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SSPS Tutorials and LCs Noteshttps://referencelist.library.maastrichtuniversity.nl/E/04bfec8619d1441c80690bf8cd08f26a
TASK 1
Sustainable development entails dealing with complex and dynamic socio-
environmental systems. Such systems are characterized by feedback
loops, by uncertainties and by unforeseen side-effects of interventions.
Furthermore, sustainability problems are characterized by high
uncertainty and high decision stakes among a multitude of stakeholders.
Sustainability science has emerged as a response from science to deal
with the complexities of sustainable development because the normal
way of doing science turned out to be insufficient. Reductionism and
Newtonian science don’t seem to help in solving sustainability problems.
Post-normal or mode-2 science occurs when facts are uncertain, values in
dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent. Meeting the challenges of
sustainable development requires action that changes the status quo. It is
impossible to eradicate uncertainty from decision-making processes, and
therefore it must be adequately managed through organized participatory
processes in which different kinds of knowledge – not only scientific
knowledge – come into play. As a result, those making policy are as well
informed as possible about complex social problems of major importance
and an extended peer community becomes necessary.
Study questions
Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs
What is a dynamic social-environmental system?
What are the 5 most challenging features of complex social-
environmental systems?
What is the normal way of doing science (What is reductionism and
Newtonian science (look up on internet))?
What is post-normal or mode 2 science (and what is the role of systems
uncertainties and decision stakes)?
What is sustainability science?
*Discussion questions
1. Why is it so difficult to pursue sustainability?
- Many actors, different knowledge, merging of global and local,
difficult to define problems, solutions might cause new
problems
2. Why is post-normal science relevant for sustainability problems?
- Problems contemplated by sust.sci are not straightforward to
solve and cannot be addressed in a linear way
,3. What is an extended peer community and why is it important for
pursuing sustainability?
- A community of peers from all stakeholders and including
those outside of science
- Important since both scientific and practical / experience
knowledge are needed to address sustainability issues
4. Kates et al ( 2001) state that “In areas like climate change, scientific
exploration and practical application must occur simultaneously”. Do
you think that such simultaneous actions might compromise science?
Matson Chap 1
- Sustainable development concept evolving and broadening
since the Brundtland report
- Meeting the challenges of sust dev requires action that
changes the status quo – difficult since too many powerful
interests in keeping business as usual so need for social
agitation
- Amrtya Sen: role of science: informed agitation to promote
sust dev
- Sustainability science is a field emerged that focussed on
creating and harnessing many different kinds of
knowledge to help address social problems, integrates
science and practice through use-inspired research –
goal is increasing our knowledge of and ability to maintain
interactions between environmental and social systems
- Success in pursuit of sustainability is context specific and a
collaborative affair
- Check appendix A and B
Matson Chap 3 – Dynamics of Social-Env Systems
- Social- environmental systems are complex adaptive systems
that have multiple interconnected components interacting in
diverse ways – boundaries of the system need to be described
– characterised by self-organisation and emergent behavior so
more complex than would be predicted by the behavior of
individual parts
- For intergenerational concerns of sustainability analysis –
what time frame should be taken into consideration?
- Spatial and temporal changes in systems can be understood
and tracked by measuring the changes in stocks of capital
assets whose size is controlled by inflows and outflows
,- Inertia in some systems where effect of changing controls is
seen after long time
- 5 capital assets: natural, manufactured, Social, human and
knowledge capitals
- Sust dev can be seen as a challenge of maintaining assets
well managing the inflows and outflows
- Systems interact through feedback loops, when change in one
part of a system affects other parts in such a way as to loop
back to influence that original component by reinforcing the
change (+ feedback) or by dampening it (-) – feedbacks result
from a chain of events that can sometimes be very hard to
measure or predict
- Invisibilites (local choices affecting communities and
generations in a way that decision makers cannot see) are
referred to as externalities
1. First dimesion is ignorance: science not yet developed
(CFCs)
2. effects are not visible in geographical proximity (Nepal)
3. effects are on a later to come generation
- SO making the invisible visible is essential
- Pursuit of sustainability in complex s-e- s needs to be an
adaptive process in which the best possible interventions are
tried, results carefully monitored, course corrected as seen fit
- Systems can cross thresholds or tipping points at each small
perturbation, leading to regime shifts which are persistent and
abrupt changes in the dynamics of a system
- Poverty traps in the system is where poverty persists over
time – efforts to help people cross tipping points into more
dynamic systems
- Perturbations interact with the dynamic characteristics of
complex systems (feedbacks, invisibilities, tipping points and
regime shifts) – ways to manage them:
1. System absorbs the perturbation and continues like
before
2. System collapse into components and then reassemble
its core capacities slowly
3. Can transform shock into opportunity to do things in
new ways that allow prosperity like before
- What determines the capacity of SESs to cope depends on:
1. Resilience: ability to continue to perform when faced
with perturbation at the current level if not even
benefitting from it – thanks to: diversity, redundancy
(insurance against loss) and connectivity
2. Vulnerability: likelihood of suffering harm, which also
depends on differential access to capital assets
- Search: Agroforestry systems
- We don’t yet have tools to evaluate quant systems and their
dynamics
, - System dynamics modelling is used to conceptualise and
formalise an understanding of the interactions in a system
(integrated assessment; multi-criteria analysis, life cycle
assessment)
- Efforts made to develop an accounting of a system and
indicator of its components usually do not take into
consideration externalities and only focus on flows rather than
stock - but increasingly more integrative – see Yale example
page 77 box 3.2
- Science for sustainability is a tent with different kinds of
expertise needed
Funtowicz and Ravetz – science for the post normal age
- Emerged in response to challenges of policy issues of risk and
environment
- New science has new methodology that helps to guide its
development where uncertainty is not banished but managed
and values are not presupposed but made explicit
- Good quality of info depends on good management of
uncertainties which was before kept at the margins of science
and methodology
- New policy issues have common features distinguishing them
from traditional scientific problems: universal in their scale
and long term in impact, phenomena are not well understood
yet, data on their effects are inadequate, science can now
produce at best mathematical models or computer
simulations which are untestable > policy cannot proceed on
factual predictions but only on forecasts
- All stakeholders in an issue from an extended peer community
for QA, for an effective problem-solving strategy for global
environmental risks
- Before: clear methodology leading to clear solution – new
challenges do not render traditional science irrelevant but we
need to choose appropriate problem solving strategies for
each particular case
- System uncertainties: problem is concerned not with the
discovery of a particular fact but with the comprehension or
management of a complex reality
- Decision stakes: various costs, benefits and value
commitments involved in the issue through stakeholders
- Manifold uncertainties in products and processes require that
the relative importance of persons becomes enhanced, where
actors primarily affected are involved in the peer communities
– this enriches process of investigation
Kates – Sustainability Science:
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