◽  
Susan Hanisch
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Evolutionary Studies ◽  
Complex Adaptive

Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) examines the emergence and persistence of complex adaptive systems, including human social-ecological systems. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to empower students with the skills to develop and sustain human social-ecological systems that reflect the shared values of our species. The aims of EvoS and ESD have clear overlaps, and yet these two fields remain as distant islands of thought with few academic bridges between them. This chapter explores the connections between EvoS and ESD from historical, theoretical, and applied perspectives and presents the value of an integrated approach. The authors argue the strengths of this approach include its cumulative evidence base from wide-ranging disciplines, its explanatory power, and its overall simplicity.

The Otaniemi Campus Development and Ecological Sustainability

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katri-Liisa Pulkkinen ◽  
Aija Staffans
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
University Campus ◽  
Current State ◽  
Complex Adaptive

No building or neighbourhood is an island but a constantly changing complex adaptive system produced by many contemporaneous, mostly interconnected and parallel but sometimes also conflicting processes. By using the development of Aalto University Campus, Finland, as an example of such a complex adaptive system in the course of change processes, the article demonstrates the challenge of transforming the production of our urban environment to truly meet the goals of sustainable development. Ecological sustainability is here understood as the need for regeneration, which is proposed as necessary in the current state of the planet. The article uses the concept of the perceived systemic environment and argues for its paradigmatic role in this context. Perceptions of the systemic environment affect and steer the actual goal setting of the stakeholders/actors in the system and can either enhance or even override the transition towards sustainability. The article suggests a way to steer the change towards a more regenerative perception of the systemic environment.

UN Women’s feminist engagement with governance by indicators in the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-366
Author(s):  
Sara Rose Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Evidence Based Policy ◽  
Development Goals

The rise of evidence-based policy has brought with it an increase in the use of indicators and data-driven global projects. The United Nations System has used the indicator-based Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) projects to govern policy from above. Of particular interest in this article is how indicators are used to govern gender equality initiatives within the Goals. By using ‘governance by indicators’ as a framework for understanding global policy processes, we can better understand how the power of indicators can help or hinder progress towards gender equality depending on the extent to which it renders gendered concerns visible. Studying indicators in this forum also illuminates spaces of contestation, where policy actors can debate indicators and reshape meaning. Based on this framework, this article explores UN Women’s feminist critique of measurement and knowledge production in the MDGs and SDGs. Looking through their feminist lens applied to this form of knowledge production can yield a better understanding of the use of indicators in shaping evidence-based policy from the global level. In recognizing the value of quantification and data-driven evidence in policy, this article speaks to the tension between feminist critique of quantitative knowledge production and the feminist approach’s welcoming of multiple ways of knowing.

scholarly journals Sustainability Science: Toward a Synthesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 331-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Clark ◽  
Alicia G. Harley
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
Term Evolution ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Governance Arrangements

This review synthesizes diverse approaches that researchers have brought to bear on the challenge of sustainable development. We construct an integrated framework highlighting the union set of elements and relationships that those approaches have shown to be useful in explaining nature–society interactions in multiple contexts. Compelling evidence has accumulated that those interactions should be viewed as a globally interconnected, complex adaptive system in which heterogeneity, nonlinearity, and innovation play formative roles. The long-term evolution of that system cannot be predicted but can be understood and partially guided through dynamic interventions. Research has identified six capacities necessary to support such interventions in guiding development pathways toward sustainability. These are capacities to ( a) measure sustainable development, ( b) promote equity, ( c) adapt to shocks and surprises, ( d) transform the system into more sustainable development pathways, ( e) link knowledge with action, and ( f) devise governance arrangements that allow people to work together in exercising the other capacities.

scholarly journals Activist ESD Pedagogies and the End of Critique: An Edu/Poetic Attempt to Bring in the Missing Child—Becoming Child

2020 ◽  
pp. 107780042097874
Author(s):  
Anne Beate Reinertsen
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Affective Processes ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Zero Points

The idea of this article is to interrogate what I conceive of as an onto-epistemic acceleration and knowledge production spoken by life. Immanent knowledge practices for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Love, care, learning, and collective responsibility transmigrating throughout the aeons of time. It is an attempt to write planetary differential Activist Pedagogies and Life Sciences: experimentations and explorations of putting parts of components together, reaching into the future, playing toward an interest. It is a nonlinear, mannerist, and poetic approach to education, learning and play, research, and pedagogical practices of critique. An approach and style possibilizing and opening up for affective becomings in which ongoing processes are vitalist parts of ontological change. I work with thinkable categories as they disappear, collaboratively linked to a natural web of human and more-than-human agents. It implies a de-facto end of critique or a normalizing of judgment and/or our assessment practices: a Deleuzian clinical practice. Counting myself in and staying accountable to my immanent situatedness, to the child. Processes seen as zero points in action only graspable in hindsight, hence always unpredictable. Affective processes bring concepts into play and seek to continue keeping them in play. Concepts are thus always performative and methodological, inherently experimental, and open to yet-unknown territories of thought. I speak of happenings in language. Thinking with, through, and beyond concepts involves developing conceptual foci while also, and at the same time, designing for debate. I ask, how to continue not knowing what is right or wrong even in times of crisis?

scholarly journals Characteristic Development Model: A Transformation for the Sustainable Development of Small Towns in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 3753
Author(s):  
Xueqin Wang ◽  
Shenghe Liu ◽  
Olivier Sykes ◽  
Chengxin Wang
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Development Model ◽  
Main Line ◽  
Development Mode ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultivation Strategy

In recent years, the construction of small towns in China has faced many challenges, hindering the sustainable development of small towns. This paper proposes that the traditional development model of small towns no longer meets the current demands, and it urgently needs updating. In the past two years, there has been an increase in the construction of characteristic small towns in China. This is a good beginning for the transformation development of small towns and would bring new opportunities. However, some problems have developed. One example is the emergence of the “blind town”, which means the governors cultivate a featured town blindly without objectively considering the reality of that area. These decisions have a negative impact on the future sustainable development of small towns. Therefore, the governors need to consider the basic conditions of the area, perform a scientific assessment, and present a clear cultivation strategy. This paper presents a preliminary scientific method for the characteristic development mode of small towns with “explore characteristic–evaluate characteristic–nurture characteristic” as the main line, which would be conducive to the characteristic transformation for the steady and sustainable development of small towns in China.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document