Environment and Sustainability > Sustainable Development
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The distinctiveness of urban processes and dynamics in Africa are of global significance. Achieving sustainable transitions in African cities must necessarily engage with theory and practice, which are derived out of context, and applied in systems and structures that are not globally understood. As sites of knowledge production, universities on the continent have a key role to play in addressing Sustainable Development Goal 11, which seeks to make cities sustainable. The ‘third mission’ of universities, which involves shaping societal benefits, extends their traditional mandates of research and higher education teaching beyond and across academic disciplines, to engage in local and global partnerships. Evidence from a range of knowledge co-production programmes anchored at African universities show that transdisciplinary approaches have made positive contributions to society. With the goal of realising the full potential of sustainability transitions, a network of scholars convened around a series of workshops to understand and enhance the effectiveness of the New African Urban University. Through processes of knowledge exchange, the network showed that realising the full potential is hampered by challenges of working across and beyond disciplines, highlighting the structural and systemic shifts required within African universities. Furthermore, partnering across the Global North and South in international transdisciplinary programmes is beset by power dynamics that shape assumptions and practices based on universalised assumptions about both theory and practice. This article outlines dimensions of an agenda to inform a more global and inclusive positioning of African universities as agents of social change.
Resilience has become a ubiquitous term. Individuals, communities and societies are increasingly called upon to be resilient and build resilience as a way to withstand and bounce back from compound climate-induced shocks, conflicts, health and economic crises. In this provocation we critically interrogate the potential that resilience holds for moving beyond a world marked by crises and widening inequalities. A multidisciplinary corpus of feminist scholarship conceives of resilience as a conservative and deeply exclusionary biopolitical device. Against this background, we argue that expressions of resilience from above and below firmly guided by principles of care can be seen as serving socially and environmentally just ends. We thus encourage scholars, particularly feminist scholars, to continue engaging and engaging more courageously with these two concepts in a collective effort to reclaim resilience as a transformatory device.
Organising ‘boundary spaces’ has become a practice for tackling wicked issues in societal planning. Such spaces bring together diverse actors to intentionally staged problem formulation and management processes. However, despite clear goals, boundary spaces face challenges. Moreover, the processes often generate dilemmas and paradoxes that participating actors are incapable of managing within the boundary space itself. In some situations, such tensions can amplify challenges or prevent results from impacting participating organisations. Using a transdisciplinary (TD) research approach, the aim of this article is to develop a better understanding of the different dilemmas and paradoxes that surround or arise within boundary spaces and thereby contribute to increasing their effectiveness in tackling the issues they were created to address.
This article originates from a TD research project that investigated four different boundary spaces of societal planning and research in Sweden. The project employed an iterative TD process that combined theoretical contributions from planning- and organisation studies with practical experiences from societal planning, and facilitation. The position of boundary spaces as being ‘between’ actors – ‘between’ in terms of representation and decision making – calls for further attention to the situatedness of dilemmas and paradoxes in space and time. Our approach resulted in an analytic framework where the dilemmas and paradoxes of boundary spaces were categorised as contextual, relational, process- or transformation-related. The results point at the relations between what we see as three interrelated tensions that ground the existence and functioning of boundary spaces: the mismatch dilemma, the commoning dilemma and the collaboration paradox.
Since the late 1980s, academics and activists have been drawing attention to a slow-moving global crisis: the ongoing destruction of global linguistic diversity. Despite this attention, language loss has proceeded unabated, and conservative estimates now suggest that around half the world’s languages will no longer be in use by the end of this century. In this provocation, I argue that only a global mass movement has the capacity to change the course of this crisis. I furthermore argue that a rights-based approach, centred on language rights, is our best bet for organising such a movement. Drawing on social movement studies, and my own experience as a language rights researcher and advocate, I explore three key areas where language rights provide the foundations for a mass movement in defence of linguistic diversity. First, I look at how language rights provide a discursive frame that resonates with other movements and clarifies the problem that needs to be addressed. Second, I look at how the concept of language rights can help recruit individuals and organisations into a mass movement and sustain their involvement in the cause. Third, I discuss how language rights provide a basis for effective collective action. In the conclusion I briefly discuss some of the challenges that will need to be overcome in forming a global mass movement for language rights.
I analyse the coming together of frontline actors, particularly people of colour in the US, building on the concept of ‘just transitions’ to help solve the climate crisis as ‘border thinking or border epistemology’ within decolonial thought. Frontline communities are characterised by high exposure to climate and environmental risks; fewer safety nets because of their immigration status and insecure jobs; and less political power to respond to risks. My contribution is twofold: first, to allow reflexivity and to acknowledge that I share some sense of the lived experiences with the people I speak with in my research, I have approached our encounter through pakikipagkapwa, a Filipino indigenous concept that evokes concepts of communal support, solidarity and equality. Second, I argue that conceptualising frontline mobilisation as border thinking repositions frontline actors as creators, thinkers and knowers who harness their collective power to shift from an extractive economy, which is profiting off labour and natural resources with centralisation of profits, to a regenerative one that is ecologically and equitably sustainable. Through praxis and community organising, frontline communities reclaim their agency, challenge dominant neoliberal capitalistic relations and redefine just transitions that reflect their practices and vision of the world.
‘New economics’ discourses – comprising diverse approaches advocated as more just and sustainable replacements of dominant neoclassical and neoliberal economic perspectives – have been criticised as insufficiently coherent to form the ‘discourse coalitions’ necessary to enter the mainstream. To date there has been little systematic exploration of the agreement or divergence in new economics discourses. Here, we conduct a qualitative systematised review of new economics literature in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to analyse stances towards the economic status quo and the depth of change advocated in it, such as fundamental and systemic transformation or more superficial reformist or accepting types of change that mostly maintain current economic systems. We interpreted authors’ stances towards six key status quo themes: capitalism; neoliberalism; GDP-based economic growth; debt-based money; globalisation; and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the 525 documents analysed, there was relative consensus that neoliberalism needed transforming, stances towards GDP-based growth substantially diverged (from transformative to reformist/accepting), and stances towards the SDGs were mostly accepting, although the status quo themes tended to be infrequently mentioned overall. Different new economics approaches were associated with diverging stances. We suggest that alignment against neoliberalism and towards the SDGs may provide strategic coalescing points for new economics. Because stances towards core problematised aspects of mainstream economics were often not articulated, we encourage new economics scholars and practitioners to remain explicit, aware and reflexive with regard to the economic status quo, as well as strategic in their approach to seeking economic transformation.
This chapter explores the biopolitical ‘effects’ of ESD interventions in terms of the subjectivities and conceptions of sustainable lifestyles that they produce in different socio-economic and geographical contexts. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the empirical material alongside some reflections on methodological challenges involved in studying biopolitical ‘effects’. The chapter then proceeds with a comparative biopolitical analysis of such effects in discrete socio-economic and geographical ESD settings. This analysis brings attention to the different conceptions of sustainable lifestyles that are produced among students and how they understand their everyday lives, and constitute themselves as agents, in relation to sustainable development. Attention is further drawn to the notions of responsibility that are produced and where responsibility for sustainable development is located. Thereafter, the analysis closes in on the students’ engagement with democratic decision-making within ESD activities, and how they think about themselves as shapers of sustainable development through these initiatives. Finally, attention is drawn to how students situate themselves geographically in relation to sustainable development and how they engage with the key rationale of ESD suggesting that the local community is the most promising arena for transformative action.
This final chapter concludes the book. The first part of the chapter summarizes and discusses the main findings and themes of the book. Contributions to previous research and missing pieces are also brought to the fore. The second part of the chapter seeks to intervene in the world of ESD policy and practice by raising issues around what affirmative alternatives there might be to current modes of biopolitical differentiation in global ESD implementation – that is, alternatives that take seriously UNESCO’s vision of a more just and sustainable world.
This chapter and the next explore the world’s largest ESD programme – Eco-Schools – through comparative biopolitical analysis across sites and scales. Combined, the two chapters probe how the programme is governed globally, and how it is unpacked in different local contexts in a world marked by deep inequality. The present chapter focuses on the rationalities and techniques through which the programme is rendered governable globally. The chapter begins with a short introduction to Eco-Schools and to the programme’s national operators in Sweden, South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda. Thereafter, the chapter proceeds with an analysis of how Eco-Schools is governed across scales. Through this analysis, the (neo)liberal biopolitical elements that pervade the programme are laid bare. These include: the programme’s efforts to target and transform everyday life through education; techniques of self-management and performativity; decentred power structures; and the overall logic of global inclusion. A biopolitical understanding of these modalities of government will prove important as it will pave the way for the subsequent chapter’s findings from different local Eco-School settings.
