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While the concept of the Anthropocene reflects the past and present nature, scale and magnitude of human impacts on the Earth System, its true significance lies in how it can be used to guide attitudes, choices, policies and actions that influence the future. Yet, to date much of the research on the Anthropocene has focused on interpreting past and...
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Citations
... Scientific urge for a change in humanity's development trajectories is starting to be translated into action. The nature's unprecedented and dangerous decline (Rockström et al. 2009;Steffen et al. 2015;Bai et al. 2016) calls for 'a fundamental, system-wide reorganization' (IPBES 2019) across psychological, behavioural, social, cultural, economic, political, governance, institutional, demographic, technical andtechnological factors andchanges (IPBES 2021). In the past years, the scientific appeals appear to start being picked up in political commitments to action. ...
... In part, this is due to the incredible complexity of manging a societal transition among multiple and linked biophysical and social interactions and constraints. Contemporary socio-ecological systems are subject to rapid and unprecedented change, multiple drivers, dynamic and unpredictable structures, unknown phenomena and unintended consequences (Bai et al. 2016;Reyers et al. 2018). Add to that the density of today's governance landscape, which involves a myriad of actors, from state to non-state, acting at multiple levels and with a heavy interdependence (e.g. ...
Although science widely supports moving towards transformative change through integrating biodiversity into decision-making, and arguing for the essential role of public authorities, it falls short on suggesting specific means to that end. This article considers the EU’s approach to fostering the green transition as part of its post-pandemic recovery while exploring how the integration of biodiversity considerations could be integrated into decision-making. The rationale and implementation of the EU’s do no harm principle is examined, which functioned as a condition for public funds. The analysis shows the mentioned EU policy innovation has a very limited impact. The role of do no harm has been limited to validating, rather than initiating policy measures. It has failed to influence the design of measures such that they would benefit biodiversity and not encouraged synergies between the climate and biodiversity goals. Based on the experience with do no harm as well as the more focussed regulatory action directed at the goal of climate neutrality, the article lists key steps for fostering biodiversity integration in policy planning and policy implementation. These steps encompass substantive and procedural approaches and aim for deliberation, target-setting, tracking, verification and screening. There is considerable scope for robust regulation to play a role in support of the biodiversity goals alongside transformative bottom-up initiatives.
... These are interconnected across sectors and scales (local to international), providing a challenge to siloed and spatially uncoordinated decision-making (Bai et al. 2016a). Given the diversity of local histories, cultures and contexts, specific urban solutions also need to be context-specific and place-based (Corburn 2009;Dixon and Tewdwr-Jones 2021), and guided by local communities' shared visions and exploration of future pathways (Bai et al. 2016b;McPhearson et al. 2017;Hajer and Versteeg 2019). The complex, systemic and cross-scale nature of urban challenges means that transformative change requires both top-down (national/state) and bottom-up strategies (Ehnert et al. 2018;Romero-Lankao et al. 2018), with solution-oriented transdisciplinary engagement (McPhearson et al. 2022). ...
Transformative urban development is urgent to achieve future sustainable development and wellbeing. Transformation can benefit from shared and cumulative learning on strategies to guide urban development across local to national scales, while also reflecting the complex emergent nature of urban systems, and the need for context-specific and place-based solutions. The article addresses this challenge, drawing on extensive transdisciplinary engagement and National Strategy co-development processes for Australia. This includes generation of two frameworks as boundary objects to assist such transdisciplinary strategy development. An ‘enabling urban systems transformation’ framework comprises four generic overarching transformation enablers and a set of necessary underpinning urban capacities. This also built cumulatively on other sustainability and urban transformation studies. A complementary ‘knowledge for urban systems transformation’ framework comprises key knowledge themes that can support an integrated systems approach to mission-focused urban transformations, such as decarbonising cities. The article provides insights on the transdisciplinary processes, urban systems frameworks, and scoping of key strategies that may help those developing transformation strategies from local to national scales.
Science highlights
• Transdisciplinary national urban strategy development is used to distil generic frameworks and strategy scopes with potential international application.
• The frameworks also build on other published framings to support convergent, cumulative and transdisciplinary urban science.
• The ‘enabling transformations’ and ‘urban knowledge’ frameworks include the perspective of those developing sustainable urban systems strategies.
• The enabling framework also informs ‘National Urban Policy’ and ‘Knowledge and Innovation Hub’ strategies, and prevailing power imbalances.
• The knowledge framework can help frame urban challenges, missions and knowledge programs.
Policy and practice recommendations
• An urban ‘transformation imperative’ and ‘strategic response’ can be co-developed from local to national scales.
• Local initiative is crucial to drive urban strategies, but sustained national leadership with coherent policy across sectors and scales is also key.
• Diversity in engagement participation and processes generates whole-of-urban-systems and local-to-national perspectives.
• Urban solutions are context-specific but generic frameworks can help collaborative issue framing and responses.
• Collaborative issue framing informed by generic frameworks can bring broader perspectives to context-specific and contested policy and practice issues.
... Economic globalization and technological progress promote the multi-level and multi-scale mobility of people, information, and materials, making the network structure between urbanization and ecosystems across spatial distances (Bai et al., 2016). Thus, local ecosystems and urbanization development are subject to flow elements that can have distal effects that further influence urbanization and ecosystem interaction stresses. ...
Coordinating the relationship between urbanization and ecological environment quality (EEQ) is crucial to achieving sustainable development. With the development of globalization, the pattern of remote interaction between urbanization and EEQ has gradually increased. However, the current study on the coupling of urbanization and EEQ lacks a remote perspective, and the remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) model has not yet considered the environmental pollution caused by population agglomeration. For these reasons, this study proposes the remote sensing ecological environment index (RSEEI) model and measures the local coupling and telecoupling coordination degree (LTCCD) of urbanization and EEQ in China from 2000 to 2020. According to the results, the rate of change of EEQ in China was −0.00011a⁻¹. RSEEI widens the gap between the east and west of EEQ, differentiated by the Heihe-Tengchong Line. China's urbanization is growing at a 0.0008a⁻¹ rate, with a spatially driven radiation potential with Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macao as the core. LTCCD follows an increasing trend from inland to coastal and west to east. Over 70% of provinces experienced a shift in adjacent LTCCD levels, and 14 provinces moved from disorder to coordination after 2010. The telecoupling strengthens the correlation between urbanization and EEQ among regions compared with traditional coupling. In addition, the eastern coastal areas, the northern and central-south inland areas, and the northwest face different coordination problems.
... Previous research on place framing in sustainability transitions and transformation has had a marked and more narrow focus on the politics of the future, in line with an ongoing turn in sustainability studies towards investigations into future imaginaries and their performativity in the present (Bai et al., 2016;Muidermann et al., 2020;Beck et al., 2021;Oomen et al., 2021). For example, Braun (2015: 239) has argued that, while. ...
... This study makes a second contribution to understandings of the geography of sustainability transitions and transformation. By recognizing the role of collective memories of place in the co-constitution of place frames and future visions, it is our hope that this paper contributes to an active counterbalancing of the strong 'future orientation and outlook' taken in recent years by sustainability science and transition studies (e.g., Bai et al., 2016;Knappe et al., 2019;Muiderman et al., 2020). Without de-emphasizing the important role of the future and of varying techniques of futuring in influencing vision and actions in the present (e.g. ...
A geographical perspective is crucial to understanding sustainability transitions and transformation, but previous research on place framing in sustainability transitions and transformation has had a marked focus on the politics of the future and its performativity in the present. This paper analyzes place-framing in sustainability transitions and transformation by examining how the conflicting collective memories of a place and the framings of the future of this place interact and lead to the justification of particular forms of socio-material development, land use and sustainability of the peri-urban spaces of the city of Sogamoso, Colombia. Based on 38 semi-structured interviews, we identify three distinct assemblages of future visions, collective memories and place frames, which we call urban development, recovering tradition, and cultural revitalization. The analysis shows that place framing is an exercise through which collective memories and future visions are connected and co-constituted in a spatio-temporal ‘dialogue’: collective memories, future visions and place frames are processes of social construction activated in the attempt to shape or contest sustainability transitions and transformation. We contend that the existence and mobilization of collective memories—and their critical influence on future visions—are a core aspect of the politics of place framing fundamental to the socio-material processes of sustainability transitions and transformation. Furthermore, a politics of place-making in sustainability transitions and transformation involves acknowledging and negotiating collective memories of the past as much as future visions. This suggests ways to critically counterbalance the marked future orientation taken in recent years by sustainability science and transition studies.
... At the core of outer sustainability progress are needs to halt unsustainable activities; reverse unsustainable trends; and implement alternatives that enhance prospects for future as well as present wellbeing, while also maintaining and strengthening desirable current social, ecological, and socio-ecological characteristics and relations, protecting the vulnerable, and respecting uncertainties [104]. To be effective, approaches to meet these three core needs require appreciation for complexity, resilience, context-specificity, and an understanding of the interdependencies across social and ecological systems [51,52,154,176,[181][182][183][184][184][185][186][187]. Supporting positive transformations also entails the nurturing of various inner capacities such as awareness, compassion, empathy, and intercultural competencies that have been largely absent in mainstream sustainability discourse [12,87,89,149,188]. ...
Calls for systemic transformations have become prevalent throughout sustainability discourse. Increasingly, these calls point towards consciousness expanding practices and interventions, such as mindfulness, to support the development of individual understandings, skills, and capacities that are conducive to more sustainable ways of being and doing. The growing interest in leveraging inner capacities, including mindsets, worldviews, values, and beliefs for sustainability transformations emerges from concerns that conventional approaches are failing to align social and ecological systems towards long-term viability. Interest in these consciousness-driven transformations is spreading, particularly in governments and prominent organisations. Tempering this enthusiasm are concerns that untethered from moral and ethical guidelines as well as caring understanding of local and global prospects for lasting wellbeing, mindfulness programs, workshops, and interventions for inner transformation can inadvertently strengthen unsustainable systems and deepen inequities. Accordingly, this paper presents an exploratory assessment framework to increase understandings of how events focused on interventions for inner transformation align with broad sustainability requirements. Findings from application of the framework should help to elucidate how these offerings can disrupt normative ways of thinking and doing, and in turn, positively influence multi-scalar transformations. Furthermore, use of the assessment process to plan and/or evaluate inner development offerings is anticipated to help strengthen progress towards sustainability and reduce adverse trade-offs that might undermine positive systemic transformations.
... Environmentalism in the ruptured Anthropocene will not stay in the reactive and passive form of environmentalism, curtailing our impact or interference with the environment as it has been doing and continues to do so, but must rather adopt a form of active planetary stewardship (Steffen et al., 2011). This means identifying, deliberating and selecting interventions, and actively steering the Earth System towards a desirable future among many other plausible futures (Bai et al., 2016). We disturbed the system and now, whether we like it or not, we must take full responsibility by taking ownership, and choose our own future. ...
If the Anthropocene is a rupture in planetary history, what does it mean for international environmental law? When the Earth System crosses irreversible tipping points and begins a forceful, nonlinear transformation into a hostile state which I call the ruptured Anthropocene, the concept of protecting the global environment from humans would lose its meaning. Not only the dichotomy between humans and nature becomes irrelevant, but the environment itself will no longer exist as an object for protection. I argue that, for international environmental law to stay relevant in the ruptured Anthropocene, it needs to shift away from its traditional focus on restoring the planetary past, and instead play an active role in the making of planetary futures. Its new purpose will need to be active planetary stewardship, whereby humans add self-awareness for deliberate self-regulation of the Earth System. Such an attempt at 'taming' the so-called Gaia 2.0 will, however, create winners and losers, and the new form of law will have to address fundamental questions of justice on a planetary scale. Building on the concept of earth system law emerging in the earth system governance literature, I draw the contours of international environmental law 2.0 for the ruptured Anthropocene and discuss the challenges of instituting active planetary stewardship.
... He imagined one scenario of abundance and one of scarcity, overlaying them with political regimes of either hierarchy or egalitarianism. Bai et al. (2016) added more nuance to the research by indicating that such futures depended on societal goals, major trends and dynamics that might favor or hinder them, and factors that might propel or impede transformations toward desirable futures. ...
... Indeed, waiting for the collapse to happen to initiate such transformations invites folly (Ruhl & Ruhl, 2022). Bai et al. (2016) pointed out that dramatic social and technological changes are required to achieve a sustainable future and that transitions that are central to increased sustainability are interlinked and engulf demographic, technological, social, institutional, informational, and ideological transitions. Some more concrete strategies that they suggested were replacing the GDP with a new measure of progress, a broader use of scenarios of possible futures in public deliberations and collective decision-making to explore multiple relations with the situated knowledge of multiple stakeholders, and creating new relationships between science and practice, where solution-oriented research questions are asked. ...
Because of concerns that ongoing climate change could lead to a possible collapse of human civilization, the topic of societal (civilization) collapse has emerged as especially relevant, not least for the futures-oriented studies. While this has led to extensive research on societal collapse, there is a lack of consolidation and synthesis of the research. The purpose of this article is thus to systematize the extant research on societal collapse and suggest future research directions. This article offers a systematic multidisciplinary review of the existing literature (361 articles and 73 books) and identifies five scholarly conversations: past collapses, general explanations of collapse, alternatives to collapse, fictional collapses, and future climate change and societal collapse. The review builds the foundation for a critical discussion of each line of inquiry by focusing on theoretical tensions and themes within each scholarly conversation, ending with a discussion of how these conversations inform futures research.
... Well, across the last several decades in international environmental discourse, sustainability has garnered a multitude of meanings and definitions (see Hopwood et al., 2005 for an overview). Here it is a concept capable of mobilizing, particularly when practiced concretely in context (Jacobs, 1999), whose importance is underscored in policy (United Nations, 2015) and research (Bai et al., 2016;Köhler et al., 2019). Moments of definition are usually marked by international gatherings or treaties. ...
... Reflexive governance approaches inform their work from complexity sciences to learn despite uncertainty (Ison, 2010;Avelino & Grin, 2017). Their process-based nature means that governing change involves the exploration of direction, purpose, transformative potential and capacities to act (Köhler et al., 2019;Bai et al. 2016). Situated engagement of this kind is reflective of an action-oriented approach to research (Loorbach, 2007;Scholz, 2017), where "[…]sustainability must become recognized as a contested, discursive resource for learning -a boundary object -that facilitates argument about diverse pathways to different futures" (Leach et al., 2010, p.114). ...
... They are part of a swelling sentiment the roles of temporality are not one, but plural, when engagement with sustainability, and that its value may lie in how it provides a source of imagination and creation (Brown et al. 2010). Recent calls from within sustainability transformations have therefore shifted attention towards futuring as a way to elicit, explore and co-produce futures (Bai et al., 2016). One source of development concerns their anticipatory and directional characters. ...
We live in a time of compounding ecological and social change. Given the uncertain and
urgent nature of ongoing transformations, contemporary forms of governance are
experiencing a central tension. The tension between controlling the present and nurturing
collective capacities to enact transformative change. Amidst a wave of interest in transitions
and transformations in-the-making, labs in real-world contexts have entered the discussion.
Labs have emerged as appealing, novel and highly complex entities that situate and localize
engagement around complex sustainability challenges. Labs carry a systemic view of
change; they comprise alternative and experimental approaches; they carry a normative
assumption that research has plural roles; and they hold an explicit learning orientation that
infuses knowledge with action.
Given the unfolding of labs in the real world, my involvement in their design, and ongoing
interests in treating both meanings and processes of sustainability, this thesis is organized
around a curiosity. Its overarching aim is to investigate how sustainability-oriented labs
could be unpacked, designed and evaluated in the context of sustainability transitions and
transformations. Underlaboured by a critical realist philosophy of science, this thesis
investigates sustainability-oriented labs by way of a qualitative-dominant, case-based
research strategy. It does this across three overlapping research phases, culminating in four
appended papers.
In research phase one, we adopt a systematic review of sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts, exploring and classifying a global sample of labs according to their
engagement with sustainability. In paper II, we identify and unpack 53 sustainability-oriented
labs in real-world contexts. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we explore the
distribution and diversity of these labs, discerning the research communities which
conceptualize labs and the dimensions of their practice. In Paper III, we present an
empirically grounded typology, arriving at six different types of sustainability-oriented labs:
1) Fix and control, 2) (Re-)Design and optimize, 3) Make and relate, 4) Educate and engage,
5) Empower and govern and 6) Explore and shape.
In research phase three, paper II presents a qualitative case-based inquiry into Challenge
Lab (C-Lab), a challenge-driven learning environment. Paper II conceptualizes challenge
framing as embedded within an open-ended learning process, both on a level of practice
and space. Experiences related to framing in C-Lab shed light on how students situate
themselves and see their role within existing challenges, how they navigate limits to
knowledge in complex systems, and how they self-assess their own sense of comfort and
progress. In addition, we introduce three dilemmas that are not owned by teachers or
students but emerge, as contradiction, within the learning space.
In research phase three, paper IV presents a multi-case comparison of evaluation practices
in various sustainability transition initiatives. We conceptualize and compare the role of
evaluation as a tool that can enhance the transformative capacity of sustainability-oriented
labs and its broader family of transition experiments.
This thesis and its appended papers provide practical-experiential, empirical-conceptual
and methodological contributions on the topic of sustainability-oriented labs in real-world
contexts. In addition, it contains a layered account of an undisciplinary doctoral journey. I
do this by (1) reflecting upon each research phase, (2) providing transparent accounts of
positionality in relation to my research, (3) conceptualizing and reflecting upon
undisciplinarity as a process of becoming, and (4) providing a mobile autoethnographic
account of staying on the ground as part of a broader commitment to interrogate
knowledge practices. Moving forward, I find myself motivated by three convictions: (1)
transformations are needed, and labs are invitations in between dualisms, (2) invitations
hold the possibility of flipping big assumptions and ethical practices, and (3)
transformations presuppose fundamental change from within both research and education
knowledge systems. They hinge upon the questioning of what both are, who they are for,
and what they might need to become. In conclusion, they compel us think big, start small,
and act now.
... However, these approaches do not intend to remove the human from the equation but consider a multispecies worldview that questions their interaction and cohabitation (Kobayashi, 2014;Light et al., 2017aLight et al., , 2017bMancini and Lehtonen, 2018;Roudavski, 2020;Smith et al., 2017), moving humans from their view of superiority. The Anthropocene signifies new challenges and opportunities that require new perspectives (Bai et al., 2015;Haraway, 2016). Designers are now required to look beyond products to work on services, networks, and experiences that consider complex sociotechnical systems (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy, 2016). ...
Climate change is arguably the most urgent crisis of our lifetimes, and the Design community has been continuously exploring how to respond to this complex challenge. However, the past few years have demonstrated just how difficult climate change communication and engagement can be. As a response to the Anthropocene challenges, HCI and Design researchers have been debating the need for a shift from user-centered design to more inclusive, multispecies perspectives that also focus on systemic change. This is, therefore, an opportune moment to question how Design researchers have been approaching climate change and its interaction challenges, supporting the discussion on where the field should go. We present a literature review of HCI and Design research projects on climate change that target the general public. The result is the analysis and discussion of a corpus of 74 projects through the grounded theory review method. From our findings, we propose implications for design that take advantage of diverse interaction strategies and hope to inform future applied research on this pressing topic.KeywordsHuman-computer interactionDesignCommunicationInteractionVisualizationLiterature reviewSustainabilityClimate change
... Ultimately, they are self-explanatory, disregarding experience, knowledge, and personal and social aspirations, as Marquardt and Delina argue [19]. In this way, the normative and critical view argues that these sociotechnical can be integrated into desirable futures, rather than being planned futures [3,9,36], which seem predetermined by economic or technological needs, says Kelz [37]. ...
... Therefore, we also suggest normatively combining community aspirations with economic development is necessary because anticipating the future is not errorfree. It is, thus, essential to act with caution in a constructive and shared way about the "desirable future" (see Jasanoff and Simmet [3], Eaton et al. [9], Bai et al. [36]). ...
This text explores the meaning of the expression “mined future,” which has been used by local populations who oppose lithium production in Northern Portugal. We argue that the expression encapsulates the existence of a conflict for the “ownership” of future, unfolding a battle of visions of the future between local populations and governments. The local population sees the exploitation of lithium as a takeover of future. In contrast, the governments justify the project by promising a sociotechnical future in convergence with European green energy rhetoric. This article follows a grounded theory approach. It relies on information collected about the lithium exploration in Portugal, mainly through journalistic pieces and opinion articles disseminated between 2019 and 2020. In particular, the paper proposes that political action that involves large sociotechnical ventures with the potential of contamination needs to consider the local collective perceptions of the future.
