Permaculture Research Digest

Wednesday 18 December 2013

Doing sustanability science requires organisational change (#journal)

Sustainability research: Organizational challenge for intermediary research institutes

This paper compares strategies for agricultural sustainability based on natural sciences with alternatives captured under the umbrella of sustainability sciences, based on systems and mixed sciences approaches. It is argued that intermediary research institutes by their position in between academia, practice and between government and society are well positioned to incorporate sustainability science. This requires boundary management beyond the traditional boundaries of biological and technical disciplines and their fields of application and retention of methodology and knowledge within with units of scientists with complementary knowledge and skills. To become effective doing sustainability science can probably only be achieved after a prolonged period of experimentation and evaluation, while the shared base of theories, methods and networks form the core of such a knowledge system, as contrasted to disciplinary groups.

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