How can research support sustainability policies more effectively?

Policies to advance sustainability agendas are today being formulated and implemented in a context of multiple tensions. These multiple facets do not exist independently of one another and can only be sketched here:

Demography: In the last half century the global population has more than doubled. There are now close to seven billion people sharing the planet, and the figure is still growing. Many societies are very young, with an average age of between 15 and 20 years, while others, particularly in industrialised countries, are ageing. These developments put extraordinary strains on the social institutions of all societies, from education to healthcare. A minority has over-abundant access to resources, while an estimated one billion people go hungry. More than half of humanity is already living in cities and in coastal zones.

Environmental crisis: This is not only the climate crisis, but also a crisis of unprecedented loss of biodiversity and human-induced changes in ecosystem structure and functioning. It is a growing water crisis (both quantity and quality); large segments of humanity do not have access to energy; deforestation, agricultural practices and other land-use changes account for an estimated >30% of CO2 emissions and bring arid and semi-arid regions with about two billion citizens closer to the tipping point. The message is still not getting through on a broad enough front, and many companies and even governments believe that it might be enough to buy carbon offsets in developing countries and that structural changes can be avoided. This is not commensurate with the scientific evidence that we have a high chance of not meeting the political target of stopping the global temperature from rising more than 2oC.

Scientific and technological revolution: Scientific knowledge and technological developments have seen an unprecedented expansion in the last decades. With the concomitant productivity gains, fewer people are objectively needed to generate most of the economic wealth of a country. That begs the question of how to ensure dignified lives for those who seem not to be 'needed'. On the other hand, intellectual or other monocultures are not viable, not to mention the fact that they are incompatible with democracy. How can we cultivate a knowledge society in which everybody is both a provider of knowledge – scientific or otherwise – and a user of knowledge and where rich international knowledge-intensive co-operation generates benefits to all participants.

Peaceful international relations and interdependence in times of globalisation: Greater social justice is at the heart of global sustainability agendas. Using the already available knowledge and technologies meaningful win-win situations can be constructed that combine productivity gains with socially, economically and environmentally sound activities. Among the more obvious are

  • climate-proofing housing stocks,
  • ecosystem rehabilitation and restoration,
  • individual healthcare and care for the elderly,
  • growing biodiverse and biosafe value-for-money food in more environmentally-friendly ways that also strike a better balance between increasingly urban living conditions and the human need to relate to nature,
  • bringing renewables within the economic and practical reach of energy-starved people.

Three factors among the many that play a role may offer particular cost-effectiveness:

- investing in public goods that foster peacefulness and create enabling conditions for public, private and civil society actors on a broad front; and more particularly public knowledge goods which bring down transaction costs and create a level-playing field and inclusiveness. A case in point of the latter are public web archives, such as www.fishbase.org and www.sealifebase.org, which make the best scientific knowledge on fish and marine organisms and their ecosystems readily accessible to currently one million users per month;

- strengthening sustainability objectives in national and international education systems with a particular emphasis on creating common memories and consciousness as a precondition for acting together, making the ability to co-operate a centrepiece of education, applying the motto "meet the global peers"; and

- strengthen rules and law enforcement so as to increase the credibility of already agreed principles and commitments.

 

Research agendas for transitions towards sustainability with a particular potential for supporting more options and action:

Process: Conducting more research in a critically engaged mode with social actors such as to help organise demand for knowledge and at the same time uptake and use in social and technological innovation. Likewise, much more effort is warranted in "translating" scientific work and results into language and contextualised narratives which facilitate the assessment of the waves of new knowledge for its suitability for problem-solving, supporting general culture and other uses.

Content: Only a few of the areas particularly worthy of pursuit in future research, including in international co-operative mode, to address basic sustainability needs can be highlighted here:

  • growing food sustainably under the conditions of global change with a particular emphasis on food security (access for everyone to sufficient food of good quality to lead an active and healthy life);
  • public healthcare delivery to all;
  • how we can live more in tune with nature;
  • how to gradually implement existing international commitments and fill existing knowledge gaps to reduce impediments;
  • how to devise financial service and insurance systems conducive to sustainability;
  • cultural heritage;
  • greening the economy;
  • governance systems and approaches supportive of sustainability.

 

Dr Cornelia Nauen is Senior Scientific Officer at DG Research, European Commission