This thesis provides a detailed exploration of the way that four large research-council-funded bioenergy projects have engaged with the politics of bioenergy sustainability. Given the contested nature of sustainable development and the nature of the science in question, this thesis takes a discourse analysis approach to critically examine the functioning of these projects in the context of the wider politics surrounding the issue of bioenergy sustainability. Drawing on in depth interviews and a wide-ranging analysis of the literature, this thesis presents a number of findings. While used in strategically ambiguous ways, under the dominant ecologically modernising discourse governing bioenergy, sustainability is primarily constructed as synonymous with least-cost decarbonisation. Policy support for bioenergy is built around a technologically optimistic storyline, underpinned by a number of assumptions, including a linear view of scientific policy making. This dominant discourse around bioenergy has been challenged in two main ways. The first of these has rejected the over emphasis on carbon balances and economics as the primary metrics against which bioenergy sustainability should be measured. Decarbonising our energy supply has become increasingly dislocated from its underlying (disputed) ethical and moral rationales. As such it has seemingly become an end in its own right. The second challenge is more subtle and involves a rejection of the framing of bioenergy sustainability as a scientific and technical problem. Although reproducing a more administrative type discourse, the science initiatives explored in this thesis appear to reinforce much of the dominant discourse. As well as reflecting certain practices associated with the governments focus on scientific policy making, a lack of reflexivity to the strategic aims of energy policy within science also reflects a strong positivism and shared reliance on the perceived linearity of scientific policy making. It is argued that if science is to be liberated to fully respond to the challenges of sustainability, scientists need to be more reflexive as to the (political) role of science in modern environmental controversies, questioning both what their impacts might be and whose interests they are serving.

abstract: The greatest challenge facing humanity in the twenty-first century is our ability to reconcile the capacity of natural systems to support continued improvement in human welfare around the globe. Over the last decade, the scientific community has attempted to formulate research agendas in response to what they view as the problems of sustainability. Perhaps the most prominent and wide-ranging of these efforts has been sustainability science, an interdisciplinary, problem-driven field that seeks to address fundamental questions on human-environment interactions. This project examines how sustainability scientists grapple with and bound the deeply social, political and normative dimensions of both characterizing and pursuing sustainability. Based on in-depth interviews with leading researchers and a content analysis of the relevant literature, this project first addresses three core questions: (1) how sustainability scientists define and bound sustainability; (2) how and why various research agendas are being constructed to address these notions of sustainability; (3) and how scientists see their research contributing to societal efforts to move towards sustainability. Based on these results, the project explores the tensions between scientific efforts to study and inform sustainability and social action. It discusses the implications of transforming sustainability into the subject of scientific analysis with a focus on the power of science to constrain discourse and the institutional and epistemological contexts that link knowledge to societal outcomes. Following this analysis, sustainability science is repositioned, borrowing Herbert Simon's concept, as a "science of design." Sustainability science has thus far been too focused on understanding the "problem-space"--addressing fundamental questions about coupled human-natural systems. A new set objectives and design principles are proposed that would move the field toward a more solutions-oriented approach and the enrichment of public reasoning and deliberation. Four new research streams that would situate sustainability science as a science of design are then discussed: creating desirable futures, socio-technical change, sustainability values, and social learning. The results serve as a foundation for a sustainability science that is evaluated on its ability to frame sustainability problems and solutions in ways that make them amenable to democratic and pragmatic social action. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Sustainability 2011

abstract: Sustainability visioning (i.e. the construction of sustainable future states) is considered an important component of sustainability research, for instance, in transformational sustainability science or in planning for urban sustainability. Visioning frees sustainability research from the dominant focus on analyzing problem constellations and opens it towards positive contributions to social innovation and transformation. Calls are repeatedly made for visions that can guide us towards sustainable futures. Scattered across a broad range of fields (i.e. business, non-government organization, land-use management, natural resource management, sustainability science, urban and regional planning) are an abundance of visioning studies. However, among the few evaluative studies in the literature there are apparent deficits in both the research and practice of visioning that curtails our expectations and prospects of realizing process-based and product-derived outcomes. These deficits suggests that calls instead should focus on the development of applied and theoretical understanding of crafting sustainability visions, enhancing the rigor and robustness of visioning methodology, and on integrating practice, research, and education for collaborative sustainability visioning. From an analysis of prominent visioning and sustainability visioning studies in the literature, this dissertation articulates what is sustainability visioning and synthesizes a conceptual framework for criteria-based design and evaluation of sustainability visioning studies. While current visioning methodologies comply with some of these guidelines, none adhere to all of them. From this research, a novel sustainability visioning methodology is designed to address this gap to craft visions that are shared, systemic, principles-based, action-oriented, relevant, and creative (i.e. SPARC visioning methodology) and evaluated across all quality criteria. Empirical studies were conducted to test and apply the conceptual and methodological frameworks -- with an emphasis on enhancing the rigor and robustness in real world visioning processes for urban planning and teaching sustainability competencies. In-depth descriptions of the collaborative visioning studies demonstrate tangible outcomes for: (a) implementing the above sustainability visioning methodology, including evaluative procedures; (b) adopting meaningful interactive engagement procedures; (c) integrating advanced analytical modeling, sustainability appraisal, and creativity enhancing procedures; and (d) developing perspective and methodological capacity for long-range sustainability planning. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Sustainability 2013

Social-ecological systems research is interventionist by nature. As a subset of sustainability science, social-ecological systems research aims to generate knowledge and introduce concepts that will bring about transformation. Yet scientific concepts diverge in innumerable ways when they are put to work in the world. Why are concepts used in quite different ways to the intended purpose? Why do some appear to fail and others succeed? What do the answers to these questions tell us about the nature of science-society engagement, and what implications do they have for social-ecological systems research and sustainability science? This thesis addresses these questions from an interpretive perspective, focusing on the meanings that shape human actions. In particular, the thesis examines how meaning, interpretation and experience shape the enactment of four action-oriented sustainability concepts: adaptive management, biosphere reserves, biodiversity corridors and planetary boundaries/reconnecting to the biosphere. In so doing, the thesis provides in-depth empirical applications of three interpretive traditions – hermeneutic, discursive and dialogical – that together articulate a broadly interpretive approach to studying social-ecological complexity. In the hermeneutic tradition, Paper I presents a ‘rich narrative’ case study of a single practitioner tasked with enacting adaptive management in an Australian land management agency, and Paper II provides a qualitative multi-case study of learning among 177 participants in 11 UNESCO biosphere reserves. In the discursive tradition, Paper III uses Q-method to explore interpretations of ‘successful’ biodiversity corridors among 20 practitioners, scientists and community representatives in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. In the dialogical tradition, Paper IV reworks conventional understandings of knowledge-action relationships by using three concepts from contemporary practice theory – ‘actionable understanding,’ ‘ongoing business’ and the ‘eternally unfolding present’ – to explore the enactment of adaptive management in an Australian national park. Paper V explores ideas of human-environment connection in the concepts planetary boundaries and reconnecting to the biosphere, and develops an ‘embodied connection’ where human-environment relations emerge through interactivity between mind, body and environment over time. Overall, the thesis extends the frontiers of social-ecological systems research by highlighting the meanings that shape social-ecological complexity; by contributing theories and methods that treat social-ecological change as a relational and holistic process; and by providing entry points to address knowledge, politics and power. The thesis contributes to sustainability science more broadly by introducing novel understandings of knowledge-action relationships; by providing advice on how to make sustainability interventions more useful and effective; by introducing tools that can improve co-production and outcome assessment in the global research platform Future Earth; and by helping to generate robust forms of justification for transdisciplinary knowledge production. The interventionist, actionable nature of social-ecological systems research means that interpretive approaches are an essential complement to existing structural, institutional and behavioural perspectives. Interpretive research can help build a scientifically robust, normatively committed and critically reflexive sustainability science. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

abstract: Without scientific expertise, society may make catastrophically poor choices when faced with problems such as climate change. However, scientists who engage society with normative questions face tension between advocacy and the social norms of science that call for objectivity and neutrality. Policy established in 2011 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) required their communication to be objective and neutral and this research comprised a qualitative analysis of IPCC reports to consider how much of their communication is strictly factual (Objective), and value-free (Neutral), and to consider how their communication had changed from 1990 to 2013. Further research comprised a qualitative analysis of structured interviews with scientists and non-scientists who were professionally engaged in climate science communication, to consider practitioner views on advocacy. The literature and the structured interviews revealed a conflicting range of definitions for advocacy versus objectivity and neutrality. The practitioners that were interviewed struggled to separate objective and neutral science from attempts to persuade, and the IPCC reports contained a substantial amount of communication that was not strictly factual and value-free. This research found that science communication often blurred the distinction between facts and values, imbuing the subjective with the authority and credibility of science, and thereby damaging the foundation for scientific credibility. This research proposes a strict definition for factual and value-free as a means to separate science from advocacy, to better protect the credibility of science, and better prepare scientists to negotiate contentious science-based policy issues. The normative dimension of sustainability will likely entangle scientists in advocacy or the appearance of it, and this research may be generalizable to sustainability. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2015

Sustainability assessment and decision-making is a complex task for companies and considering the new requirements of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, there will be an increased demand on companies to make sure that their impact on the environment and people is assessed. In alignment with these new requirements, this study aims to combine three methods; LCA, S-LCA, and LCC, also known as LCSA, to investigate the environmental-, social- and cost impact of a safety barrier called SVEA. This has been done in collaboration with Ramudden and Worxsafe who are the developers of SVEA. By combining these three methods the goal is to identify hotspots throughout the lifecycle to see where mitigations can be made to make SVEA even more adapted for a ‘green’ future. The environmental hotspots that have been identified are global warming potential and abiotic depletion. These were further interpreted in the discussion which shows that several improvements are possible in the life cycle of SVEA. These improvements are related to the concrete and steel that SVEA consists of. For the S-LCA, several social improvements for health and safety and the gap between employed men/women were further discussed and interpreted. Additionally, a “partial LCC” was applied in order to create an understanding of the possible trade-offs between environmental and social benefits and the cost of different improvement possibilities. The results showed that the suggested improvements can also provide economic advantages. Lastly, one big takeaway from this thesis is that the combination of LCA, S-LCA, and LCC is a promising method to reach a more holistic assessment of the three pillars of sustainable development, which can also help deal with the complexity of the new corporate sustainability reporting directive. However, as noticed when conducting this thesis, more harmonization and standardization of these three methods is still required to create a more effective and valuable implementation for companies and create a bigger foundation for LCSA.

<p>As the world population continues to grow past seven billion people and global challenges continue to persist including resource availability, biodiversity loss, climate change and human well-being, a new science is required that can address the integrated nature of these challenges and the multiple scales on which they are manifest. Sustainability science has emerged to fill this role. In the fifteen years since it was first called for in the pages of Science, it has rapidly matured, however its place in the history of science and the way it is practiced today must be continually evaluated. In Part I, two chapters address this theoretical and practical grounding. Part II transitions to the applied practice of sustainability science in addressing the urban heat island (UHI) challenge wherein the climate of urban areas are warmer than their surrounding rural environs. The UHI has become increasingly important within the study of earth sciences given the increased focus on climate change and as the balance of humans now live in urban areas. </p><p>In Chapter 2 a novel contribution to the historical context of sustainability is argued. Sustainability as a concept characterizing the relationship between humans and nature emerged in the mid to late 20th century as a response to findings used to also characterize the Anthropocene. Emerging from the human-nature relationships that came before it, evidence is provided that suggests Sustainability was enabled by technology and a reorientation of world-view and is unique in its global boundary, systematic approach and ambition for both well being and the continued availability of resources and Earth system function. Sustainability is further an ambition that has wide appeal, making it one of the first normative concepts of the Anthropocene. </p><p>Despite its widespread emergence and adoption, sustainability science continues to suffer from definitional ambiguity within the academe. In Chapter 3, a review of efforts to provide direction and structure to the science reveals a continuum of approaches anchored at either end by differing visions of how the science interfaces with practice (solutions). At one end, basic science of societally defined problems informs decisions about possible solutions and their application. At the other end, applied research directly affects the options available to decision makers. While clear from the literature, survey data further suggests that the dichotomy does not appear to be as apparent in the minds of practitioners. </p><p>In Chapter 4, the UHI is first addressed at the synoptic, mesoscale. Urban climate is the most immediate manifestation of the warming global climate for the majority of people on earth. Nearly half of those people live in small to medium sized cities, an understudied scale in urban climate research. Widespread characterization would be useful to decision makers in planning and design. Using a multi-method approach, the mesoscale UHI in the study region is characterized and the secular trend over the last sixty years evaluated. Under isolated ideal conditions the findings indicate a UHI of 5.3 ± 0.97 °C to be present in the study area, the magnitude of which is growing over time. </p><p>Although urban heat islands (UHI) are well studied, there remain no panaceas for local scale mitigation and adaptation methods, therefore continued attention to characterization of the phenomenon in urban centers of different scales around the globe is required. In Chapter 5, a local scale analysis of the canopy layer and surface UHI in a medium sized city in North Carolina, USA is conducted using multiple methods including stationary urban sensors, mobile transects and remote sensing. Focusing on the ideal conditions for UHI development during an anticyclonic summer heat event, the study observes a range of UHI intensity depending on the method of observation: 8.7 °C from the stationary urban sensors; 6.9 °C from mobile transects; and, 2.2 °C from remote sensing. Additional attention is paid to the diurnal dynamics of the UHI and its correlation with vegetation indices, dewpoint and albedo. Evapotranspiration is shown to drive dynamics in the study region.</p><p>Finally, recognizing that a bridge must be established between the physical science community studying the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, and the planning community and decision makers implementing urban form and development policies, Chapter 6 evaluates multiple urban form characterization methods. Methods evaluated include local climate zones (LCZ), national land cover database (NCLD) classes and urban cluster analysis (UCA) to determine their utility in describing the distribution of the UHI based on three standard observation types 1) fixed urban temperature sensors, 2) mobile transects and, 3) remote sensing. Bivariate, regression and ANOVA tests are used to conduct the analyses. Findings indicate that the NLCD classes are best correlated to the UHI intensity and distribution in the study area. Further, while the UCA method is not useful directly, the variables included in the method are predictive based on regression analysis so the potential for better model design exists. Land cover variables including albedo, impervious surface fraction and pervious surface fraction are found to dominate the distribution of the UHI in the study area regardless of observation method. </p><p>Chapter 7 provides a summary of findings, and offers a brief analysis of their implications for both the scientific discourse generally, and the study area specifically. In general, the work undertaken does not achieve the full ambition of sustainability science, additional work is required to translate findings to practice and more fully evaluate adoption. The implications for planning and development in the local region are addressed in the context of a major light-rail infrastructure project including several systems level considerations like human health and development. Finally, several avenues for future work are outlined. Within the theoretical development of sustainability science, these pathways include more robust evaluations of the theoretical and actual practice. Within the UHI context, these include development of an integrated urban form characterization model, application of study methodology in other geographic areas and at different scales, and use of novel experimental methods including distributed sensor networks and citizen science.</p> / Dissertation

abstract: The science community has made efforts for over a half century to address sustainable development, which gave birth to sustainability science at the turn of the twenty-first century. Along with the development of sustainability science during the past two decades, a landscape sustainability science (LSS) perspective has been emerging. As interests in LSS continue to grow rapidly, scholars are wondering what LSS is about and how LSS fits into sustainability science, while practitioners are asking how LSS actually contributes to sustainability in the real world. To help address these questions, this dissertation research aims to explore the currently underused problem-driven, diagnostic approach to enhancing landscape sustainability through an empirical example of urbanization-associated farmland loss (UAFL). Based mainly on multimethod analysis of bibliographic information, the dissertation explores conceptual issues such as how sustainability science differs from conventional sustainable development research, and how the past, present, and future research needs of LSS evolve. It also includes two empirical studies diagnosing the issue of urban expansion and the related food security concern in the context of China, and proposes a different problem framing for farmland preservation such that stakeholders can be more effectively mobilized. The most important findings are: (1) Sustainability science is not “old wine in a new bottle,” and in particular, is featured by its complex human-environment systems perspective and value-laden transdisciplinary perspective. (2) LSS has become a vibrant emerging field since 2004-2006 with over three-decade’s intellectual accumulation deeply rooted in landscape ecology, yet LSS has to further embrace the two featured perspectives of sustainability science and to conduct more problem-driven, diagnostic studies of concrete landscape-relevant sustainability concerns. (3) Farmland preservationists’ existing problem framing of UAFL is inappropriate for its invalid causal attribution (i.e., urban expansion is responsible for farmland loss; farmland loss is responsible for decreasing grain production; and decreasing grain production instead of increasing grain demand is responsible for grain self-insufficiency); the real problem with UAFL is social injustice due to collective action dilemma in preserving farmland for regional and global food sufficiency. The present research provides broad implications for landscape scientists, the sustainability research community, and UAFL stakeholders. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2020

Rapid economic growth, urbanisation and increasing population have caused (materially intensive) resource consumption to increase, and consequently the release of large amounts of waste to the environment. Numerous technological and operational approaches to resource management have been introduced throughout the system of production, consumption and waste management. This thesis concludes that the current, rather isolated, efforts to influence different systems for waste management, waste reduction and resource management are indeed not sufficient from a long-term sustainability perspective. To manage resources and waste sustainably, resource management requires a more systems-oriented approach, which addresses the root causes of the problems. This thesis identifies and discusses different sustainability challenges facing the global waste management system. To address these challenges a broader systems approach to waste management is proposed. The thesis argues that there is a need to recognise the multitudes of perspectives, cross-scale dynamics and actors’ interactions at various levels. The barriers and limitations to a systems-oriented management of waste generation including design, production, consumption and waste management are discussed. The study utilises soft systems methodology (by Checkland (2000)) within which different concepts and methods are utilised to present a worldwide view on resource dynamics and develop a research heuristic for sustainable resource management. The study emphasises the need for a shared vision among various actors across the chain of production and consumption. To assist better planning, the need for improved databases on resource use and wastes is emphasised. / <p>QC 20140211</p>

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