David P. M. Lam

David P. M. Lam
Leuphana University of Lüneburg ·  Institute of Ethics and Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research

Doctor of Philosophy

About

24
Publications
25,747
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,342
Citations

Publications

Publications (24)
Article
Full-text available
Technical summary The question of how science can become a lever in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals permeates most recent sustainability research. Wide-ranging literature calling for a transformative approach has emerged in recent years. This ‘transformative turn’ is fueled by publications from fields such as sustainability science, soc...
Article
Full-text available
Achieving sustainability in the Anthropocene requires radical changes to how human societies operate. The Seeds of Good Anthropocenes (SOGA) project has identified a diverse set of existing initiatives, called “seeds,” that have the potential to catalyze transformations toward more sustainable pathways. However, the empirical investigation of facto...
Article
Full-text available
Biocultural approaches are gaining attention for coping with current sustainability challenges. These approaches recognize that biological and cultural diversity are inextricably linked. Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) plays an important role in biocultural approaches as these often build on local cultural perspectives. This review explores ho...
Article
Full-text available
To create the science we need for the ocean we want in this United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and to support the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) value assessment, we systematically reviewed literature from the past 20 years (N = 375) that used conceptualizatio...
Article
Full-text available
The Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) was established in 2011, and is now one of the major international social-ecological systems (SES) research networks. During this time, SES research has undergone a phase of rapid growth and has grown into an influential branch of sustainability science. In this Perspective, we argue that SES res...
Article
Full-text available
Food is essential to people and is one of the main ways in which people are connected to the world’s ecosystems. However, food systems often cause ecosystem degradation and produce ill-health, which has generated increasing calls to transform food systems to be more sustainable. The Swedish food system is currently undergoing substantial change. A...
Article
Full-text available
Since the emergence of transdisciplinary research, context dependencies, innovative formats and methods, societal effects, and scientific effects are key aspects that have been discussed at length. However, what is still missing is an integrative perspective on these four aspects, and the guidance on how to apply such an integrative perspective in...
Article
Full-text available
Sustainability transformations research increasingly recognizes the importance of local actors and their networks to foster fundamental societal change. Local actors have different types of relations between each other (e.g., sharing material resources, giving advice) through which they jointly intervene in different system characteristics. We cond...
Article
Full-text available
Transdisciplinary research that bridges science and society is needed to address the complex social-ecological sustainability challenges we are facing. However, many transdisciplinary researchers grapple with balancing the competing demands of scientific rigour and excellence, societal impact and engagement, and self-care. This is especially eviden...
Article
Full-text available
This article explores the application of design prototyping as a creative method to support collaborative processes within transdisciplinary sustainability research and to meet the challenges they pose. By drawing on discourses on integration, mutual learning and co-production, we identified six different interrelated challenges, concerning: (1) di...
Article
Full-text available
Two new academies support future change agents: The Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership is designed to develop the next generation of leaders in sustainability and transformation research. And the platform tdAcademy aims to be a continuously evolving knowledge base for transdisciplinary research.
Article
Full-text available
At the heart of transition research lies the question of how to "scale up" sustainable alternatives from a protected niche to the creation of mainstream practices. While upscaling processes are often seen as an essential element that contributes to societal transformation, upscaling itself remains a fuzzy concept. We argue that some fundamental dil...
Article
Full-text available
Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we use...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Amplifying the impact of sustainability initiatives to foster transformations in urban and rural contexts, has received increasing attention in resilience, social innovation, and sustainability transitions research. We review the literature on amplification frameworks and propose an integrative typology of eight processes, which aim to inc...
Article
Full-text available
Scholars, politicians, practitioners, and civil society increasingly call for sustainability transformations to cope with urgent social and environmental challenges. In sustainability transformations research, understandings of transformations are often dominated by Western scientific knowledge. Through a systematic literature review, we investigat...
Article
There is increasing recognition that sustainability science should be solutions orientated and that such solutions will often require transformative change. However, the concrete sustainability interventions are often not clearly communicated, especially when it comes to the transformative change being created. Using food and energy systems as illu...
Article
Full-text available
Although sustainability science and social-ecological systems research pursue very similar goals, i.e., generate problem- and solution-oriented knowledge to foster sustainability transformation, they partly apply different research approaches and use different key concepts. Our aim is to identify archetypes of sustainability transformation research...
Article
Full-text available
Indigenous peoples are key actors for environmental management because they hold valuable indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) for the sustainable stewardship of nature. However, the consideration of ILK in environmental management is still limited. We explore how environmental government institutions in Colombia have involved indigenous communitie...
Article
Full-text available
Transformational research frameworks provide understanding and guidance for fostering change towards sustainability. They comprise stages of system understanding, visioning and co-designing intervention strategies to foster change. Guidance and empirical examples for how to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention strategies in real-worl...
Article
Full-text available
Despite the normative nature of sustainability, values and their role in sustainability transformations are often discussed in vague terms, and when concrete conceptualizations exist, they widely differ across fields of application. To provide guidance for navigating the complexity arising from the various conceptualizations and operationalization...
Article
Full-text available
Wynes and Nicholas (2017a Environ. Res. Lett. 12 1–9) recently published an article that reviewed academic and grey literature to identify the most impactful individual actions for reducing carbon emissions in developed countries, identifying having 'one fewer child' as by far the most impactful action. This action was recommended with little conte...

Network

Cited By