Reconstructing Sustainability Science

The growing urgency, complexity and ‘wickedness’ of sustainability problems –

from climate change and biodiversity loss to ecosystem degradation and persistent
poverty and inequality – present fundamental challenges to the production and use
of scientific knowledge.While there is little doubt that science has a crucial role to
play in our ability to pursue sustainability goals, critical questions remain as to how
to organize research most effectively and connect it to actions that advance social
and natural well-being.
Drawing on interviews with leading sustainability scientists, this book examines
how researchers in the emerging, interdisciplinary field of sustainability science are
attempting to define sustainability, establish research agendas and link the know-
ledge they produce to societal action. Pairing these insights with case studies of
innovative sustainability research centres, the book reformulates the sustainability
science research agenda and its relationship to decision-making and social action.
It repositions the field as a ‘science of design’ that aims to enrich public reasoning
and deliberation while also working to generate social and technological inno-
vations for a more sustainable future.
This timely book gives students, researchers and practitioners a valuable and
unique analysis of the emergence of sustainability science, and both the opportunities
and barriers faced by scientific efforts to contribute to a more sustainable world.

Thaddeus R. Miller is Assistant Professor at the Nohad A. Toulan School of

Urban Studies and Planning and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable
Solutions at Portland State University, USA. He is also an affiliate of the Consort-
ium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University, USA. His
research explores the social, ethical and political dimensions of science, technology
and sustainability.
Science in Society Series
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Reconstructing Sustainability Science

Knowledge and action for a sustainable future
Thaddeus R. Miller
RECONSTRUCTING
SUSTAINABILITY
SCIENCE
Knowledge and action for
a sustainable future

Thaddeus R. Miller
First published 2015
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Thaddeus R. Miller
The right of Thaddeus R. Miller to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
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or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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ISBN: 978-0-415-63261-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63262-1 (pbk)
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Typeset in Bembo
by Fish Books
To Britt and Zadie
‘A new generation of students and scholars has embraced sustainability as a concept
and is eager to explore more thoughtful, more integrative and better scientifically
grounded ways to approach it.Thad Miller’s new book is just what they are looking
for.’
Paul B.Thompson, Michigan State University, USA

‘Thad Miller’s book presents a sophisticated, nuanced and insightful analysis of the
emerging field of sustainability science. Particularly welcome is his analysis of the
normative, ethical and epistemological underpinnings of different approaches to
sustainability. His proposal for an explicitly normative solutions-oriented approach
to sustainability is exactly right.’
John Robinson, University of British Columbia, Canada

‘Thad Miller, in this new conceptualization of how to restructure for sustainability

science, outlines the logic and mechanisms by which an action-oriented, outcome-
driven science might emerge. His book serves as a guide for what all sophisticated
future-oriented knowledge enterprises should have as a part of their teaching,
learning and discovery agendas in order to pursue a more sustainable future.’
Michael M. Crow, Arizona State University, USA
CONTENTS

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvi

PART I
Constructing sustainability science 1

1 Planet under pressure 3

2 A science for sustainability 14

3 Constructing sustainability science 29

4 Tensions in sustainability science 46

PART II
Reconstructing sustainability science 65

5 Reclaiming sustainability: limits to knowledge 67

6 Sustainability as a science of design 79

7 Conclusion: sustainability and our socio-technical future 99

x Contents

Appendix A Interview subjects 104

Appendix B Interview protocol 107

Index 109
LIST OF FIGURES

2.1 Quadrant model of scientific research 17

2.2 The ‘loading dock’ or linear model of science and decision-making 19
3.1 Knowledge-first sustainability, socio-political and epistemic claims 38
3.2 Process-oriented sustainability science 40
6.1 Design imperatives 89
LIST OF TABLES

3.1 Boundary work and claims in sustainability science 41

6.1 Analytical focus, characteristics and objectives for potential
sustainability science pathways 93
PREFACE

In the spring of 2007, I was among a handful of graduate students to enroll in the
inaugural class of the first School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. We
had in common a deep concern for the state of our planet’s ecology and its
implications for human well-being, a desire to do something about this, and a
collective excitement to be a part of a new program. Self-proclaimed guinea pigs,
we eagerly signed up for this somewhat radical experiment in the reorganization
of research and education to understand and address the complex problems of
sustainability.
The School of Sustainability is on the bleeding edge of efforts to transform our
research and education institutions to break down disciplinary divides and tackle
real-world sustainability problems. From the University of Tokyo to Stellenbosch
University in South Africa and, my current home, Portland State University,
universities around the globe are shifting to reshape research and education in the
face of rapid global environmental change.As they do so, they reveal the limitations
of traditional disciplinary approaches and the barriers to transformative change in
academia (Crow 2010; Miller et al. 2008).
In these changes and others, including the National Science Foundation’s recent
Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability initiative and the
International Council for Science (ICSU) Future Earth, there is a recognition that
the ways in which we have come to organize research and education limit our
ability both to understand and resolve sustainability problems. The challenges and
roadblocks run from the seemingly mundane – such as how the distribution of
student credit hours impedes interdisciplinary course offerings – to deep normative
and epistemic divides between academic disciplines and assumptions about the
relationship between scientific knowledge and social action.
Being a naïve yet willing participant in this upheaval as a doctoral student, I
became interested in understanding how sustainability challenges were reshaping
xiv Preface

academic programs and emerging interdisciplinary fields. How are disciplines

merging? How are the normative goals of sustainability incorporated into
supposedly ‘value-free’ scientific research? How will the knowledge produced by
sustainability research be utilized? How are sustainability problems framed? By
whom? For my dissertation research, I took up these questions and others to
examine the emergence of sustainability science – an interdisciplinary, problem-
driven field at the forefront of efforts by the US National Academies of Science
and the American Association for the Advancement of Science to address real-
world sustainability problems. Sustainability and scientific efforts to contribute to it
are rich territory for analyzing the complex interplay between science and society
and how scientists are responding to twenty-first century sustainability challenges.
At the core of these and similar efforts is a critical question: How can science
and technology most effectively inform and foster social action for sustainability?
How is knowledge to be connected to actions and decision making that advance
collective visions of natural and social well-being (Bocking 2004; Jasanoff 1997)?
This book examines how sustainability science aims to contribute to social action
for sustainability and the implications of emerging research agendas for societal
discourse on sustainability.The results will help move sustainability science forward
through a better understanding of how science might contribute to social out-
comes more effectively. It will provide an opportunity to create more reflexive
sustainability science research agendas and demonstrate the necessity of addressing
the social, political and normative dimensions of sustainability in order to
contribute to social action. I hope to lay the foundation for a sustainability science
that is evaluated based on its ability to frame sustainability problems and solutions
in ways that make them amenable to democratic and pragmatic social action.
This book has also been a deeply personal project. It began with reflections on
what kind of student the School of Sustainability was trying to produce. How
would we – those guinea pigs – be different? How can places like the School of
Sustainability contribute to more sustainable communities? How will these experi-
ments change the way we organize research and education institutions? These
initial reflections transformed into my research agenda owing in large part to an
incredibly fruitful and creative intellectual environment at Arizona State – partic-
ularly around the School of Sustainability, the NSF Integrative Graduate Education
and Research Training (IGERT) program in Urban Ecology and the Consortium
for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO).
After receiving my doctorate in Sustainability in Spring 2011, I accepted my
current position as Assistant Professor in the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban
Studies and Planning at Portland State University. Portland State has made sustain-
ability one of its campus-wide strategic initiatives. At Portland State, this effort is
led by the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, where I am now a Faculty Fellow.
Faculty, administration, staff and students at universities around the world are
actively working to transform research and education to produce knowledge,
technologies and people that will meet the challenges of sustainability. Arizona
State, Portland State and other colleges and universities I’ve encountered in my
 Preface xv

research and through colleagues have met their fair share of barriers as well as
successes. From this work and experience, it is clear that sustainability’s ‘wicked’
problems (which I discuss in Chapter 1) present fundamental challenges to know-
ledge production and our ability to link research to beneficial outcomes.
This project is the result of empirical and theoretical research and deep personal
and professional reflection on these challenges. It creates an opportunity for the
emergence of a more reflexive sustainability science and demonstrates the necessity
of addressing the social, political and normative dimensions of sustainability in
order to contribute to social action. The ongoing transformations in research and
education for sustainability throughout the world make this an especially exciting
time to be involved in this work. However, the challenges are significant and carry
risks for the students, faculty and administration involved.This book contributes to
our understanding of the successes and limitations of such transformations and
develops a pathway forward for a more radically interdisciplinary, solutions-
oriented design science for sustainability.

References
Bocking, S. 2004. Nature’s experts: Science, politics, and the environment. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
Jasanoff, S. 1997. NGOs and the environment: From knowledge to action. Third World
Quarterly 18(3): 579–94.
Miller,T.R.,T.D. Baird, C.M. Littlefield, G. Kofinas, F.S. Chapin, III and C.L. Redman. 2008.
Epistemological pluralism: Reorganizing interdisciplinary research. Ecology and Society
13(2): 46. Available at: www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art46/. [Accessed 31 July
2014.]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project began as my dissertation project as a doctoral student at Arizona State

University’s School of Sustainability. If the dissertation process were not long and
arduous enough, the long haul to this manuscript was that and more.Throughout
this project, I have been incredibly lucky to have the support and cooperation of
many colleagues, friends and family. Though long, it has been a socially and
intellectually rewarding process.
First, I would like to thank all of those I interviewed throughout the course of
my research for their responsiveness and for their generosity with their time. One
of the highlights of my work has been the opportunity to meet such intelligent and
dedicated individuals and discuss the core problems of sustainability.
This research would not have been possible without funding from the National
Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training
Program (IGERT), the Graduate Student Professional Association at Arizona State
University and the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
under Grant No. 0504248, IGERT in Urban Ecology. Any opinions, findings and
conclusions or recommendation expressed in this material are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The IGERT Program in particular and the opportunities it affords have been
instrumental in my development as a scholar. I would like especially to thank the
IGERT Principal Investigators, Stuart Fisher, Ann Kinzig, Margaret Nelson and
Charles Redman, as well as the program administrator, Gail Ryser, for all of their
help and support throughout my time as an IGERT Fellow.
As a graduate student at Arizona State University, I was fortunate to be sur-
rounded by a group of intelligent, dynamic and committed students and faculty,
particularly in the IGERT Program, the School of Sustainability and the
Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO). I would like to particularly
 Acknowledgments xvii

thank the following colleagues for their input and support: Kate Darby,Ann Kinzig,
Clark Miller,Tischa Muñoz-Erickson, Mark Neff and Zachary Pirtle.
I would like to thank my dissertation committee – Ben Minteer, Charles
Redman, Daniel Sarewitz and Arnim Wiek. They have always been and continue
to be available, responsive and supportive. Most importantly, I thoroughly enjoy
working with each of them on this project and others, and hope to continue to
find opportunities to do so in the years to come. Each of them set a high bar for
scholarship, mentorship and friendship.
I would also like to thank the editorial team at Routledge. They have been
incredibly supportive and enthusiastic about this work from the beginning. In
particular, I would like to thank Khanam Virjee, Charlotte Russell and Bethany
Wright. I am also grateful to Steve Rayner, editor of the Science in Society series.
I am truly humbled to be a part of this series.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family for their support
and enthusiasm. To Mom, Dad and Cam for checking in with words of encour-
agement and, sometimes, incomprehension. Most especially, my wife, Britt
Crow-Miller, has helped me through this in more ways than she knows. Not only
is she a great editor but, more importantly, she is tolerant, loving, supportive – and
a great travel companion on research trips. This process has been long enough to
see us get married and welcome our daughter, Zadie Avalyn Miller, into the world.
And to Zadie – thank you for showing me what matters in life.
As usual, all faults are my own, and everything worthwhile is in part a result of
working with those mentioned above.
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PART I

Constructing
sustainability science
This page intentionally left blank
1
PLANET UNDER PRESSURE

In the spring of 2012, during a run of unseasonably warm weather, 3,000 scientific
experts and decision makers gathered in London at the ‘Planet under Pressure:
New Knowledge towards Solutions’ conference. Convened by the Global Environ-
mental Change Programmes and the International Council for Science, the goal of
the conference was ‘to assess the state of the planet and explore solutions to
impending global crises’ (Brito and Smith 2012: 1). ‘Planet under Pressure’ was
timed to deliver a powerful message to the United Nations Conference on Sustain-
able Development, or Rio+20, to be held that summer. The ‘State of the Planet
Declaration’, summarizing the key messages from the proceedings, was issued at the
conference. The declaration provided a clear and urgent call to global action to
meet the world’s sustainability challenges. New scientific understandings of the
Earth system, it declares,‘demand a new perception of responsibilities and account-
abilities of nation states to support planetary stewardship’ (ibid.: 2). Recent research
and the large-scale action required by society, urge the authors of the declaration,
require drastic changes in political and scientific organization:

The scientific community must rapidly reorganize to focus on global sustain-

ability solutions. We must develop a new strategy for creating and rapidly
translating knowledge into action, which will form part of a new contract
between science and society, with commitments from both sides
(ibid.: 4).

I begin with this brief dispatch from London to illustrate the ways in which
scientific discourse and knowledge claims, particularly around sustainability
concerns, are intertwined with socio-political and normative claims and visions of
social, political and ecological order.This gathering of scientific delegates sought to
bring the power of scientific knowledge to bear on the social and political barriers
4 Constructing sustainability science

to achieving sustainability. Insights provided by scientific knowledge, according to

the Declaration, are a cause to reconsider our ethical and moral positions. In this
case, a call for ‘planetary stewardship’ that requires radical changes to social and
political organization to be put into practice. Both normative claims about what
we ought to value and how, and visions of social and political order – ‘intercon-
nected problems require interconnected solutions’ (ibid.: 2) – are positioned as
stemming from insights gained through acquisition of scientific knowledge.
The Declaration contends that financial and political support for a reorgani-
zation of scientific research are necessary. Knowledge must be more rapidly
generated and translated to social and political action. This requires a focus on
solutions to global sustainability by scientists. They cite the International Council
for Science Future Earth research initiative, which will ‘develop the knowledge…
for supporting transformation toward global sustainability’ (Future Earth 2013), as
the type of support and organization that is needed. Global sustainability
challenges, then, should drive changes in research organization and priorities and
to the more effective use of scientific knowledge.
Scientific discourse and knowledge making are inextricably linked to visions of
social, political and ecological order (Jasanoff 2010; Latour 1988).The State of the
Planet Declaration and the proceedings of the ‘Planet under Pressure’ conference
demonstrate how knowledge claims about the sustainability of interconnected,
socio-ecological systems are also claims to the proper social, political and scientific
organization that is necessary to promote sustainability.These knowledge claims are
also claims to norms and values that ought to be pursued and upheld.This relation-
ship between science and society is not unique to the sustainability arena and has
been explored extensively by science and technology studies (STS) scholars (e.g.
Jasanoff 2005; Latour 2004; Shapin and Schaffer 1985). Science produces beliefs not
only about how the world is, but also how it ought to be ( Jasanoff 2004; Latour
1993). As scientists describe social or ecological dynamics, they influence beliefs
about what dynamics are sustainable – what society ought to do in order to be
sustainable. Scientists attempt to respond to social and environmental concerns by
researching problems identified by society as important. How sustainability science
influences the social, political and normative dimensions of sustainability may
render the concept of sustainability and the problems it encapsulates more or less
tractable in terms of social action.
Sustainability challenges are reshaping scientific research and education at multi-
ple scales, yet global science and policy organizations and national and regional
research and education institutions are ill-equipped to deal with integrative
knowledge generation and the management of complex science – policy interfaces
(Crow 2007; Reid et al. 2010; Miller et al. 2011). From well-established disciplines
such as ecology and geography to emerging, interdisciplinary fields such as earth
systems science and sustainability science, scientists are moving to find ways to
contribute more directly to the resolution of society’s most pressing problems
(Lubchenco 1998; NRC 1999). Central to these efforts is the following question:
How can science and technology inform and foster social action for sustainability?
 Planet under pressure 5

Or, put slightly differently, how is scientific knowledge to be connected to actions

and decision making that advance our visions of natural and social well-being?
This question has spawned a variety of efforts by members of the scientific
community to contribute to the resolution of pressing social and environmental
problems (Lubchenco 1998; NRC 1999; Palmer et al. 2005; Reid et al. 2010).
Perhaps the most prominent and wide-ranging of these efforts, and the one that
this book will focus on, has been sustainability science – an interdisciplinary,
problem-driven field that addresses fundamental questions on human – environ-
ment interactions (Clark 2007; Clark and Dickson 2003; Kates et al. 2001; Levin
and Clark 2010). Sustainability scientists aim to support sustainability transitions by
linking scientific knowledge to societal action (Cash et al. 2003; Clark and Dickson
2003). The field is both problem-oriented and ‘focus[ed]… on understanding the
complex dynamics that arise from interactions between human and environmental
systems’ (Clark 2007: 1737). Carpenter et al. (2009: 1305) note that sustainability
science ‘is motivated by fundamental questions about interactions of nature and
society as well as compelling and urgent social needs.’ They define progress in
sustainability science as those areas where ‘scientific inquiry and practical appli-
cation are comingled.’ Carpenter et al. (2009) go on to stress ‘the urgency and
importance of an accelerated effort to understand the dynamics of coupled human
– natural systems.’This argument is representative of a major theme in sustainability
science:The fundamental understanding of the dynamics of human – environment
interactions (e.g.Turner et al. 2003a,b).
Sustainability and scientific efforts to contribute to it are rich territory for
analyzing the complex interplay between science and society and examining how
scientists are responding to twenty-first century sustainability challenges. This
analysis, then, will provide insight into how to develop a more effective role for
science in pursuing sustainability goals. Utilizing theories and insights from STS,
this book explores the construction of a new, and to some, radically inter-
disciplinary, use-inspired field of scientific research – sustainability science.
Sustainability science provides an important window through which to examine
how scientific knowledge production – its organization and institutions – are being
(re)shaped to respond to complex, urgent and value-laden problems related to
sustainability. Through interviews and discourse analysis, I explore how sustain-
ability scientists perform boundary work (Gieryn 1983), establishing credibility and
epistemic claims and demarcating areas of normative and socio-political concern.
This will contribute to STS analyses of the relationship between science and
society as well as inform developments in sustainability science and allied fields. In
so doing, the purpose is not to simply critique sustainability science, but to lay the
foundation for a deeper dialogue amongst sustainability scientists, decision makers
and other concerned stakeholders over the role of science in sustainability and
future directions for the field.
This book will also explore the implications of transforming the contested and
value-laden concept of sustainability into the subject of fundamental scientific
analysis. Sustainability can act as a platform for communities to articulate visions of
6 Constructing sustainability science

social and natural well-being, including responsibilities to nature and future

generations (Norton 2005; Thompson 2010). In its broadest sense, one can view
sustainability as an effort to formulate visions of the collective good. Science has, on
one hand, brought many environmental problems to the world’s attention, including
ozone depletion, acid rain and climate change, which have in turn become the
subject of normative and political concern. On the other hand, in offering objective
and epistemically powerful explanations of natural phenomena, science can also
constrain what is considered appropriate, legitimate or necessary discourse and
debate. Exploring these issues, this work will contribute to our understanding of the
complex relationship between science and the normative dimensions of sustain-
ability and point to areas where dialogue may be ‘opened up’ to allow for discussion
of alternative pathways to and meanings of sustainability (Stirling 2008).
Finally, I will explore the following question: How can science shift from
identifying and describing problems in the biophysical realm to contributing to
potential solutions in the social and political realm? It is this issue as well as the
nature of sustainability problems as complex and contested that challenges the
practice of sustainability science and its usefulness. In Part II, I develop a framework
that pushes sustainability science toward focusing on the study and design of
solutions, rather than the identification of problems. This is a new, explicitly
normative vision of sustainability science that, I argue, will be more effective in
advancing visions of natural and social well-being.
Before reviewing the structure of the book, I briefly discuss how the wickedness
of sustainability problems presents specific challenges to the production and utili-
zation of scientific knowledge, and how this analysis can provide an opportunity
for sustainability science to address these challenges more effectively.

Wicked sustainability
Sustainability issues are often wicked – that is, they are problems the solutions to
which are not obvious, wherein complexity is high, uncertainty is rampant, values
are in dispute and trade-offs are the norm (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993; Miller et
al. 2011; Rittel and Webber 1973). Many of the problems that fall under the rubric
of sustainability – ensuring adequate access to clean water supplies, developing
alternative energy systems, evaluating intergenerational trade-offs in natural
resource use, and advancing solutions to widespread poverty – not only are difficult
to define but rarely yield to simple, one-time solutions. As the coiners of the term,
Rittel and Webber (1973: 161) note: ‘The formulation of a wicked problem is the
problem! The process of formulating the problem and of conceiving a solution (or
re-solution) are identical, since every specification of the problem is a specification
of the direction in which a treatment is considered.’1 Tame or benign problems, on
the other hand, are those in which the goal is clear and it is easy to determine
whether the problem has been solved (Norton 2005; Rittel and Webber 1973).
Often, as we will see below, tame problems may be amenable to scientific or
technological fixes.
 Planet under pressure 7

Wicked problems are not just empirically challenging, they are linked to
normative criteria (Fischer 2000; Hoppe and Peterse 1993).A central characteristic
of such problems is that they are defined by value pluralism and that these values
are highly contested. Consensus over problem definitions or the identification of
solutions is very difficult. In the case of tame or benign problems, convergence on
policy and technical solutions is possible in part because the proposed solutions can
satisfy multiple value positions (at least for a time). In other words, wicked problems
are just as political as they are scientific or technical. In order to understand such
problems conceptually, we must consider how scientific or technical inputs allow
for or impede the convergence of divergent and conflicting values on pathways that
lead to resolution, even if it is momentary or unstable.
Richard Nelson’s (1977) moon and the ghetto metaphor highlights why distin-
guishing between tame and wicked problems is critical. Though technologically
complicated, landing on the moon is a relatively tame problem. The mission is
straightforward and it is clear when the objective has been achieved. It is a matter
of economic investment and technological capability. Success here is a testament to
the capacities of science and technology to solve such problems. When there is
broad agreement on the nature of the problem and what will comprise a
satisfactory solution, science and technology can be powerful tools to inform our
decisions and generate action (Allenby and Sarewitz 2011).
Nelson then asks,‘[i]f we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we solve the
problems of the ghetto?’ The problems of the ghetto are difficult to define and
rarely give way to scientific or technological applications. How can we provide
decent and affordable health care? How can high school graduation rates be
improved? Addressing these issues is infinitely more complex. The solutions to
such problems are often highly contextual and contingent on social, cultural,
political and economic factors. In order to understand how science and
technology might contribute to sustainability, scientists, engineers, practitioners
and decision makers would do well to consider the degree to which a given
problem is more like the moon or the ghetto – that is, is it amenable to a techno-
logical solution or does the problem lie in socio-political complexity? If the
latter, are there elements of the issue that might be clarified with additional
scientific knowledge?
This should not, however, be taken to mean that technological solutions are
always overly simplistic or insufficient since they are perceived, particularly by the
environmentalist community, as avoiding more meaningful value changes. In fact,
as Sarewitz and Nelson (2008) illustrate, so-called technological fixes can be
incredibly effective in enhancing human well-being and achieving specific and
agreed goals. The challenge is not to avoid technological solutions in favor of
genuine changes in values and worldviews; instead, it is to understand the problem
context and what solution pathways – from technological fixes (which are rarely as
simple as the critics would have one believe) to the long, but perhaps more
meaningful, slog of social and political change – are most appropriate and effective
in achieving desirable outcomes.
8 Constructing sustainability science

Many of the environmental problems that society has been successful in solving
to some degree have been tame. Sewage treatment facilities and sanitation networks
led to vast improvements in water quality and public health throughout western
Europe and North America in the mid-nineteenth century (Melosi 2008). Like-
wise, the invention and eventual widespread use of the catalytic converter in the
1950s and 1960s substantially reduced the toxicity of automobile emissions,
contributing to improve air quality in heavily congested cities. A key point is that
these tame problems are amenable to technical applications that are relatively
uncontroversial and help to settle potential value debates. This is possible because
the goal is clear and does not involve significant trade-off between various interests
(Lindblom 1959). For wicked problems, this process is not possible. Potential
technological or policy solutions to wicked problems such as climate change often
divide as many interests as they bring together. Furthermore, owing to normative
and empirical complexity, solutions to wicked problems often end up leading to
the proliferation of additional, unforeseen problems (Latour 1993; Scott 1998).
Yet it is also the case that, before modern sewage and sanitation systems, the
problems of water-borne disease, water quality and public health were wicked.2
This is an example in which a wicked problem was tamed by technological
developments, political will and institutional change. Such developments can occur
in the absence of necessary scientific understanding or even despite incorrect
scientific understandings. For example, in the case of sanitation the miasmatic
theory, which associated disease with bad smells, dominated contemporary think-
ing as new methods for sanitation and disease prevention were first implemented.
Additional scientific knowledge may not necessarily be the tool to help solve or
settle a wicked problem. Calls for mode-2 knowledge production (Nowotny et al.
2001) and post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993) have recognized and
thoughtfully explored this dynamic. In fact, additional knowledge will likely be
contested by conflicting scientific findings or political positions and reveal
additional uncertainties, rather than eliminating them (Sarewitz 2004). To what
degree does sustainability science grapple with these issues? How do sustainability
scientists navigate normative and epistemic issues at the science – policy interface
and then address the social, political and ethical challenges posed by sustainability
problems? Sustainability science serves as an example to explore how far sustain-
ability concerns are reshaping scientific research agendas, if at all. If sustainability
scientists are to facilitate social learning and link knowledge to action, they must
be able to differentiate between these various types of problems and provide the
knowledge or tools appropriate for a given context. This book analyzes how
sustainability scientists currently approach these dynamics and develops a frame-
work for the field that incorporates these insights.

Book structure
The point of departure for this analysis is itself an openly normative one – sustain-
ability is a valuable and value-laden concept that may allow communities and
 Planet under pressure 9

society writ large to articulate and represent visions of human and natural well-
being. In a search for a new path for progress, sustainability links concerns for the
value(s) of nature, social justice and poverty with responsibilities to future gener-
ations. It attempts to demarcate a desirable space in which humans would like to
exist; a path in which society should develop in a way that limits the negative
human impacts (or even seeks to produce positive impacts) on ecological support
systems, reduces social injustices such as hunger and poverty, and takes a long-term,
multigenerational perspective. Sustainability is a normative claim about how the
world is (i.e. unsustainable) and how it ought to be. Sustainability offers the potential
for constructing a new and improved discourse for discussion of environmental
problems because it is both descriptive and evaluative (Norton 2005). As Norton
(2005) argues, it is a ‘thick’ concept that can encapsulate a great deal of information
about how humans interact with the environment and present that information in
a way that is transparent, important to widely held social values and helps move
communities toward adopting more sustainable practices.
The book is organized in two parts. The first – Chapters 2, 3 and 4 – is an
empirical and theoretical analysis of the emergence of sustainability science.
Chapter 2 provides a detailed discussion of the theoretical and methodological
approach taken in the book, drawing mostly from STS. It also provides a brief
overview of the emergence of sustainability science. Chapter 3 discusses the results
of 28 in-depth interviews conducted with leading sustainability scientists. This
chapter draws from a content analysis of the relevant literature in sustainability
science, examining how scientists are constructing research agendas for sustain-
ability. More specifically, it addresses three core questions: (1) How do sustainability
scientists define and bound sustainability? (2) How and why are various research
agendas being constructed to address these notions of sustainability? (3) How do
scientists see their research contributing to societal efforts to move toward sustain-
ability? Following Thomas Gieryn’s (1983, 1995) concept of boundary work, this
chapter analyzes how sustainability scientists demarcate areas of normative,
epistemic and socio-political concern.
Based on these results, Chapter 4 explores the tensions that arise between the
approach of sustainability scientists and societal efforts to articulate and pursue
sustainability goals, addressing three sets of questions: (1) How does sustainability
science address the normative commitments of the sustainability discourse? What
are the implications for science and for societal understandings of sustainability? (2)
What are the epistemic challenges posed by sustainability problems? How does
sustainability science address these? (3) What are the barriers to and opportunities
for linking knowledge with action for sustainability? How does sustainability
science as a field address these issues? The purpose of this analysis is to illuminate
these often hidden tensions so that future research efforts in sustainability science
might navigate them more effectively and contribute to positive social outcomes.
Based on the empirical and conceptual work done in Part I, Part II maps out an
alternative, or perhaps complementary, pathway for sustainability science. Chapter 5
marks a shift from the empirical exploration of sustainability science to this
10 Constructing sustainability science

conceptual project. It examines the epistemic and normative limitations of scientific

approaches to sustainability in order to open the pathway for a framework centered
on the articulation and pursuit of shared visions of social and natural well-being.
Chapter 6 borrows from the work of Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon and
repositions sustainability science as a ‘science of design’ – that is, a normative
science of what ought to be in order to achieve certain goals – rather than a science
of what is. It will develop a foundation for a sustainability science that is solutions-
oriented – one that aims to enrich public reasoning and deliberation while also
working to generate social and technological innovations for a more sustainable
future. This chapter then develops a set of design imperatives for sustainability
science that aim to overcome the limitations of other approaches and focus research
on the generation of positive, more sustainable, social outcomes. A sustainability
science of design requires thinking beyond the current state of affairs to explore
how preferred, more sustainable, futures can be developed and pursued. This
requires that we rethink research priorities, the role of science in society and the
training of the next generation of sustainability scientists.
Finally, Chapter 7 concludes with a discussion of the implications of a design
science for sustainability, for how we organize research agendas, knowledge-
producing organizations and the relationship between science and society. As
environmental philosopher Dale Jamieson (1998: 191) aptly notes,‘[w]hat is needed
are simple and compelling stories that show us how to practically participate in
creating the future in our daily lives, and how to engage in ongoing dialogue with
others about how our everyday actions help to produce global realities.’ Science alone
cannot make a future happen; yet, it can help us identify the potential implications of
such futures and their plausibility. As various research agendas for sustainability
continue to emerge and develop, this project offers an opportunity to consider how
science is informing and shaping societal efforts to pursue sustainability and an
avenue for a more broadly reflexive and deliberative research program for sustain-
ability regarding how knowledge is appropriated and the public purposes it serves.

Notes
1 Rittel and Weber (1973) identify ten distinguishing characteristics of wicked problems:
(1) There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem; (2) wicked problems have
no stopping rule; (3) solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-
bad; (4) there is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem;
(5) every solution of a wicked problem is a ‘one-shot operation’; (6) wicked problems
do not have enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions; (7)
every wicked problem is essentially unique; (8) every wicked problem can be con-
sidered to be a symptom of another problem; (9) the existence of a discrepancy
representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways; the choice of
explanation determines the nature of the problem’s resolution; and (10) the planner has
no right to be wrong.
2 Of course, such problems are still wicked in many parts of the world. In large part the
contextual variability of problems and the differential presence of technology, know-
 Planet under pressure 11

how and the institutions necessary to regulate or deal with such problems can deter-
mine whether a problem is wicked or not. Whether a problem is tame or wicked is
contextual.

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2
A SCIENCE FOR SUSTAINABILITY

First coined in 1982 at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) World Parks Congress in Bali, the term ‘sustainable development’ was an
attempt by conservation biologists and practitioners to integrate the goals of
conservation with human and economic development, particularly in the develop-
ing world. Science, and more specifically the then emerging field of conservation
biology, was viewed as crucial to revealing the societal and environmental benefits
of conservation and providing knowledge to assist in the management of protected
areas (Hughes-Evans and Aldrich 1983).
Emerging from conservation biology, a self-proclaimed ‘mission-oriented’
science (Soulé 1985), the framing of sustainable development was clearly norm-
ative. Sustainable development was an attempt to resolve the conflict between
biodiversity conservation and human development. ‘The ultimate choice,’ stated
Peter Thacher, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment
Program, in his keynote address at the IUCN Congress, ‘is between conservation
or conflict. Trees now or tanks later. The choice for governments is either to find
the means by which to pay now to stop the destruction of the natural resource base,
or to be prepared to pay later, possibly in blood.’ From the start, the power behind
the argument for sustainable development was the ability to link empirical and
normative claims (Miller et al. 2011). In this case, conservation biology aims to
produce knowledge that provides the empirical evidence for the benefits of conser-
vation and how it should be managed. As Miller et al. (2011) show, normative
arguments about what ought to be conserved and how humans should interact with
protected areas are inextricably intertwined with empirical claims regarding human
well-being and biodiversity.
While the concept of sustainable development can be traced back further to the
1980 World Conservation Strategy and the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the
Human Environment, it gained wide recognition and political cachet with the
 A science for sustainability 15

1987 landmark publication by the World Commission on Economic Development

(WCED) of Our Common Future, or, as it is more commonly known, the Brundt-
land Report. Bearing the name of the chair of the commission, Gro Harlem
Brundtland, the Report famously defined sustainable development as ‘development
that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED 1987: 43).While it made clear the
importance of the role of technology, social organization and political action,1 it
relied heavily on and carved out a significant role for science in the pursuit of
sustainable development.The Brundtland Report framed sustainable development
as something that would be made possible by the power of global ecology to
inform society’s decisions and strategies (Jasanoff 1996). Jasanoff (1996: 185–6)
continues, arguing that the Brundtland Report’s idea of sustainable development
and ‘…the indefinite survival of the human species could be assured through a
universally acceptable marriage between scientific knowledge and rational
stewardship.’
By the turn of the century, the 1999 report by the Board on Sustainable
Development of the the US National Research Council (NRC), Our Common
Journey, reviewed the status of the knowledge and know-how needed to embark
on a sustainability transition.The Board defines a sustainability transition as occur-
ring over the next two generations that ‘should be able to meet the needs of a
much larger but stabilizing human population, to sustain the life support systems of
the planet, and to substantially reduce hunger and poverty’ (NRC 1999: 31). The
authors of the report, a group of geographers and ecologists with Robert Kates,
William C. Clark and Pamela Matson emerging as leaders, argue that this transition
is possible only with ‘significant advances in basic knowledge, in social capacity and
technological capabilities to use it, and political will to turn this… into action’
(NRC 1999, 7; emphasis added). It is in this context that the field of sustainability
science is emerging.
The NRC report proposed the development of a ‘sustainability science’ that is
place-based and problem-driven, integrating knowledge from different disciplines,
across geographical and temporal scales, and between scholarship and practice.The
concept began to gain traction in academic circles with the publication of ‘Sustain-
ability science’ in Science. This article defined sustainability science as a new field
that seeks ‘to understand the fundamental character of interactions between nature
and society’ and enhance ‘society’s capacity to guide those interactions along more
sustainable trajectories’ (Kates et al. 2001, 641). Kates et al. (2001) and others (Cash
et al. 2003; Matson 2009; NRC 1999) are quick to point to the normative reasons
why such a research agenda is important – meeting human needs, especially for
those living in poverty, while preserving the Earth’s life support systems for future
generations – and emphasize the necessity of linking knowledge to social action.
While it is a broad and evolving field at this point, several characteristics identify
sustainability science, including fundamental research with a place-based focus on
coupled human – natural systems from an interdisciplinary, problem-driven
perspective (Cash et al. 2003; Clark and Dickson 2003; Kumazawa et al. 2009).
16 Constructing sustainability science

Turner et al. (2003a), for example, apply a vulnerability framework to the analysis
of three coupled human-environment systems case studies including the Southern
Yucatán peninsular region surrounding the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.2 The
authors view vulnerability as residing ‘in the condition and operation of the
coupled human – environment system, including the response capacities and
system feedbacks to the hazards encountered’ (Turner et al. 2003a: 8080).
Another example of coupled systems research in sustainability is the work of
Matson and colleagues on the Yaqui Valley in Sonora, Mexico. Matson et al. (2005)
examine a system in which they seek to understand transitions under way as a result
of population growth, urbanization, land use change and changes in the region’s
water regime. In these and other studies, sustainability science is being defined as
an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand the coupled human – environ-
ment dynamics underlying many pressing environmental problems (Carpenter et al.
2009; Ostrom 2007;Turner et al. 2003a).
As the research agendas for sustainability have developed so too have the pro-
grammatic elements of a growing scientific field including the establishment of
research and education institutions and dedicated academic journals. Much of the
activity in institutionalizing sustainability science has been centered around the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Forum on Science
and Technology for Sustainability, the Roundtable on Science and Technology for
Sustainability Program at the National Academy of Sciences, and the Initiative on
Science and Technology for Sustainability sponsored by the International Council
of Science. Research and education programs and centers are also rapidly emerging.
These include, but are certainly not limited to, the Global Institute of Sustainability
and School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, the Center for Interactive
Research on Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Sustainability
Studies at Lund University (Sweden), the Sustainability Science Program in the
Center for International Development at Harvard University, and the Graduate
Program in Sustainability Science at the University of Tokyo. Several academic
journals have emerged including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Sustainability Science section, Sustainability Science, Current Opinion in Environmental
Sustainability, and Sustainability: Science, Policy and Practice.

Use-inspired science
A critical motivating theme in sustainability science is that it is use-inspired,
concerned with linking knowledge to action. Clark (2007) marked an important
point in the development of the field with the establishment of a section devoted
to sustainability science in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In an
editorial introducing the section, Clark (2007: 1737) characterizes sustainability
science as a field similar to health science or agricultural science – ‘a field defined
by the problems it addresses rather than by the disciplines it employs.’ Sustainability
science, argues Clark, is use-inspired (as opposed to applied science or basic
research) and seeks to facilitate a transition toward sustainability.
 A science for sustainability 17

Clark’s classification of sustainability science as use-inspired refers directly to

science policy scholar and political scientist Donald Stokes’s Pasteur’s Quadrant (1997).
Stokes reviews what he argues is a false dichotomy between basic and applied
research. Basic research has been set up as the only ‘pure’ type of scientific research,
aimed at revealing the fundamental laws of nature. Applied research, on the other
hand, has been characterized as a more practical effort, engaged in solving problems
as opposed to generating fundamental understanding.The physicist Niels Bohr and
the inventor Thomas Edison are presented as examples of basic and applied research,
respectively.This dichotomy has driven US science policy in the post-WWII era and
continues to motivate perspectives on what counts as ‘good’ science.
Stokes contends that this two-dimensional image of science, which pits consid-
erations of use against a quest for fundamental understanding, misses a critical
category of scientific research – that is, use-inspired basic research. Use-inspired
basic research ‘seeks to extend the frontiers of understanding but is also inspired by
considerations of use’ (Stokes 1997: 74). Stokes illustrates his argument with the case
of French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. Pasteur’s work on vaccinations,
pasteurization, fermentation and bacteria was motivated by a quest to understand
microbiological processes and to control these processes for human use and benefit.
Therefore, Stokes argues that Pasteur does not fit neatly into the traditional model
of basic and applied research. Instead, a quadrant model of scientific research (Figure
2.1) is developed that accounts for use-inspired basic research, or ‘Pasteur’s
Quadrant.’This is where Clark (2007) explicitly positions sustainability science.
Sustainability science is not unique, of course, among contemporary research
efforts that aim to find a way to contribute directly to positive social and environ-
mental outcomes while advancing fundamental understanding. For example, while

Research inspired by. . .

Consideration of use

No Yes

Pure basic research Use-inspired basic

Yes (Bohr) research (Pasteur,
sustainability science)
Fundamental
understanding
Applied research
No (Edison)

FIGURE 2.1 Quadrant model of scientific research.

Note: This model, adapted from Stokes (1997) and Clark (2007), depicts how sustainability scientists
view the position of their field – pursuing questions that contribute to the fundamental under-
standing of human – environment interactions while also contributing to an ability to make
decisions that contribute to more sustainable outcomes.
18 Constructing sustainability science

serving as President of the AAAS, Jane Lubchenco (1998) called for a new social
contract for science. She argues that science has brought incalculable benefits to
society while seeking knowledge that is largely divorced from considerations of
societal benefit. However, society now faces a set of challenges that require
scientists to shift their research priorities and translate knowledge to policy makers
and the public more effectively. Scientists must address the most urgent needs of
society, communicate the knowledge they produce to inform policy and manage-
ment decisions and exercise good judgment in doing so. Similarly, Palmer et al.
(2004, 2005) lay the foundations for a new pathway for ecological science – an
‘ecology for a crowded planet.’ The authors argue that for too long ecological
research has focused on pristine ecosystems in which humans are viewed as a
disturbance. They see a key role for ecology in informing decisions that support
environmental sustainability and argue that a new research agenda must be built
that focuses on ecosystem services and ecological design and restoration. More
recently, Palmer (2012) has called for more ‘actionable science’ that serves society.
Lubchenco, Palmer and others (Gibbons 1999) contend that it is time for a new
social contract for science. The ‘old’ social contract implicit in these arguments is
that established byVannevar Bush. In Science—The Endless Frontier (1945), Bush laid
the foundation for the post-WWII relationship between science and society in the
United States. Bush and other scientists (Polanyi 1962) argued that science delivers
benefits to society most effectively and efficiently when scientists are able to act
independently of political interference and pursue knowledge out of their own
curiosity (Miller and Neff 2013). This relationship between scientific knowledge
and its application is captured by the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair unofficial motto –
‘Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.’ This deterministic take on
science and technology, or what some have referred to as the ‘loading dock’ or
linear model of science and policy (see Figure 2.2),3 has been widely challenged by
sociologists of science and technology and science policy scholars, among others,
in recent years (e.g. Guston 2000; Pielke 2007; Stokes 1997). In the linear model,
science produces knowledge and facts about an issue, which are then picked up by
decision makers to inform their decision or perhaps even compel action. In this
model, it is important that science remain separate from political and subjective
concerns and therefore be able to offer impartial, objective knowledge.
Calls for a new social contract for science or for more use-inspired research
recognize that the assumptions behind this linear model limit the ability of
scientific research to contribute to pressing problems.The complexity and urgency
of sustainability problems present fundamental challenges to scientific research.
First, the complexity of coupled human – natural systems and the scale and pace at
which humans are transforming local and global ecologies cannot be understood
through inquiries from single disciplines.This is a fundamental, epistemic challenge
in how scientific research, disciplines and organizations are structured. Second,
proponents argue that use-inspired basic research is required to meet the urgency
of sustainability problems. Extraordinary circumstances – WWII, global environ-
mental degradation – require extraordinary efforts. Such circumstances are so
 A science for sustainability 19

Scientific
knowledge
Science Society
Facts Values

FIGURE 2.2 The ‘loading dock’ or linear model of science and decision-making.
Note: Adapted from Jasanoff and Wynne 1998: 8.

serious and time-sensitive that scientists must focus their research on issues of
immediate concern to society and enhance their efforts to communicate know-
ledge to policy makers and the broader public.
How different scientific communities respond to these challenges and how
effective those responses are – in terms both of producing positive social outcomes
and of generating fundamental knowledge about our world – will provide insights
into the power and/or limits of knowledge and serve as experiments for how
scientific research can contribute to beneficial outcomes. Sustainability science,
explicitly branded as problem-driven and use-inspired, is a case study for the
exploration of how scientific fields and disciplines are reorganizing in the face of
urgent and complex sustainability problems. As such, this work builds on Stokes
and other science policy scholars (Guston 1999), in examining how scientific
knowledge is perceived (in this case by sustainability scientists) to generate new
understandings and contribute to better decisions relative to sustainability issues.
This research, then, is partly an examination of what environmental philosopher,
Paul Thompson, refers to as the paradox of sustainability, which ‘arises because
substantive, research-based approaches to sustainability may be too complex to
effectively motivate appropriate social responses, especially in a culture where
science is presumed to be value-free’ (2010: 235). Before exploring the state of
sustainability science in more detail in the following chapter, I now turn to a
discussion of the theoretical and methodological framework offered by science and
technology studies (STS) that I will be drawing from.

Science, technology and society

Though criticized as inoperable, overly ambiguous or simply promoting the status
quo (Jamieson 1998; Marcuse 1998; Mebratu 1998; Worster 1994), sustainability
might also be viewed as an effort to represent and articulate visions of social and
natural well-being. Any effort by society to progress towards such a vision(s) will
be an intensely social and political process. As scientists move to conduct research
relevant to sustainability, they, in part, define sustainability – both in the production
of knowledge and in the institutional structures of the field. This is not a process
20 Constructing sustainability science

free of value choices or socio-political implications. Latour (2004: 95), for instance,
cautions that ‘the tempting aspect of the distinction between facts and values lies
in its seeming modesty, its innocence, even: scientists define facts, only facts: they
leave to politicians and moralists the even more daunting task of defining values.’
In selecting theories and problems for sustainability science, scientists shape the
concept of sustainability in society more broadly. Motivated by a desire to produce
useful knowledge and a belief that access to the necessary knowledge will result in
better decisions as well as a need to seek out the latest sources of funding, scientists
often pursue research priorities that respond to pressing problems. The ways in
which scientists construct research agendas for sustainability science and grapple
with the deeply social, political and normative dimensions of both characterizing
and pursuing sustainability have implications for the capacity of the field to provide
useful knowledge and for how sustainability is constituted in society.
At the core of the STS research agenda has been the study of how the content
of scientific and technical knowledge are constructed (Hacking 1999; Knorr-Cetina
1999; Latour 1988; Pinch and Bijker 1987;Vaughn 1996). Constructivism involves
examining the social and political processes that influence and actively produce
scientific and technological knowledge (Hacking 1999; Sismondo 2008). As
Sismondo (2008: 13) notes,‘the history of STS is in part a history of increasing scope
– starting with scientific knowledge, and expanding to artifacts, methods, materials,
observations, phenomena, classifications, institutions, interests, histories, and cultures.’
Following this, STS scholars have science and society co-produce one another.That
is, science not only produces beliefs about how the world is, but also how it ought
to be (Jasanoff 2004a; Latour 1993). As scientists describe social or ecological
dynamics, they influence beliefs about what dynamics are sustainable – what society
ought to do in order to be sustainable. Scientists may attempt to respond to the
societal discourse on sustainability by researching problems identified by society as
important. How sustainability science influences the social, political and normative
dimensions of sustainability may render the concept of sustainability and the
problems it encapsulates more or less tractable in terms of social action. STS scholars
are well positioned to offer an analysis of both the boundary work being done to
shape sustainability science and its relationship to society.
The concept of boundary work is particularly useful in this context for two
reasons. First, boundary work allows for an examination of how the social, political
and normative dimensions of sustainability are understood, articulated, bounded
and settled by sustainability scientists. Gieryn (1999: 4) defines boundary work as
‘the discursive attribution of selected qualities to scientists, scientific methods, and
scientific claims for the purpose of drawing a rhetorical boundary between science
and some less authoritative residual non-science.’ For the purpose of this analysis,
the concern is not on boundary work as the expulsion of rival authorities. Rather,
the focus is on the construction of epistemic authority through scientific discourse
and knowledge and how sustainability scientists deploy this authority to control
discussions of research goals and demarcate social, political and normative
discussions as either settled or beyond the scope of their claim-making territory.As
 A science for sustainability 21

Gieryn (1999) argues, boundaries between science and non-science are constantly
drawn and redrawn, allocating the epistemic authority of science and demarcating
it from non-science.
Science and technology have been positioned as critical to society’s ability to
move towards sustainability. So too has science been shaped by the problems and
concerns associated with sustainability as ecologists, geographers, environmental
scientists and others move to conduct applied and use-inspired research
(Lubchenco 1998; Stokes 1997; Palmer et al. 2004). Science, in other words, shapes
and is shaped by sustainability problems and values.They co-produce one another
(Jasanoff 2004b, 2005; Latour 1993) – ‘the products of the sciences, both cognitive
and material, embody beliefs not only about how the world is, but also how it ought
to be. Natural and social orders… are produced at one and the same time’ (Jasanoff
2005: 19). As philosopher of science Helen Longino (1990) notes, the object of
inquiry is not just nature, but nature under a specific description – teleological,
mechanistic or a complex adaptive system, for example. Before any knowledge is
produced or research performed, the subject matter or system of inquiry must be
characterized ‘in ways that make certain kinds of explanation appropriate and
others inappropriate’ (Longino 1990). Scientific communities do not want just
knowledge, but knowledge about a particular set of things (Longino 2002).
Concealing the reliance of scientific inquiry on background assumptions and
values discourages the investigation of alternative frameworks and stymies the
development of new insights and knowledge (Longino 1990). Human – environ-
ment interactions underlying (un)sustainable dynamics and the broad normative
agenda of sustainability are sufficiently complex and diverse to allow for a variety
of interpretations, or constructions, of sustainability. Utilizing boundary work and
co-production as conceptual tools, this book will uncover these background
assumptions as they are taking shape in emerging sustainability science com-
munities and, in Part II, it will turn to an exploration of alternative pathways for
sustainability science.
As sustainability scientists move to conduct research relevant to sustainability,
they, in part, define it. In selecting theories and problems for sustainability science,
scientists shape the concept of sustainability in society more broadly. Motivated by
a desire to produce useful knowledge and a belief that access to the necessary
knowledge will result in better decisions (Bocking 2004; Kinzig 2001; Lubchenco
1998; Palmer et al. 2005; Raven 2002) as well as a need to seek out the latest
sources of funding (Braun 1998), scientists often pursue research priorities that
respond to pressing problems (Miller and Neff 2013).The ways in which scientists
construct research agenda(s) for sustainability science have implications both for the
capacity of the field to provide useful knowledge and for how sustainability is
constituted in society. STS is well positioned to offer an analysis of this co-
production as well as of how boundary work is shaping sustainability science and
its relationship to society. In the following chapter, I will trace the normative,
epistemic and socio-political boundaries that are being drawn in sustainability
science in order both to understand these assumptions, examining potential
22 Constructing sustainability science

tensions and limitations, and to explore the potential for STS to contribute to a
reconstruction of sustainability science. Here, I will discuss the shift to recon-
struction; but, first, I turn to a brief description of the methodological approach
taken to analyze sustainability science.

Methodological approach
The methodological approach follows the pioneering study of conservation
biologists and biodiversity by Takacs (1996). Through interviews with leading
figures in conservation,Takacs examines how they have shaped and promoted the
concept of biodiversity, including its normative character. In a similar fashion, the
analysis in this book provides a rich description of emerging research agendas in
sustainability science and how scientists envision the knowledge produced by the
field contributing to society.
In-depth interviews were conducted with 28 key researchers in sustainability
science between June 2009 and January 2010. Interview subjects were identified
through their involvement in critical developments in the sustainability science
literature, through association with sustainability research programs and by key
informants. Interview subjects were drawn from the USA, the Netherlands,
Sweden, the UK, Japan and Canada. Several researchers that are outside of the
mainstream sustainability science community were interviewed in order to get
alternative perspectives on this developing research area. Interviews began with
several preset questions and topics but allowed for flexibility around the research
interests and perspective of the interview subject. Interviews were conducted in
person when possible and over the telephone in select cases. Interviews were
conducted in English and lasted from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours in length.4
In addition to the interviews, a literature review and content analysis of the
leading journals, reports and papers in the field was performed. Journals analyzed
included the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, Sustain-
ability: Science, Policy and Practice, Sustainability Science and Current Opinion in
Environmental Sustainability, as well as select papers in other journals. Activities
sponsored by the AAAS, the National Academy of Sciences and the National
Science Foundation have been critical in establishing a research agenda for the field.
Workshop reports and other outcomes from these activities were analyzed as well.
Content analysis of the literature was coded to focus on the normative,
epistemic and socio-political claims of sustainability science. Journal articles and
workshop reports, however, do not always provide the detail necessary to explore
the motivations behind research agendas. Interviews, then, were important sources
of data to examine the normative dimensions of this emerging field and its social
and political context. This qualitative, mixed methodological approach enables a
‘thick’ description of emerging visions of sustainability science; that is, an approach
that steers away from descriptive cataloguing of, in this case, the culture of a
scientific field, and instead seeks the ‘connections and general patterns that are
characteristic of a certain context’ (Adger et al. 2003: 195; Geertz 1973).
 A science for sustainability 23

Reflexivity and reconstruction in STS

As noted earlier, STS scholarship has focused on the construction of scientific
knowledge and boundaries between science and decision making or science and
society. While such analyses are necessary and fruitful, they can limit the ability of
STS scholarship to actively contribute to the exploration and development of
alternative research trajectories and a more nuanced relationship between science
and social context. In Part II, I follow STS scholars who have urged the field to
move beyond constructivist analyses to propose potential reconstructions for sustain-
ability science (Hess 2007;Woodhouse 2006;Woodhouse et al. 2002).This is part of
a larger turn in STS toward an ‘engaged program’ (Sismondo 1998), exemplified by
STS researchers engaging scientists, engineers, decision makers and the public (e.g.
Fisher and Schuurbiers 2013; Barben et al. 2008;Tlili and Dawson 2010).
Woodhouse (2006), for example, describes how ‘brown’ chemistry came to have
a privileged position over ‘green’ chemistry. Woodhouse notes that in its early
stages, it was not obvious that ‘brown’ chemistry, or more toxin-intensive chemistry,
would become dominant. Instead, ‘brown’ chemistry had several advantages
including a better structural position, a quiescent public and habits of thought that
led to it becoming the dominant paradigm. Woodhouse then lays out the
reconstructivist agenda by asking how we might better understand the micro-local
reality of scientific research agendas, reduce elite appropriation of knowledge and
direct technical capabilities to more justifiable public purposes.
As research agendas for sustainability continue to develop (e.g. Clark and
Dickson 2003; Gibson 2006; Mihelcic et al. 2003; Miller et al. 2013; Palmer et al.
2005), a reconstructivist approach offers an avenue for a more broadly reflexive and
deliberative science and technology (S&T) research program. An STS analysis of
sustainability science can inject a needed dose of reflexivity to the field. Reflexivity
is a recursive process that focuses attention on how the object of study is
represented by, in this case, scientists. In turn, it also draws attention to how
attributes of the subject (e.g. epistemic and normative presuppositions) constitute
representations of the object of study and how these very representations might
condition the subject (Stirling 2006).
Reflexivity is particularly important in socially relevant areas like sustainability.
As discussed earlier, science helps to shape our representations of what a sustainable
or unsustainable system looks like. Given the complexity and contested nature of
sustainability problems, awareness of how epistemic and normative assumptions
shape representations and how, in turn, these representations shape potential actions
and future research is critical to ensuring that sustainability science fosters dis-
cussion and debate over normative aims and appropriate action. An unreflexive
sustainability science risks ‘closing down’ such debate and ‘block boxing’ normative
and epistemic claims. Reflexivity requires a transparency and openness with regards
to normative premises, epistemic claims and position, and an understanding of the
limits of knowledge in terms of both what can be known and observed about a
system and the variability of the role of knowledge in different socio-political
24 Constructing sustainability science

contexts (Grunwald 2004; Miller et al. 2011). Reflexivity will be discussed further
in Part II as a critical element of a reconstructed sustainability science.5
Like much of STS research (Fujimura 1996; Latour 1988; Jasanoff 2005; Knorr-
Cetina 1999), the reconstructivist approach taken here works to uncover these
issues.This is the focus of Part I.Where reconstruction moves beyond a traditional
constructivist approach is in the active engagement with sustainability science to
‘open up’ (Stirling 2008) alternative research pathways, the meaning of sustain-
ability and institutional configurations for research organization. This is done
theoretically and conceptually here, in Part II, but also through an engagement in
the sustainability science literature and community (cf. Miller 2013; Miller et al.
2014).This is partly an interdisciplinary gesture to reach across disciplinary divides.
Importantly, it is also a normative position. As mentioned in the discussion of
wicked problems in the previous chapter, sustainability encapsulates concerns about
nature, the sense of place, culture and what options and opportunities we ought to
keep open for future generations (Norton 2005). Sustainability is itself a boundary
concept ( Jasanoff 1990) with an interpretative flexibility that enables a plurality of
potentially divergent views and values and a certain degree of normative ambiguity
(Stirling 2006). STS scholarship has shown how S&T can shape and even close
down discussion of such value-laden issues. Part I explores the various ways the
sustainability science community is interpreting sustainability. The reconstructivist
approach taken in Part II aims to inform a sustainability science that works to foster
and open up these discussions.

Conclusion
Sustainability science provides an opportunity to explore how emerging fields are
reorganizing to respond to pressing social and environmental problems and
conduct use-inspired basic research. As such, this work informs STS examination
of boundary work, particularly around value-laden and socio-politically relevant
areas like sustainability. It also contributes to science policy studies and STS in
exploring how scientists interpret public values (Bozeman 2007) and attempt to
link scientific knowledge to those values. Building on and utilizing insights from
STS, reconstruction helps to shape a sustainability science that supports deliber-
ation on the normative goals of sustainability and links knowledge to beneficial
outcomes. In the following chapter, I discuss the emerging visions of sustainability
science and analyze how scientists are drawing boundaries around normative,
epistemic and socio-political claims.

Notes
1 As well as defining sustainable development the authors note that, while it does imply
limits, they are ‘not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of tech-
nology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the
biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities. But technology and social
 A science for sustainability 25

organization can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of
economic growth’ (WCED 1987: 8).
2 Vulnerability is defined as ‘the degree to which a system, subsystem, or system com-
ponent is likely to experience harm due to exposure to a hazard, either a perturbation
or stress/stressor’ (Turner et al. 2003b: 8074).
3 I am indebted to my friend and colleague, Kate Darby, and the IGERT in Urban Eco-
logy group at Arizona State University for this label and for heated discussions about
the linear model.
4 See Appendices A and B for a list of interview subjects and the interview protocol.
5 There is also a long history of reflexivity in the social sciences. For reviews of reflexivity
in the social sciences as well as science studies, see Beck (1992), Bourdieu (2001),
Giddens (1991), Hess (2011), Sismondo (2008).

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3
CONSTRUCTING
SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE

Sustainability science, like much use-inspired research, explores a world that is

inherently complex and uncertain. It tangles with deeply normative and contested
questions about our relationship to nature, our consumption of natural resources
and the value we place on the future. How, then, are sustainability scientists to navi-
gate this complex terrain, drawing boundaries around appropriate research
questions for the field, while both acknowledging the value-laden nature of
sustainability questions and pursuing the scientific, value-free ideal?
This chapter1 focuses on three core issues in the construction of sustainability
science:

1. how sustainability scientists define and bound sustainability;

2. how and why various research agendas are being constructed to address these
notions of sustainability; and
3. how scientists see their research contributing to societal efforts to move
towards sustainability.

In particular, I will focus on the boundary work performed around the normative,
epistemic and socio-political claims of sustainability scientists. Sustainability, as
noted earlier, is a value-laden concept. How scientists interpret the normative
dimensions of sustainability may influence the directions of the research agendas
and shape the perceived credibility of alternative normative claims and concerns –
from other scientists, decision makers or other stakeholders. The epistemic claims
of sustainability scientists – or what knowledge they seek about what set of things
– demarcate those areas worthy of pursuit by the field. How these claims balance
the potential tension between basic research and use-inspired research will inform
developments in use-inspired basic research as well as the reconstruction of sustain-
ability undertaken in Part II. Finally, given the field’s problem and use-inspired
30 Constructing sustainability science

orientation, uncovering sustainability scientists’ socio-political claims – that is, how

knowledge will be useful and for what actions – is critical for understanding the
field’s situatedness and analyzing the ways in which scientists might be limiting the
field or enabling it to contribute to social action for sustainability.These claims will
be explored here and tensions between them will be discussed in Chapter 4.
The discussion in this chapter is informed by in-depth interviews conducted
with 28 key researchers in sustainability science and an extensive review of the rele-
vant literature. By revealing how scientists are bounding elements of the
sustainability discourse and the relationship between knowledge and action, this
chapter will lay the foundation for the reconstruction of sustainability science.

Normative claims: defining sustainability

In discussions on sustainability there is one question that is inevitably raised –
‘What is sustainability?’ Follow-up questions typically attempt to ask what is being
sustained, for whom and for how long.The answers to such questions are anything
but trivial and are value-laden, particularly in the context of sustainability science
(Norton 2005). The interests scientists select, observes the German sociologist
Ulrich Beck (1992: 174), ‘on whom and what they project the causes, how they
interpret the problems of society, what sort of potential solutions they bring into
view – these are anything but neutral decisions.’
The purpose of examining scientists’ definitions of sustainability is not to refute
or endorse one or another. In fact, some of the scientists interviewed discussed and
even endorsed multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. Definitions of
sustainability serve as an important point from which to analyze the normative
claims of scientists and how they are demarcated from epistemic claims. Two
primary themes emerged in discussions on the meaning of sustainability: universalist
sustainability and procedural sustainability. Importantly, each of the definitions involves
normative notions of sustainability, but with varying emphases and implications.
How do scientists define sustainability? To what extent do scientists address these
value-laden questions related to sustainability? How might this influence the way(s)
by which society comes to define sustainability? How do they envision their
research contributing to societal efforts to move toward sustainability? These are
the questions that will be addressed in the following discussion.

Universalist sustainability
Many of the interview subjects and much of the literature reviewed refer to one of
two definitions – those put forth by the WCED and the NRC report. Parris and
Kates (2003: 8068), for example, define a transition to sustainability as ‘stabilizing
world population, meeting its needs and reducing poverty and hunger while
maintaining the planet’s life support systems.’ Similarly, a report from the Third
World Academy of Sciences (Hassan 2001: 70) defines sustainability as ‘meeting
current human needs while preserving the environment and natural resources
 Constructing sustainability science 31

needed by future generations.’ Carl Folke of the Stockholm Resilience Centre

sums up this perspective: ‘How can we develop and continue to improve human
well-being and our life as a species on [this] planet…? That’s really what sustain-
ability is about for me.’ I refer to this set of definitions as universalist (or thin)
sustainability – meeting human needs, both now and in the future, without degrad-
ing the planet’s life support systems.
Political theorist Michael Walzer (1994) uses ‘thin morality’2 or ‘moral
minimalism’ to describe concepts that encourage widespread agreement but do not
substantively translate to the level of individual behavior changes or conflict with
more contextual notions of what is moral or desirable. Walzer notes that virtually
every human society can agree that the idea of justice is one worth pursuing;
however, what justice looks like in various places or contexts can be very different
and even conflict.This does not mean that thin or morally minimal descriptions of
justice are meaningless or morally shallow. Instead, thin morality can assume a
deeply compelling character, since it consists of moral notions on which all can
agree. It is this universality that has allowed thin sustainability to gain traction in
both science and society.
At the core of sustainability is a concern that current human activities and their
effects on the environment are undercutting the ability of ecological systems to
support the well-being of both current and future generations.‘Despite the awe in
which we hold nature and the value we place on its conservation,’ argues William
C. Clark (2010: 82), co-Director of the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard
University,‘ours is ultimately a project that seeks to understand what is, can be, and
ought to be the human use of the earth.’
Thin sustainability serves as a general normative frame, or in the words of Jan
Rotmans, former Director of the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT),
a ‘normative orientation,’ for sustainability scientists. It is both a source of motivation
and a normative goal for research. Sustainability scientists are able to tap into the
moral underpinnings of sustainability to express concern over the impacts of human
activity and justify research agendas. Moral minimalism ‘is everyone’s morality
because it is no one’s in particular; subjective interest and cultural expression have
been avoided or cut away’ (Walzer 1994: 7). So too is science perceived by many
scientists and the public as universalist, objective and free of cultural context. A
sustainability from which ‘subjective interest and cultural expression have been
avoided or cut away’ serves to reinforce this image of science and maintain its
authoritative role in society (Collingridge and Reeve 1986; Jasanoff 1987).
‘Thick morality’ or ‘moral maximalism,’ on the other hand, is contextual and
embedded in a certain place or unique to a certain people. Maximalism ‘is
idiomatic, particularist, and circumstantial… [it] is the socially constructed idealism
of these people’ (Walzer 1994: 39). Norton (2005) picks up on this, arguing that
sustainability has the potential for constructing an improved language for discussion
of environmental problems because it is both descriptive and evaluative. In other
words, sustainability is a ‘thick’ concept that can encapsulate a great deal of inform-
ation and present that information in a way that makes explicit its importance to
32 Constructing sustainability science

widely held social values. Scientists have embraced thin sustainability and its
universality, potentially limiting the degree to which deeper discussions over a
‘thick sustainability’ and the role of science take place. As Jamieson (1995, 1998)
notes, attempts to provide scientific or technical definitions for highly normative
concepts, such as sustainability or ecosystem health, often result in a circumvention
of ethical and political issues or lead to a bedeviled debate in which ethical, political
and scientific issues are confused.
The values of sustainability motivate scientists but, at the same time, scientists are
careful to control the degree to which such values infiltrate science. Parris and
Kates (2003: 8068), for instance, believe that ‘defining sustainability is ultimately a
social choice about what to develop, what to sustain, and for how long.’ Pam
Matson of Stanford University, a leading figure in the field, separates the values of
society from the values of the scientist:

the values are the values of the decision makers. And, of course, scientists all
have their own value systems, too. And mine would say – …meeting the
needs of people while protecting the life support systems of the planet. I’m
including the ecosystems and the species within them, on land and in the
oceans, because I think they provide all of the [ecosystem] services that we
need.

Boundaries are drawn between personal values and those that might influence the
way society and decision makers understand sustainability. The values and moti-
vations of scientists and sustainability science are acknowledged, but at a level that
is universal. It is ‘everyone’s morality because it is no one’s in particular.’ I refer to
this boundary work as normative distancing.These are the scientists’ values and they
are everyone’s values. Both the definition of sustainability and the usefulness of
science to sustainability efforts are universal.
The context and conflict that come with thickness are absent in thin sustain-
ability. ‘With thickness,’ notes Walzer (1994: 6), ‘comes qualification, compromise,
complexity, and disagreement.’Thomas Parris of ISciences, a sustainable science and
information consulting group, and a member of the NRC’s Board on Sustainable
Development, notes that the selection of a thin definition of sustainability is often
deliberate: ‘It’s the part that everyone can agree on… The point is that there’s a
core… because people don’t universally agree to the various additional layers that
people add on to it…’ A universalist sustainability creates a normative distance
between science and values that enables scientists to avoid opening up an arena in
which the role of science and the knowledge produced by scientists may be
contested along with other components of sustainability.

Procedural sustainability
The NRC (1999: 48) notes that sustainability is a ‘process of social learning and
adaptive response amidst turbulence and surprise.’ This way of defining sustain-
 Constructing sustainability science 33

ability is referred to as procedural sustainability – a methodologically oriented

approach that focuses on how sustainability comes to be defined and how pathways
are developed to pursue it.
John Robinson, Associate Provost, Sustainability at the University of British
Columbia, provides a succinct explanation of this view:

The procedural [definition of sustainability] is that sustainability is the

emergent property of a discussion about desired futures that’s informed by
some understanding of the ecological, social, and economic consequences of
different courses of action.

Rather than being defined in thin, universalist terms, sustainability is defined

through a participatory or democratic process contingent on place and time. As
Norton (2005: 335) argues, ‘…the problem of how to measure sustainability… is
logically subsequent to the prior question of what commitments the relevant com-
munity is willing to make to protect a natural and cultural legacy.’
Rotmans (former Director of DRIFT) also makes a case for procedural sustain-
ability:

[Sustainability] is very context-dependent… [I]n practical environments, my

opinion is that what is sustainable is defined by the stakeholders that will be
involved in this process… It means that it might be different in Rotterdam
than in Amsterdam… [I]t’s more the process itself where… you are contin-
ually making trade-offs in time, and in space, and in domains, and if you do
that systematically and continuously, then the outcome for me doesn’t matter
as much as the process itself.

This is different from the participation of stakeholders in scientific research or the

process of linking knowledge to action, which will be discussed below. Procedural
sustainability is based on an understanding of sustainability as a process for identi-
fying important societal values and pathways toward a desirable future. It
emphasizes difference and context rather than agreement on a broad definition. It
is not that procedural sustainability is in opposition to thin sustainability; rather, a
thin definition is only useful insofar as it aids in the process of developing a
contextual understanding of sustainability in a certain place or community.

Epistemic claims: research agendas for sustainability

Regardless of the way scientists define sustainability, there is widespread agreement
(Lubchenco 1998; Palmer et al. 2004; Levin and Clark 2010) that science should
contribute to sustainability efforts – ‘promoting the goal of sustainability requires
the emergence and conduct of the new field of sustainability science’ (Friiberg
2000: 1). As both Matson and Clark noted in interviews, they adhere to a ‘big tent’
theory for what is to be included in sustainability, particularly at this point in its
34 Constructing sustainability science

development. Two major themes in the construction of research agendas for

sustainability are the coupled systems approach and the social change approach.

Coupled systems
Sustainability science ‘seeks to understand the fundamental character of interactions
between nature and society’ (Kates et al. 2001: 641). As Carpenter et al. (2009:
1305) note, it is ‘motivated by fundamental questions about interactions of nature
and society as well as compelling and urgent social needs.’ Likewise, Turner et al.
(2003a: 8080) argue, ‘[s]ustainability science seeks understanding of the coupled
human – environment system in ways that are useful to the different communities
of stakeholders.’ I refer to this set of research agendas as the coupled systems approach
to sustainability science.
The coupled systems approach is focused on producing knowledge about ‘the
complex dynamics that arise from interactions between human and environmental
systems’ (Clark 2007: 1737). In its broadest sense, as B.L.Turner III of Arizona State
University says,‘[a]nything that fits under the rubric of how humankind is altering
the basic structure and function of the earth’s system… is a critical problem that
ought to be studied.’The role of sustainability science, argues Parris of ISciences, is
in ‘understanding how [the human – environment system] functions.’ Similarly,
Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Laureate in Economics and a former editor of and contri-
butor to the Sustainability Science section of PNAS, contends that sustainability
science should be concerned with ‘developing rigorous methods for analyzing
complex systems over time.’
The coupled systems approach has several important implications for boundary
work within science and its relationship to sustainability. It positions research on
coupled human–natural systems as critical to efforts to move towards sustainability.
For example, Clark (2010: 82) states that ‘the core of sustainability science lies in
seeking to understand how society’s efforts to promote a transition toward sustain-
ability are constrained or promoted by the interactions between human and
environmental systems’ (emphasis original). In order to adequately address the
problems of sustainability, fundamental knowledge is required about the dynamics
of coupled human–natural systems.3 It is this knowledge that sustainability science
can provide.
Clark (2010: 82) views sustainability science as problem-oriented yet grounded
by a search for fundamental understanding of human–environment systems:

Like ‘agricultural science’ and ‘health science’ before it, sustainability science is
a field defined by the problems it addresses rather than the disciplines or
methods it employs. For us, those problems are defined as the challenges of
promoting a transition toward sustainability – improving human well-being
while conserving the earth’s life support systems over appropriate time and
space scales. Sustainability science then draws from – and seeks to advance –
those aspects of our understanding of human systems, environmental systems
 Constructing sustainability science 35

and their interactions that are useful for helping people achieve sustainability
goals.

This knowledge is produced in conjunction with stakeholders so that it is not just

reliable but also salient, legitimate and trustworthy and thus more likely to assist
society in making the transition to sustainability (Cash et al. 2006; Clark and
Dickson 2003; Kates et al. 2001; NRC 1999).This leads to a final, key component
of the coupled systems approach – connecting scientific research to practice, or
linking knowledge to action (Cash et al. 2003).
However, as Matson noted in an interview, while ‘a lot of progress has been
made [in understanding life support systems]… there is going to be a lot more
[research] needed in decision science, in behavioral research.’ Knowledge of the
system and its use in decision making is viewed as a factor limiting action. Part of
the mission of sustainability science is to determine what knowledge is needed.
This is done by basing on a better understanding of decision making and percept-
ions. How and why this knowledge is linked to societal action and what the
implications are will be discussed in further detail below.

Social change
According to Jill Jäger, a researcher at the Sustainable Europe Research Institute,
sustainability science ‘is very much about process and very much about dialogue…
it’s a process for social change, learning, and transitions.’ It should ‘drive societal
learning and change processes’ and focus ‘on the design and running of processes
linking knowledge with action to deal with persistent problems of unsustainability
and to foster transitions to sustainability’ (Jäger 2009: 3). I refer to this as the social
change approach to sustainability science.
The social change approach seeks to construct, inform and study processes for
defining and pursuing sustainability. Rather than producing knowledge about
underlying dynamics that are sustainable or unsustainable, it both produces know-
ledge about and actively participates in the processes of sustainability transitions.
Paul Raskin, Director of the Tellus Institute, argues that we must focus on ‘the
ultimate drivers’ that cause unsustainability or that might result in positive action –
‘culture, power, politics and values.’ Following the notion of procedural sustain-
ability discussed earlier, Swart et al. (2004: 138) argue that sustainability science
must ‘emphasize the need to develop approaches for evaluating future options,
recognizing diverse epistemologies and problem definitions, and encompassing the
deeply normative nature of the sustainability problem.’
The social change approach is envisioned by some scientists as a mode of
governance.The field of transitions management highlights this issue. Loorbach and
Rotmans (2009: 240) define transitions management as ‘a deliberative process to
influence governance activities in such a way that they lead to accelerated change
directed towards sustainability ambitions.’ Derk Loorbach (2007: 18), current
Director of DRIFT, defines a transition ‘as a continuous process of societal change
36 Constructing sustainability science

whereby the structure of society (or a subsystem of society) changes fundamentally.’

Transitions management is a form of meta-governance – ‘how do we influence,
coordinate and bring together actors and their activities in such a way that they
reinforce each other to such an extent that they can compete with dominant actors
and practices?’ (Loorbach and Rotmans 2009: 240).
This approach is concerned with how sectors of society or certain com-
munities define sustainability in context, the process that facilitates a dialogue
about this and the strategies that might be pursued to meet the goals that are set.
While not always referred to as sustainability science by its adherents, it too is
stakeholder-oriented, interdisciplinary and incorporates a systems perspective.
The social change approach potentially creates a privileged role for science as a
designer of and key participant in procedural sustainability. Epistemic authority
emanates from knowledge shared and developed through the process of tran-
sitions management rather than knowledge about underlying system dynamics. It
should, however, be noted that in focusing on the process it is recognized that
there is a continual negotiation between actors about goals, knowledge and
strategy for action.This approach creates a space for science as part of the process
of sustainability and as a source of knowledge on how to design an effective
process.

Socio-political claims: science and society

Regardless of the specific approach or research agenda, there is a consensus that
science should respond to societal needs and the challenges of sustainability
(Lubchenco 1998). Whether science is producing knowledge about complex
coupled human–natural system dynamics or about processes for managing
transition to sustainability, in each case science is a knowledge provider. But the
role of knowledge in society, how it is developed and deployed, and how scienti-
fic knowledge is viewed relative to other types of knowledge, is complicated. If
a primary goal of sustainability science is to help society make the transition to
sustainability, it makes sense to ask: How might scientific knowledge help society
solve problems and create solutions that will foster a transition to sustainability?
Building on the previous discussions, this section analyzes how scientists
envision the knowledge produced by sustainability science contributing to society.
Two broad themes emerged: the knowledge-first approach and the process-oriented
approach.

Knowledge first
Cash et al. (2003: 8089) argue that, without drastically increasing the contribution
of science and technology, ‘it seems unlikely that the transition to sustainability
will be either fast or far enough to prevent significant degradation of human life
or the earth system.’ Carpenter et al. (2009: 1305) contend that ‘compelling and
 Constructing sustainability science 37

urgent social needs’ stress ‘the urgency and importance of accelerated effort to
understand the dynamics of coupled human–natural systems.’ Sustainability
science performs fundamental research on problems identified by society which,
scientists argue, will help move towards solutions. I refer to this vision of the role
of science in society as the knowledge-first approach; i.e. ‘science characterizes
problems in terms of their causes and mechanisms as basis for subsequent action’
(Sarewitz et al. 2010: 1).
As Matson (2009: 41) notes, ‘the purposeful intent [of sustainability is] to link
knowledge to action. Much of sustainability science is hard-core fundamental
research, but the field is essentially use-inspired and oriented toward decision-
making of all kinds.’ Sustainability science, says Matson, can ‘help make better
decisions’ but there has to be a ‘pull’ from decision makers.That is, decision makers
have to signal to scientists what kind of information is needed to make better
decisions. For example, Simon Levin of Princeton University and co-organizer of
an NSF workshop on sustainable science, notes that scientists have ‘no special
expertise to deal with ethics, and certainly not with politics, so I see the role of
scientists as not making decisions, but as informing decision makers.’ Part of this
process, then, is finding out what decision makers need.
This knowledge, it is argued, must be co-produced with stakeholders and
decision makers. Co-production is not used here in the same sense as Jasanoff
(2004) and others use the term in STS. In sustainability science co-production of
knowledge refers to the act of producing information ‘through the collaboration
with scientists and engineers and nonscientists, who incorporate values and criteria
from both communities’ (Cash et al. 2006: 467). Organizing and facilitating co-
production of knowledge at the interface of science and society is referred to as
boundary management (Cash et al. 2003). These actions are meant to ensure the
salience, credibility and legitimacy of the knowledge produced.
The knowledge-first approach views the problem of sustainability as a
problem of not using available knowledge because it lacks credibility or legit-
imacy, is insufficient or through not having knowledge about the necessary
aspects of the system (salience). If science can provide the knowledge that is
needed about coupled-system dynamics, for example, then better and more
informed decisions may be made (i.e. decisions that will move society towards
sustainability).
Sustainability scientists, however, are still careful to keep such activity separate
from the core of the scientific research agenda – fundamental research into coupled
human–natural systems. Being both ‘basic’ and ‘applied,’ knowledge-first sustain-
ability science creates a boundary zone (see Figure 3.1) in which it justifies its
usefulness to society and decision making for sustainability while maintaining
epistemic authority by keeping its core research fundamental and free of values. As
Kristjanson et al. (2009: 5049) conclude, ‘there is certainly a role in sustainability
science for both traditional, curiosity-driven research and for context-specific
problem solving – so long as both are conducted within a larger framework that
ensures rigor and usefulness.’
38 Constructing sustainability science

Boundary zone

Science Society
Negotiation of
salience, credibility,
legitimacy
Scientific Goals, values
knowledge

Epistemic core:
Coupled systems

FIGURE 3.1 Knowledge-first sustainability, socio-political and epistemic claims (from

Miller 2013).

The knowledge-first approach attempts both to be free of and to affect politics:

Despite the awe in which we hold nature and the value we place on its
conservation, ours is ultimately a project that seeks to understand what is, can
be, and ought to be the human use of the earth.We pursue this goal, however,
in the conviction that what is possible and desirable for people can only be
understood through an appreciation of the interactions between social and
environmental systems. (Clark 2010: 82; emphasis in original)

Through boundary work (in Gieryn’s sense of the term) and boundary manage-
ment, sustainability scientists attempt to externalize the potential risk politics pose
to the epistemic core of sustainability science, while at the same time claiming to
produce the knowledge that was heretofore limiting societal action.

Process-oriented approach
Lennart Olsson, Founding Director of the Lund University Centre for Sustain-
ability Studies, argues that sustainability science can be called ‘action research or…
social intervention research… [in which scientists] intervene and then that inter-
vention becomes [a subject] of study… [R]ather than… simply understanding…
how do you actually feed into [the intervention]?’ Here, the focus is on setting up,
participating in and conducting research on social and technological processes that
come to define and move towards sustainability goals. I refer to this approach as the
process-oriented approach.
 Constructing sustainability science 39

In some instances, the process-oriented approach goes beyond collaborative or

participatory research to facilitating or actively participating in what Rotmans calls
‘arenas for change or transition.’ For example, in the field of transitions manage-
ment, a ‘transition arena’ is created in which this work takes place. Loorbach and
Rotmans (2009: 244) define a transition arena as an ‘informal network… within
which a group process unfolds, often in an unplanned and unforeseen way.’These
arenas are sites for boundary management and the production of joint knowledge
by scientists, decision makers and other stakeholders (Kemp and Rotmans 2009).
The aim of boundary management in this case is not necessarily to ensure that
knowledge produced about coupled human–natural systems will be salient,
credible and legitimate; rather, it is to facilitate a process for determining multiple
trajectories for a transition and continual, mutual learning (Kemp and Rotmans
2009). There is an active role for science and scientists in establishing, facilitating
and participating in mechanisms or dialogue for change, rather than simply provid-
ing knowledge from a more removed position.
Like the knowledge-first approach, in the process-oriented approach ‘[s]cience
is still playing a big role in that first of all it’s a knowledge provider,’ says Jäger,‘but
not the only knowledge provider.’ Robinson makes a similar point: ‘Science plays
the crucial role of providing some of the information about consequences and
trade-offs associated with difference choices, but it doesn’t tell us anything about
where we want to be. That has to emerge from discussion… We [scientists] want
to engage them as citizens of part of a collective.’ The role of science is to help
society or communities deliberate over what sustainability might look like and how
communities might move towards it. Both the knowledge-first and the process-
oriented approaches are concerned with assisting a sustainability transition by
producing credible knowledge. Most sustainability scientists acknowledge the
importance of working with stakeholders so that science can provide useful
information. However, how they envision the type of knowledge needed and the
role of that knowledge in assisting society are quite different.
David Kriebel, co-Director of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production,
cautions that ‘[scientists] have to be aware not to allow the need to fully charac-
terize the system delay action.’ He believes that it is important to make a
‘distinction between the system in which the problem occurs and the system in
which the solution occurs.’ By focusing on where the solution may occur, he
argues, the conversation shifts from a scientific characterization of the system to the
social, political, economic and technological processes involved in formulating a
desirable outcome. In Jäger’s words, ‘it’s trying to find ways to get things done.’
In response to a question on the role of sustainability science in society,
Robinson asks, ‘[w]ho needs to know the science?’ He sketches three potential
ways in which scientists might seek to help society move towards sustainability.The
first potential method would be to use guilt to pressure individuals into changing
their behavior, which, he notes, has not been terribly successful thus far. A second
would be ‘to do a brilliant analysis, and it’s so compelling and convincing that when
we give it to policy makers, they change everything.’ In his own experience,
40 Constructing sustainability science

however, Robinson argues that the role of science ‘has to be [in] a conversation
where various forms of certified knowledge are brought together with various
ethical and normative views of citizens… in an exploration of where we want to
be in the future.’
The process-oriented approach at once creates a space for science as a source of
credible knowledge and limits its own epistemic authority by acknowledging that
it is just one source of such knowledge among many. Scientific analysis is broadly
focused on the process of envisioning and pursuing pathways to sustainability (e.g.
Robinson and Tansey 2006). Rather than knowledge acting as the factor limiting
the ability to make decisions, it is a matter of constructing a social process in which
various forms of credible knowledge, perspectives and values can come together to
define sustainability.This creates a more open discourse about what sustainability is
and how a given community might move towards it (see Figure 3.2).The process-
oriented approach is more concerned with exploring pathways to sustainability
than with maintaining a core program of fundamental research.

Bounding sustainability
In both the universalist and the procedural definitions of sustainability, scientists are
carving out a role for science and shaping the way society might understand
sustainability. For thin sustainability, a universal understanding of sustainability is
complemented by the universal applicability of science – ‘the only universal
discourse available in a multiply fragmented world’ (Jasanoff 1996: 173).There is a
normative distancing of a value-free epistemic core from the value-laden questions
of sustainability.This limits not just the debate over the appropriate or effective role
of science but also important social, political and cultural debates over the nature
of sustainability, especially in specific contexts. Sustainability is prevented from
becoming ‘thick’ because science cannot go there; science cannot become
contextual, contested and qualified.

Science Society
Defining
Knowledge sustainability: Knowledge
provider, Multiple provider,
facilitation, knowledges, participation,
participation, goals, values values, goals
analysis of
process

FIGURE 3.2 Process-oriented sustainability science (from Miller 2013).

 Constructing sustainability science 41

TABLE 3.1 Boundary work and claims in sustainability science.

Universalist Procedural
Normative claims • Normative frame • Defining as process
• Universal values • Values of community
• “Value-free” science • Contextual
Coupled Systems Social Change
Epistemic claims • Fundamental research • Action research
• Social needs • Processes of transitions
• Co-production of knowledge • Participant
with stakeholders
Knowledge-first Process-oriented
Socio-political • Problem space • Social intervention
• Salient, credible, legitimate • Beyond understanding
knowledge • Facilitate and participate
• Knowledge provider in process

As Jamieson (1998: 189) argues, at this universal level ‘there is too little by way
of shared beliefs and values to provide enough content to ideas of sustainability to
make them effective.’ Procedural sustainability, on the other hand, attempts to
identify social values that are important for sustainability that will result in action.
According to Norton (2005: 405) the question that a more procedural sustain-
ability can help address is ‘how can diverse, democratic communities develop
procedures that encourage cooperative action to protect their environment?’
Considered in the light of procedural sustainability, the process-oriented approach
to the relationship between science and society establishes a dual role for science
as both participant and observer of the procedures Norton proposes.
In order to address the problems of sustainability, Cash et al. (2003) urge that
society ‘harness the power of science and technology.’ Both the coupled systems
and social change approaches to sustainability make ‘compelling arguments for why
science is uniquely best as a provider of trustworthy knowledge, and compelling
narratives for why [their] science is bona fide’ (Gieryn 1999: 4). The coupled
systems approach does this by maintaining a core of basic science while conceding
that it must also be applied in order to link knowledge to action.The social change
approach is more critical of the usefulness of science, yet it carefully maintains a
space as part of societal processes that define sustainability and as uniquely
positioned to analyze such processes.
Scientists, particularly in the coupled systems approach, seek to establish their
epistemic authority over facts about the sustainability of system dynamics and the
approach’s usefulness in decision making. At the same time, they both site a thin
sustainability as a normative goal or motivation and establish normative discussions
as outside of the realm of hard-core science. Boundary work performed by sustain-
ability scientists delineates the analysis of coupled human–natural systems as the
scientific purview of sustainability science.The coupled systems approach is similar
42 Constructing sustainability science

to what Thompson (2010) refers to as functional integrity. Functional integrity can

be ‘understood in terms of threats to or failures in the integrity of functional
systems on which they depend’ (Thompson 2010: 221).This leads to a perspective
that certain human activities are sustainable or unsustainable as determined by the
ways in which they affect this functional integrity. As Jasanoff and Wynne (1998:
25) note, ‘[t]he universalism of technical discourses is often maintained through
scientists’ unstated naturalization of their own assumptions concerning social
behavior; that is, scientists come to accept their own assumptions as natural and not
open to question.’
Given the complexity of these systems, science is relied upon to reveal and
translate for society.This leads to the second act of boundary work – sustainability
scientists imagine the effective pursuit of sustainability as requiring fundamental
knowledge about coupled systems that sustainability science provides. However, as
environmental philosopher Mark Sagoff (2008) warns, there is a danger in relying
too heavily on science in areas that he argues are primarily of ethical concern. For
example, Sagoff (2008: 207) argues that environmental science ‘presents nature as a
system for interdisciplinary scientists to model and administer for the collective
good rather than as an object for moral instruction and aesthetic appreciation for
every individual.’
Exploring how scientists are constructing research agendas for sustainability, this
chapter presents an opportunity to take stock of recent, rapid developments and
pose the question ‘how is sustainability science to be positioned to assist society in
a sustainability transition?’ While certainly not discounting the substantial and
thoughtful efforts that have gone into the development of the field, this analysis
offers an opportunity to continue a dialogue about sustainability science in new
directions.Where, for example, is scientific knowledge a limiting factor in decision
making? Where will fundamental understanding of human–natural systems
enhance our capacity to make decisions? What other factors are limiting decision
making and how will science affect that context? How is science to be engaged in
the social, political and ethical components of sustainability while maintaining its
ability to provide credible knowledge where needed? What can the approaches
outlined here offer each other?
This chapter has shown how different visions of sustainability science are
emerging with different values, knowledge and socio-political claims (Table 3.1).
These claims have implications for the credibility of different styles of sustainability
science under alternative normative positions, including how the field is positioned
with regards to more radical notions of social change. The following chapter
explores the implications of current trajectories in sustainability science, laying the
foundation for the reconstruction of sustainability science.
 Constructing sustainability science 43

Notes
1 Parts of this chapter have been published previously (Miller, Thaddeus R. 2013.
Constructing sustainability science: Emerging perspectives and research trajectories.
Sustainability Science 8(2): 279–93) and have been published here with permission.
2 Walzer borrows this term from Geertz’s (1973) ‘thick description.’ Walzer’s (1994: xi)
aim, however, is not to present a thick description of moral argument but to refer to
argument that is thick – ‘richly referential, culturally resonant, locked into locally
established symbolic systems or network of meanings.’
3 Coupled human–natural systems are also referred to as human–environment or social-
ecological systems. They are broadly defined as ‘integrated systems in which people
interact with natural components’ (Liu et al. 2007: 1513).

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4
TENSIONS IN
SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE

The crux of the sustainability challenge facing humanity in the twenty-first cen-
tury is the ability to reconcile continued improvement in human welfare around
the globe with the capacity of natural systems to support such development. It is
this grand challenge that the allied concepts of sustainable development and
sustainability attempt to articulate.This challenge has gained significant traction in
the scientific community over the last decade as scientists have attempted to
formulate research agendas in response to what they view as the problems of
sustainability (e.g. Holling 2001; Lubchenco 1998; Mihelcic et al. 2003; NRC
1999; Palmer et al. 2005; Schellnhuber et al. 2004).
Many scientists have argued that the problems of sustainability, from climate
change and biodiversity loss to poverty alleviation and access to adequate safe water
supplies, require renewed effort on the part of the scientific community to conduct
research on the issues that matter most to society. Scientists stress the urgency of
harnessing the contributions of science and technology as a means for developing
solutions to sustainability problems (e.g. Cash et al. 2003; Clark et al. 2002; Kates et
al. 2001; Hardin 1993; Leshner 2002; Reid et al. 2010).
To this point, Part I has examined these developments – to take stock of emerging
visions for the field, and to create a reflexive distance from which to explore tensions,
limitations and alternative pathways for sustainability science. The research goals of
sustainability science – fundamental research on complex human–natural systems –
and its stated mission – linking knowledge to action for sustainability – are often
assumed to be synergistic by sustainability scientists. Following the results presented in
Chapter 3, this chapter explores underlying tensions that, if navigated poorly, will
devalue important normative debates about sustainability goals, elevating some norms
(for instance, narrower technical and scientific values) over broader societal norms
(responsibility to nature and future generations, for example), and inhibit the ability of
sustainability scientists to perform research that will foster beneficial societal outcomes.
 Tensions in sustainability science 47

Tensions in sustainability science

The ways in which sustainability scientists contest or lay claim to normative, epi-
stemic or socio-political arguments shape not only the research agenda for the field
but also its ability to deal with contested values that inevitably arise around sustain-
ability issues and to link knowledge to action.The first such tension that emerges
from this analysis of boundary work is between science and the normative nature
of sustainability – the potential consequences of transforming sustainability, a
normative, contested and ambiguous concept, into the subject of scientific analysis.
Sustainability can provide communities with a conceptual framework within
which to articulate and pursue visions of social and natural well-being (Norton
2005).The role of science in fostering such efforts is not straightforward, however.
Science can provide descriptive foundations for normative statements in favor of
sustaining ecosystem resilience or adaptive capacity, for example; but, science,
through the perceived epistemic authority of its explanations, can also limit what
is considered appropriate discourse (Appadurai 1996; Smith 2009). For instance,
scientific explanations of climate change and atmospheric dynamics, and not more
local or regional explanations and approaches such as adaption (Pielke, Jr et al.
2007), have served to underpin a global understanding of climate and the
mitigation of greenhouse gases as a potential solution. Science can both enable and
constrain discourse about problems and their potential solutions.
This is a tension between the scientific and technical complexity of coupled
systems and the social or community values that define sustainability for a given
community. Often, the problem is not related to a need for more knowledge, as
Matson hinted in an earlier quotation. Instead, it may be that myriad other social,
political, technological or ethical issues require resolution. This is not to say that
scientific knowledge will not help to make decisions better informed or even lead
to convergence on a decision in certain situations. At the extreme, sustainability
science may ‘black box’ sustainability as a scientific and technical issue (Latour 1987;
Winner 1986).
The second tension revolves around the issue of what is known about the
institutional and epistemological contexts that link knowledge to societal out-
comes. The popularly assumed relationship in the linear model discussed around
Figure 2.2 is that more knowledge will lead to better decisions. The role of
scientific knowledge in decision making is much more complicated, however
(Collingridge and Reeve 1986; Jasanoff 1990). There may be numerous factors at
play in affecting decision-making capacity in any given context, the least of which
is the level or certainty of scientific knowledge. This is the tension between
knowledge and action.
Thomas Kuhn (1977, later edition 1996) uses the notion of essential tensions to
great effect to illustrate the conservative and innovative imperatives of science.
Scientists, argues Kuhn, must be able to solve puzzles effectively within a given
paradigm. The practice of normal science ‘is a highly convergent activity based
firmly upon a settled consensus acquired from scientific education and reinforced
48 Constructing sustainability science

by subsequent life in the profession’ (Kuhn 1977: 227). Nonetheless, divergent

thinking is necessary when scientists must grapple with and seek to explain
anomalies that do not fit their traditional paradigm.
In Kuhn’s view, the tension between the necessity of convergent thinking for the
practice of everyday science and divergent thinking for innovation in the pursuit
of anomalies is essential to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Crucial to
Kuhn’s thinking on this point is that innovation and paradigm shifts will not occur
without the convergent standards of normal science to support the ability of
scientists to recognize novelty. Occasionally, as a crisis occurs when the current
paradigm cannot explain anomalies, ‘scientists must be able to live in a world out
of joint’ (Kuhn 1996: 79).
Social studies of science scholars have also used the idea of tensions to illustrate
various aspects of scientific research in practice. Hackett (2005), for example,
explores the systemic tensions that research groups must navigate, including those
between autonomy and control in managing a research lab, and between novelty,
accepted methods and problems in the pursuit of research pathways.The concerns
of Kuhn and Hackett have focused primarily on the internal dynamics of science
– the array of social and institutional forces that pull at scientists as they perform
research. Here, the focus is not on the social forces internal to science; it is on the
tensions that emerge as scientists attempt to perform research on issues of societal
importance and link scientific knowledge to social outcomes.
There is a pervasive belief – particularly among scientists – that more scientific
knowledge is necessary to achieve beneficial outcomes (Collingridge and Reeve
1986; Neff 2011; Nelson 2003). This chapter explores the tensions between the
knowledge produced by sustainability science and the use of that knowledge by
society. By bringing these tensions to light, they may be more effectively navigated
by sustainability scientists and contribute to the reconstruction of a more effective
and reflexive agenda for sustainability.

The enabling and constraining power of science

‘The substantive focus of sustainability science,’ states Matson (2009: 39),‘is on the
complex dynamics of the coupled human/environment system.’ It is also, as Clark
(2010: 82) states, ‘ultimately a project that seeks to understand what is, can be, and
ought to be the human use of the earth.’This is a starkly social, ethical and political
choice about what to sustain, for whom and for how long. However, normative
distancing by scientists can obscure the degree to which socio-political issues are
masked by science, or overstate how far scientific knowledge can help make such
hard choices. It is important to consider how the fundamental research goals of
sustainability science and its commitment to contributing to more sustainable
outcomes might affect the understanding and pursuit of sustainability values and
goals. Sustainability scientists, concerned STS scholars, and decision makers and
publics must be aware of how the epistemic and normative commitments of
sustainability scientists shape societal understandings of sustainability (and vice
 Tensions in sustainability science 49

versa). At the core of this issue lies a tension between the capability of science to
both reveal what were previously unobservable phenomena and constrain the
variety of alternative legitimate explanations for those phenomena. As STS have
shown, the ways in which we come to know the world also shape it, including how
we value it (Jasanoff 2004b; Latour 1993; Shapin and Schaffer 1985).The following
discussion explores the implications of subjecting a contingent, contextual, con-
tested and value-laden concept – sustainability – to objective, empirical scientific
analysis.
Communities focused on environmental and sustainability issues have traditio-
nally relied on science to reveal problems and defend solutions (Bocking 2004;
Jasanoff 2004b). Science can help to illuminate new realms of ethical concern.
Concerns for sustainability and intergenerational equity, for instance, were driven
in part by inquiries into climate change and other long-term environmental
impacts (Sarewitz 1996). The role of scientific knowledge and expertise in such
issues, however, is much more complex (Callon et al. 2011). Science can reveal
more uncertainty and support multiple value positions that may in fact exacerbate
the difficulty of resolving problems (Jasanoff 1990; Sarewitz 2004).
Additionally, there is often a gap between how scientists think about a problem
and how the public comes to know or understand it – what Jasanoff (2005) and
Miller (2008) refer to as civic epistemologies. Civic epistemologies are ‘the social
and institutional practices by which political communities construct, review,
validate, and deliberate politically relevant knowledge’ (Miller 2008: 1896). The
process by which political communities make knowledge and how it is argued,
reasoned, promoted and utilized in public deliberation over sustainability goals and
indicators (Miller 2005) are different from the social and institutional arrangements
and epistemic commitments of the scientific community.
Further, as Dupré (1993) notes,‘science aims to detect order and to create order.’
The way in which science interrogates an issue can impact the way that issue is
framed by policy and the public (Bocking 2004; Miller 2008). The ways scientists
frame problems may not make for the most effective or democratic social outcome.
The goals – to advance knowledge, disciplinary expertise – and institutional
context – to publish in an area of expertise, to gain tenure – of science and scientists
may actually serve as constraints on acting pragmatically, which can be defined in
terms of social action by way of policy or politics that might advance visions of
sustainability. As sustainability science continues to develop as a field, it makes
choices about what aspects of coupled systems to examine and how.As it does this,
sustainability scientists may exclude other ways of knowing, often unwittingly.
At one level, this is the classic tension between the technical nature of environ-
mental (and sustainability) problems and the need and desire for transparency and
democratic deliberation (Bocking 2004; Brown 2009; Fischer 2000). My concern
is slightly subtler, engaging the epistemic nature of this tension. Sustainability
science, like all empirical work, requires the development of ways to categorize the
world (Bowker and Star 1999; Cartwright 1999; Porter 1995; Scott 1998).
Scientific communities do not just seek knowledge about nature, they seek
50 Constructing sustainability science

knowledge about nature under a specific description – e.g. teleological, mechanistic

or as a complex adaptive system (Longino 1990). Before any knowledge is pro-
duced or any research performed, the system under inquiry must be characterized
‘in ways that make certain kinds of explanation appropriate and others inappro-
priate’ (Longino 1990: 98).
In its quest for understanding, science disciplines problems, making them amen-
able to certain methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks.
Nonetheless, often the difficulty of finding solutions for many sustainability
problems is not related to an inadequacy of scientific knowledge. A better under-
standing of a given issue may not succeed in taming a wicked problem or in
making it any more amenable to social, political and technological solutions.
Sustainability science has, however, made a promising move towards place-based
research that attempts to address concerns as scales that are socially significant.
How sustainability science disciplines the issues with which it is concerned will
make those issues more or less tractable, more open or closed to debate. This is a
problem for sustainability science if it intends to contribute to societal efforts to
pursue sustainability transitions because other scientific ways of understanding and
value-based perspectives are excluded. Robbins (2001), for example, tells the story
of a satellite image of a small town in India. Robbins showed this image to several
of the town’s inhabitants, evoking myriad interpretations. Foresters pointed to
evidence of reforestation; farmers noted the bare soils and denuded areas; a retired
forester lamented the loss of tree cover; and a worker at a local advocacy organi-
zation for pastoralists cited the amount of grassland that had been lost to increased
tree cover.
This single satellite image highlights the plurality of interpretations of categories
in the landscape. Seemingly simple concepts that many scientists take for granted
such as ‘forest,’ ‘degraded’ and ‘grassland’ are contested. Satellite imagery is not an
impartial, objective tool. Rather, imagery itself is both a political tool used to settle
categories in the landscape and a force for transforming the environment. In
Robbins’s account, the result is the extension of green canopy cover with little
human or ecosystem value. The scientists’ categories become normalized and
objective as they are repeated (Anderson 1991; Porter 1995). As Robbins argues,
‘[t]he measurement of these resulting landscapes through the very tools of their
transformation [i.e. satellite imagery] naturalizes the resulting ecologies and erases
the history of intervention from which they arise’ (Robbins 2001: 176).The erasure
of this history transforms contested categories of change in land use and land cover
into black boxes (Latour 1987). They become accepted facts in landscape
management rather than contested categories that are open to interpretation and
that embody different practices and livelihoods.
Science has the power to constrain discussions of contested concepts and cate-
gories. It influences what counts as ‘real’ in the world. Scientists, perhaps necessarily,
take reductionist approaches as they search for causal mechanisms, analyze problems
and advance knowledge.This constraining power of science has implications for the
ability of communities to voice legitimate normative perspectives about their
 Tensions in sustainability science 51

future and how we understand phenomena that may impact those perspectives (i.e.
what is sustainable or not in a given context), especially when it comes to wicked
problems.
The categories scientists create are adopted by social actors in unpredictable and
unintended ways (Porter 1995). James Scott (1998) details the rise of scientific
forestry in late-eighteenth-century Germany. State-managed forest science
transformed a dynamic and diverse old-growth forest into a uniform, legible,
mono-cropped grid of board feet of timber, an ecosystem and cultural domain into
a volume of lumber. As Scott (1998: 15) notes, ‘the German forest became the
archetype for imposing on disorderly nature the neatly arranged constructs of
science.’ Germany forestry science came to dominate the curriculum of American
and European forestry schools, shaping both science and forest management on
both continents for the next century.
While successful in the short run, this utopian vision of a regimented forest
producing a sustained yield of lumber under the tutelage of scientific forestry
eventually met with the more complex reality of the diverse ecological processes
required to support a healthy forest. In the worst cases, the result was Waldsterben,
forest death. Scott’s account (1998: 21) ‘illustrates the dangers of dismembering an
exceptionally complex and poorly understood set of relations and processes in
order to isolate a single element of instrumental value.’ As Thompson (2010: 239)
notes, many scientists argue that:

advanced systems modeling is a wholly value-free process that will, through

pure science, generate the information we need to save the planet… but…
the way we conceptualize a system is deeply value laden and reflects judg-
ments about what is thought to be problematic, as well as likely guesses about
where the solutions might lie.

Forest scientists simplified German forests to maximize yields; so, too must sustain-
ability science produce simplifications to make wicked problems amenable to
empirical analysis.
Positioning the understanding of complex, coupled human–natural systems as
crucial to efforts to move toward sustainability, sustainability scientists also put
themselves in an epistemically superior position. Sustainability scientists presumably
hold the key to helping society move toward sustainability.Through their theories
and methods, society is able to gain access into the workings of complex systems.
The pursuit of the community-defined goals for sustainability, however, is not
equivalent to the realization of scientifically objective goods. The danger lies not
just with the simplifications that may be necessary to make the dynamics of
complex, coupled human–natural systems the object of scientific analysis, but also
in effects of sustainability science on value debates in society. Societal efforts to
articulate and pursue sustainability require a certain discursive and conceptual
‘breathing room’ that allows for an open deliberation of aims and value
commitments.
52 Constructing sustainability science

Sagoff (2008), for instance, highlights the issues that arise between science and
value-laden pursuits such as sustainability. He argues that environmentalists have
relied too heavily on scientific theories and facts in what are essentially value-
based arguments about aesthetics and environmental health. Environmentalism
now,

appeals to theories of the structure and function of ecosystems, the balance

of nature, and other scientific principles… to prescribe values to society
rather than to respond to values society already had… Environmentalism
insofar as it relies on scientific theories or postulates has little to do with the
places – particular forests or vistas – that people know, care about, or what to
protect (Sagoff 2008: 205).

Similarly, Jamieson (1995) and others (Schrader-Frechette and McCoy 1994;

Worster 1993) critique attempts to base environmental goals on science. For
example, Jamieson (1995) argues that the concept of ecosystem health works to
objectify our preferences related to ecosystem values. Such efforts are themselves
unlikely to succeed in providing an objective basis for ecosystem management
because our preferences and values related to ecosystems, like those related to
human health, are contextual and unstable. Efforts to found on science value-based
goals, whether they be environmental, sustainability or otherwise, are not only
ontologically and epistemologically dubious – defining ecosystem health or
sustainability scientifically is often, if not always, extremely difficult or impossible –
they are also normatively and politically undesirable, limiting the ability to legiti-
mately express conflicts about what is valued.
Scientists purport to focus on the facts – i.e. the dynamics of coupled systems –
while society and decision makers deal with the realm of values – i.e. what is to be
sustained. Sustainability scientists attempt to address value-laden, wicked problems
while maintaining a pristine, epistemic core of fundamental research. For example,
for Clark (2010: 82) ‘the core of sustainability science lies in seeking to understand
how society’s efforts to promote a transition toward sustainability are constrained
or promoted by the interactions between human and environmental systems’
(emphasis in original). By placing the understanding of coupled human–natural
systems at the center of the research agenda, sustainability science is given access to
understanding complex system dynamics.This framing has the effect of privileging
sustainability science over alternative understandings of such dynamics in larger
sustainability debates. It becomes less important to have discussions over potential
future pathways for a community; instead, sustainability science can know what
dynamics are (un)sustainable and deliver that information to society.Value debates
are rendered impotent through the threat of incontestable nature (Latour 2004).
Scientists, policy makers and the public are rarely aware of how the ways in which
science categorizes the world also work to shape it (Jasanoff 2005). As Longino
(2002: 189) notes,‘[a]fter consensus, the constructive role of scientists disappears, and
the result or theory is seen as inevitable, an expression of nature.’ It becomes black-
 Tensions in sustainability science 53

boxed (Latour 1987).While necessary for the advancement of scientific knowledge,

this eliminates the plurality of values within the sustainability discourse and
constrains the number of legitimate voices and explanations for the sources of and
solutions to various problems. Conceptualizing social problems in scientific and
technological terms can confuse or eliminate cultural, political and normative
discussions through the value-neutral, objective language of science (Fischer 2000;
Jamieson 1995). Elucidating these tensions is a step toward enhancing the reflexivity
of sustainability science and societal efforts to achieve sustainability goals.

Avoiding the knowledge-first trap

A key characteristic of sustainability science is the effort to link scientific know-
ledge with societal action (Cash et al. 2003; Clark 2007; Kates et al. 2001; Matson
2009). Sustainability scientists are driven not just by fundamental research questions
but also by performing research on pressing social and environmental problems
(Clark and Dickson 2003; Levin and Clark 2010). As Carpenter et al. (2009: 1305)
state, ‘sustainability science is motivated by fundamental questions about
interactions of nature and society as well as compelling and urgent social needs.’
They continue, arguing that the challenges of sustainability highlight ‘the urgency
and importance of accelerated effort to understand the dynamics of coupled
human–natural systems.’ Similarly, Matson (2009: 41) views the ‘purposeful intent
to link knowledge to action’ as a core component of sustainability science. While
‘much of sustainability is hard-core fundamental research,’ notes Matson (2009: 41),
‘it is essentially use-inspired and is oriented towards decisionmaking of all sorts.’
Sustainability scientists assume that science will support the pursuit of sustainability
values and that knowledge about coupled human–natural systems will lead to
better, more sustainable decisions. This dynamic is not unique to sustainability
science, of course.
Underlying these efforts are two interrelated assumptions about the relationship
between scientific knowledge and decision making for sustainability:

1 scientific knowledge is necessary and may even compel action relative to

sustainability goals; and
2 sustainability science and its focus on fundamental questions in coupled
human–natural systems dynamics can provide that knowledge.

The first has to do with the diagnosis of the factors limiting the ability of society
to take action relative to sustainability goals – i.e. a lack of scientific knowledge. As
Cash et al. (2003: 8086) argue, ‘[a] capacity for mobilizing and using science and
technology is increasingly recognized as an essential component of strategies for
promoting sustainable development.’ Similarly, in a study of research priorities in
ecology, Neff (2011: 467) finds that many ecologists believe that ‘amassing a
preponderance of evidence about anthropogenic impacts… can compel leaders to
make “better” policies and decisions.’ Additional knowledge is required to make
54 Constructing sustainability science

decisions that will be more sustainable.The second assumption is that science, and
in this case, sustainability science, can provide the knowledge about coupled system
dynamics needed to contribute to decision making and improve decisions. Miller
and Neff (2013) review these results in a discussion of how the normative and
epistemic concerns of scientists guide science policy in-the-making.
A brief examination of what Nelson (1977) refers to as the ‘science and
technology policy perspective’ will serve to further illuminate these assumptions
and the potential tension between knowledge and decision making. The key
intellectual commitment of this perspective is that many problems can be solved
with the proper application of scientific knowledge and technological capabilities.
It is only a matter of directing research towards the appropriate goals. However, as
Nelson (1977: 62) notes,

[w]hile formally trained scientists and engineers, engaged in organized

research and development, have been remarkably effective in advancing
knowledge and creating powerful new capabilities in certain selected arenas,
there is a strong element of faith attached to the proposition that these kinds
of talents and activities can be applied powerfully to the solution of most any
problem.

Nelson uses the example of crime and education.While the ability to address each
of these problems may be limited by knowledge in some way, it is doubtful that the
application of natural science or engineering could wholly address such issues. As
Nelson (2003) notes, this is not a comment on researchers in the field of education
(or in sustainability science for that matter). Instead, it has to do with limitations of
the ability of research to contribute to areas where progress is largely tacit (i.e. relies
on experience and practice) and social.
In this simplified model of the relationship between science and action, scientific
knowledge provides the understanding on which decisions can be made
(Komiyama and Takeuchi 2006; Levin and Clark 2010; Sumi 2007; Palmer et al.
2004; Parris and Kates 2003). Mooney and Sala (1993: 566), for instance, contend
that better science will lead to more sustainable use of natural resources – ‘[w]e
conclude that sustainable use of resources is feasible, but the only way to achieve
this goal is by improving our understanding of ecological systems.’ Many sustain-
ability scientists, however, have recognized the limitations of this model. A central
component of sustainability science is that research ought to be place-based (Kates
et al. 2001; Turner et al. 2003a). This is in part because sustainable development
efforts take place locally (Parris and Kates 2003). Place-based research allows
scientists to work with potential users of knowledge to ensure that it is credible,
salient and legitimate (Cash et al. 2003, 2006; Clark and Dickson 2003). As Clark
et al. (2002: 24) note,

for knowledge to be effective in advancing sustainable development goals, it

must be widely viewed not only as reasonably likely to be true (i.e.,
 Tensions in sustainability science 55

‘credible’), but also as relevant to decision makers’ needs (i.e.,‘salient’) and as

respectful and fair in its choice of issues to address, expertise to consider, and
participants to engage (i.e., ‘legitimate’).

These characteristics are necessary to ‘certify knowledge’ (Clark et al. 2002).

Sustainability scientists have proposed the concepts of boundary management and
boundary organizations as crucial to negotiating the credibility, salience and legiti-
macy of knowledge between scientists and other stakeholders in order to ensure
that scientific knowledge is used in decision making (Cash et al. 2003, 2006;
Guston 1999, 2001; Kristjanson et al. 2009).
While these efforts offer a more nuanced interpretation of the relationship
between knowledge and action, a tension remains as the assumptions of sustain-
ability scientists are only slightly modified from those presented above:

1 science has not been producing the ‘right’ kind of knowledge; and
2 decision makers and society, more broadly, have not been utilizing the know-
ledge that science has produced.

According to this perspective, problems in the production and use of knowledge

must be fixed before science can aid decision making. Science, up to this point, has
not been addressing the questions to which society and decision makers need
answers.‘Promoting the goal of sustainability requires the emergence and conduct
of the new field of sustainability science’ (Friiberg 2000: 1), which must be more
applied and interdisciplinary in order to produce the knowledge that is required for
decision making (Clark et al. 2002; Kates et al. 2001; Levin and Clark 2010).
Decision makers and society, according to this assumption, have not been using the
knowledge that science has produced because it is not perceived as credible, salient
or legitimate. For example, as Pamela Matson explains,‘there has to be a pull’ from
decision makers or other stakeholders; they have to demand knowledge about
certain issues (interview).
In this model, the role of science as knowledge provider has been ineffective
because it has not been responding to demand or it is not being incorporated into
decision making. In each of these cases, advancing societal action for sustainable
outcomes is seen as requiring the production of more knowledge. This approach
falls into what Sarewitz et al. (2010: 3) refer to as the knowledge-first trap ‘where
rational action is viewed as deriving from factually correct assessments of the causes
of a problem.’The knowledge-first trap can lead to a spiral of endless research and
technical debates (Collingridge and Reeve 1986; Nelson 2003; Sarewitz et al.
2010). Similarly, Collingridge and Reeve (1986: 5) argue that there is a funda-
mental mismatch ‘between the needs of policy and the requirements for efficient
research within science which forbids science any real influence on decision-
making.’
For example, in 1980, transboundary acid rain policy was controversial in the
United States. Congress created the National Acid Precipitation Assessment
56 Constructing sustainability science

Program (NAPAP) to reduce the uncertainties about the causes and effects of acid
deposition before the nation committed itself to an acid reduction policy that was
potentially costly (Herrick 2000). Although NAPAP created a wealth of scientific
understanding about acid rain, many retrospective evaluations have criticized its
failure to create an integrated and consistent policy recommendation for Congress.
NAPAP failed to generate scientific knowledge that was useful for policy makers,
since the causes and effects of acid rain are extremely complex. Studying them
requires multiple scientific disciplines to synthesize incongruent methods, systems
of knowledge and perspectives. Furthermore, NAPAP became preoccupied with
fundamental research questions and moved away from its original, use-inspired
orientation, thus eroding its potential value as an aide to policy making.
As discussed earlier, sustainability scientists both are motivated by pressing
societal problems and aim to conduct research on fundamental questions about
coupled system dynamics. Given the complexity and uncertainty inherent in
sustainability issues, there is an understandable temptation to produce scientific
knowledge in order to reduce uncertainty. In seeking to apply scientific knowledge
to sustainability problems (Clark and Dickson 2003; Cash et al. 2003), sustainability
scientists are treating wicked problems as if they were tame problems amenable to
scientific analysis. A crucial step in navigating this tension is for sustainability
scientists to begin to develop frameworks to differentiate between problems that
may very well be tame and therefore amenable to technological fixes or the
application of scientific knowledge, and those that are more wicked and for which
narrow scientific and technical discourse will subvert the need for further ethical
and political discussion.
While it may be the case that additional scientific knowledge is required to act
on sustainability goals and advance sustainable practices, it may also be that there
are a number of other, more proximate issues preventing action, such as techno-
logical capabilities and political debates. Without subjecting the link between
scientific knowledge and beneficial societal outcomes to the same analytical rigor
called for in addressing the challenges identified, the research that results may either
be irrelevant to decision making or make such decisions even more difficult.

Scientizing sustainability
When dealing with wicked problems, the response is often to call for more research
to reduce uncertainty and lay the foundation for policy action and decision making
(Bocking 2004; Collingridge and Reeve 1986; Nelson 2003).As scientists move to
focus on real world problems, they do so with their weapon of choice – scientific
knowledge. As Clark (2010: 82) states,

[l]ike ‘agricultural science’ and ‘health science’ before it, sustainability science
is a field defined by the problems it addresses rather than the disciplines or
methods it employs. Sustainability science then draws from – and seeks to
advance – those aspects of our understanding of human systems, environ-
 Tensions in sustainability science 57

mental systems and their interactions that are useful for helping people
achieve sustainability goals.

A brief examination of this analogy serves to highlight some of the tensions

discussed in this chapter. Medical scientists perform research that aims to increase
human health and decrease morbidity.Agricultural scientists seek to increase yields
per acre and decrease input of resources per unit of output. However, how these
goals are defined and problems solved in practice is far more complicated and
contested.
For example, medical science has come under criticism for pursuing increases in
life expectancy at the expense of quality of life (Fuchs 2010).There are many issues
in the doctor–patient relationships in terms of defining health problems, treatment
and positive outcomes (Teutsch 2003). These involve questions of values and how
one wants to live one’s life. Even the very notion of what is healthy can differ in
various cultural contexts (Jamieson 1995). Furthermore, much of medical science, as
measured by research funding, is far more concerned with end-of-life diseases such
as heart disease and cancer, which are health problems in the developed world, than
with chronic or acute ailments that develop earlier in life.This leaves diseases such
as malaria and tuberculosis – having the largest impact on global human health,
particularly in the developing world – with a paucity of funding and research.There
is a misalignment between the diseases that contribute to the global burden of death
and the dominant directions in medical research (Flory and Kitcher 2004). As
Sarewitz (1996) reminds us, most research and development occurs in the developed
world and is designed to address its specific problems (e.g. health of aging
populations, space exploration, national security, consumption) and not those of the
developing world (e.g. infant mortality, malaria, poverty, malnutrition).
As for agricultural science, there is little doubt that research and development
has led to enormous increases in human well-being throughout the world. New
technologies (e.g. high-yielding crop varietals), however, are not developed and
deployed in context-free environments. Many efforts to increase crop yields, the
Green Revolution in particular, have led to a mixed blessing at best as a result of a
failure to adequately consider the social, economic and ecological context in which
new crop varieties and information were being deployed.These artifacts of techno-
science (Winner 1986) have shaped and been shaped by social and economic
systems throughout the world as market and land tenure reforms were undertaken
in an attempt to increase production and competitiveness (Moseley et al. 2010).
Additionally, it is not clear that the lessons from such troubles have been learned,
as illustrated in criticisms of renewed efforts for a second green revolution (this
time focused on Africa) supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation (e.g. Holt-Gimenez et al. 2006).
While these sciences may be shaped by the problems they address, the disciplines
they employ also shape the definition of problems, how they are pursued and the
potential solutions that they offer. A sustainability science modeled on these
examples may fail to account for the difference and tensions between the context
58 Constructing sustainability science

in which knowledge was initially developed and where and how it might be used.
Both medical science and agricultural science are arenas in which the voices and
knowledge of non-experts are largely unwelcome, with the exception of those
instances where lay citizens have been able to adopt and change the language and
concepts of the experts (see e.g. Epstein 1996). Techno-scientific changes in
medicine have led to the ‘medicalization’ of society as scientific and technological
interventions come not only to dominate efforts to improve human health but also
to produce visions of what it means to be healthy (Clark and Dickson 2003;
Conrad and Leiter 2004). Likewise, agricultural science has scientized agricultural
practices and devalued traditional knowledge and practice (Howard 1994).
If the tensions discussed above are navigated poorly, sustainability science may
(a) be limited in its ability to contribute to sustainability efforts, or (b) scientize
sustainability via the epistemic authority of the analysis of coupled systems and
thereby position itself to settle cultural and political disputes over sustainability.
Appeals to scientific arguments and the expertise of sustainability scientists may
mask or push aside important political and value debates about sustainability
(Jasanoff 1996; Nowotny 1982; Sarewitz 1996). Scientific and technical debates act
as proxies for what are in fact debates about values and the good life (Miller et al.
2011; Sarewitz 2004). Scientists at once acknowledge the importance and necessity
of the normative dimensions of sustainability while establishing it as outside of
their expertise. It is thereby divorced from their science, enhancing its perceived
credibility as value-free. There is a short-circuiting of any and all questions about
the nature of the bond between the sciences and society through the invocation of
science (Latour 2004). Either outcome can be characterized as the result of ‘faulty’
boundary work; i.e. boundary work that preserves the epistemic authority and
autonomy of science at the expense of beneficial societal outcomes. As Herbert
Simon (1983: 97) notes,

[w]hen an issue becomes highly controversial – when it is surrounded by

uncertainties and conflicting values – then expertness is very hard to come
by, and it is no longer so easy to legitimate the experts. In these circumstances
we find that there are experts for affirmative and experts for the negative.We
cannot settle such issues by turning them over to particular groups of experts.

Science can explore trade-offs between important social values and the possibilities
of pursuing outcomes. Knowledge about coupled-system dynamics is surely
necessary to manage them well over the long term. However, science does not
present a certain, holistic picture of the world (Cartwright 1999; Dupré 1993). Nor
is it value-free (Douglas 2009; Longino 1990, 2002). Just as sustainability science
focuses on the coupled human–natural system in context, so too must the role of
science be treated as contextual. Sustainability concerns the ability of communities
to articulate and carry forward the social and natural values that are important to
them and help to define their place (Norton 2005; O’Neill et al. 2008). Sustain-
ability science may help inform and shape this process, but it should not dictate or
 Tensions in sustainability science 59

define it.While sustainability scientists may not intend to do anything of the sort,
as discussed through this chapter, the ways in which science can constrain debate
and affect action can often be hidden and complex.
Rather than assuming that a lack of scientific knowledge is limiting decision-
making capabilities, sustainability scientists might examine the occasions at which
the level of scientific knowledge is regarded as a constraint on decision making.
Sustainability scientists must begin to explore what solutions are possible and how
they might be fostered and from there determine what (if any) scientific knowledge
would be helpful. While scientific knowledge may indeed be necessary to take
action on particular sustainability problems, others can likely be ameliorated with-
out any major advance in scientific knowledge.There are social, cultural, political,
normative and technological constraints that may be far more proximate to
society’s ability to pursue more sustainable outcomes.

Conclusion
As Simon (1983: 105) aptly observes in relation to decision making and social
problems,‘scientific knowledge is not the Philosopher’s Stone that is going to solve
all these problems.’ In fact, at least in the context of sustainability, scientific know-
ledge may inhibit the ability to solve certain problems by constraining debates, and
lead to the assumption that more knowledge will generate better societal outcomes.
The point, however, is not to disparage current sustainability science efforts or
argue that there is no hope for science to contribute to more sustainable social and
environmental outcomes. There are several promising efforts in sustainability
science and elsewhere that appear to be successfully navigating these tensions in
their own ways. Fikret Berkes (2009a, 2009b), for example, is collaborating with
indigenous groups in the Canadian Arctic to integrate traditional ecological know-
ledge with scientific ecology in community-based natural resource management.
Researchers at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) work to
develop transition arenas for a variety of sectors including health care, waste
management, climate mitigation and urban development in which stakeholders can
articulate goals and visions for more desirable outcomes and establish plans and
policies to achieve them (Loorbach 2007; Loorbach and Rotmans 2009). Instead,
the purpose, as I argue in Part II, is to maintain the capacity of sustainability to act
as a platform from which to articulate and pursue democratic visions of natural and
social well-being.
The tensions discussed in this chapter present a significant challenge to the
practice of sustainability science, its usefulness to decision making and its institu-
tional structure. Part II and the remaining chapters develop a more reflexive
sustainability science that works to ensure the usefulness and relevance of know-
ledge in context. In part, how these tensions are navigated will determine the
ability of sustainability science to encapsulate information in ways that are import-
ant to widely held social values and will help society pursue more sustainable
outcomes.
60 Constructing sustainability science

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PART II

Reconstructing
sustainability science
This page intentionally left blank
5
RECLAIMING SUSTAINABILITY
Limits to knowledge

Part I explored the emergence of sustainability science, its empirical, normative and
socio-political claims, and the tensions stemming from normative and epistemic
positions in the field. This was an empirical and conceptual effort, drawing from
STS, and laid the foundations for a reconstruction of sustainability science. Part II
turns to a more prospective outlook, presenting a theoretical and conceptual argu-
ment for a reconstruction of sustainability science. This draws from the
reconstructivist approach in STS discussed in Chapter 2 as well as from American
pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s notion of reconstruction in philosophy.
As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, efforts by scientists to contribute to sustain-
ability often carry assumptions about the role of knowledge. However, there has
been little done to first understand how visions of sustainability come to be
articulated and then carve out a constructive role for science within that frame.
Envisioning science without also envisioning sustainability and science’s place
within it makes much more difficult the task of constructing research agendas that
might contribute to sustainability. Though sustainability science has certainly
devoted its share of ink to defining sustainability, it has not done so in a way that
makes clear how sustainability is being imagined, by whom and how science might
contribute (or not).This is due in part to an insufficient appreciation of the social,
moral and political dimensions of sustainability (Miller et al. 2009).
This tension between scientific and technical knowledge and social and ethical
concerns is neither new nor unique to sustainability matters. In Reconstruction in
Philosophy, John Dewey (1920) lamented the path of scientific and technological
progress as ignoring deep political and moral concerns:

Not only has the improvement in the method of knowing remained so far
mainly limited to technical and economic matters, but this progress has
brought with it serious new moral disturbances [war, capital and labor,
68 Reconstructing sustainability science

etc.]… These considerations indicate to us how undeveloped are our politics,

how crude and primitive our education, how passive and inert our morals.

Similarly, environmental and sustainability issues have become increasingly driven

by scientific and technical expertise (Feenberg 1999; Sclove 1994). Sustainability
science needs a conceptual and normative effort that seeks to position science
within a larger framework focused on the articulation of sustainability values and
goals, and a deliberation over potential pathways to achieve them.
Why embark on yet another project that attempts to define, critique or salvage
sustainability?1 The concept and discourse of sustainability can act as a platform for
our collectively imagined visions of natural and social well-being. As such, sustain-
ability offers the possibility of challenging hegemonic notions of economic and
technological progress and opening up alternative pathways (Leach et al. 2010;
Stirling 2006).This broad normative scope is the source of both its discursive power
and its popularity while also the source of many of its critiques (e.g.Worster 1993).
This chapter begins with a discussion of the limits of sustainability science given
certain characteristics of sustainability problems as complex, uncertain and
contested.This is not to simply critique the efforts of sustainability science. Instead,
by understanding the epistemic and normative limits of science, we can begin to
carve out a role for the field and the knowledge it produces that focuses on its
ability to support deliberation over the meaning and pursuit of sustainability in
context. This chapter concludes with a discussion of a conceptual framework for
sustainability that will allow for a more action-oriented role for sustainability
science as a science of design.

The limits of sustainability science

Sustainability science has largely focused on two objectives: Producing knowledge
about human–environment interactions and linking that knowledge to action
(Kates et al. 2001; Cash et al. 2003; Clark 2007; Friiberg 2000; Levin and Clark
2010). Sustainability science has been preoccupied with what can be referred to as
the knowledge-first approach, the idea that more knowledge about underlying system
dynamics will inform decisions and perhaps even compel action (Sarewitz et al.
2010).There are, however, severe limitations to this approach and to the scope for
science to be of use in the contested, uncertain and value-laden context of sustain-
ability.
While a lack of scientific knowledge can limit societal action in some cases,
there are a myriad of social, political and technological issues and processes that are
more proximate to the capacity of society to act more sustainably, even where
additional scientific information is available (Collingridge and Reeve 1986; Miller
et al. 2009; Nelson 1977, 2003). In fact, in an early critique of the role of science
in sustainability issues, Ludwig et al. (1993) argue that the scientific community has
helped to perpetuate the illusion that progress in science can lead to sustainability.
This section examines the epistemic and normative limitations of sustainability
 Reclaiming sustainability 69

science in order to gain insight into how they can be recognized and dealt with
more effectively.

Epistemic limitations
Many sustainability problems present deep challenges to traditional scientific
analyses and the role of science in society. Sustainability problems can often be
classified as wicked problems – defined by high complexity, uncertainty, and con-
tested social values (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993; Ludwig 2001; Norton 2005;
Rittel and Webber 1973).Traditional modes of inquiry cannot produce knowledge
that is robust enough to withstand contested values and high complexity (Nowotny
et al. 2001). In fact, such problems are often characterized by multiple conflicting
and equally valid scientific and social interpretations (Collingridge and Reeve
1986; Sarewitz 2004).
This limitation, then, is not just epistemic, but socio-political. Epistemologically,
the very idea that science can produce authoritative or reliable knowledge about
complex and contested phenomena has been challenged (Funtowicz and Ravetz
1993; Nowotny et al. 2001). At the same time, the reliability and usefulness of
scientific knowledge in society and in decision-making contexts has been called
into question. The scientific norms (Merton 1973) and epistemic values (Douglas
2009) governing scientific practice have not evolved to deal with wicked problems
and arenas in which the validity of scientific knowledge is challenged outside of
the laboratory (Crow 2007; Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993; Gibbons 1999; Jasanoff
2010; Nowotny et al. 2001).
Science, in such cases, is unlikely to reduce uncertainty or provide a common
foundation for social action. Stakeholders often demand predictive information
about policy outcomes from scientists. Many scholars have criticized the reliance
on predictive modeling to eliminate knowledge shortcomings when complex
systems (such as the climate) are under scrutiny. Oreskes et al. (1994) have argued
that verifying scientific models of complex systems is impossible owing to
intractable epistemological limitations in understanding how a complex system’s
variables interact. Likewise, philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright (1999) has
argued that science tends not to produce grand, hierarchical systems of natural laws
consistent between disciplines. Rather, the relationship between laws is tenuous
and we should avoid thinking of science as creating a coherent and consistent
picture of our world.
At best, science may be capable of informing decisions but never completely
eliminate uncertainty in such complex systems; at worst, it may increase certain
disputes and stall action. Such difficulties in the capacity of science to inform
decision making often get attributed to social and political factors such as the
public understanding of science or its politicization (Sarewitz 2010a;Wynne 1996).
However, as Ludwig et al. (1993) argue, it is likely that science will never reach
consensus regarding causal mechanisms and dynamics of complex, coupled
human–natural systems.2 More importantly, even if one were to grant that
70 Reconstructing sustainability science

consensus in the scientific community is possible, meaningful social or political

consensus on an understanding of an issue or a course of action is unlikely
(Schwarz and Thompson 1990). This has as much to do with the epistemic
practices of science and the wicked nature of sustainability problems, if not more,
as it does with any perceived problems in the ability of decision makers to
incorporate scientific knowledge into their decisions.
Scientists, decision makers and the broader public often perceive science as
having privileged access to fact-based claims about the world (Jasanoff 2005; Latour
2004; Miller 2004). As a result, scientific knowledge and its perceived epistemic
power can come to dominate alternative ways of knowing (Latour 2004; Scott
1998). Stephen Lansing’s (1991) study of the disastrous (though well-intentioned)
efforts by scientists and planners to reorganize farming practices in Bali, Indonesia
highlights these issues.
During the Green Revolution, Balinese farmers were encouraged by planners,
scientists and bureaucrats at the Bali Irrigation Project to abandon traditional
cropping patterns and plant new, higher-yield, hybrid rice varieties as often as
conditions permitted. Planners at the Project also sought to improve the perform-
ance of the traditional irrigation systems through new construction and
bureaucratic and scientific management. Before these changes brought about by the
Green Revolution, Balinese farmers traditionally planned planting and harvesting
through a complex social and technical process centered on a network of local
water temples. Ultimately, these changes led to pest outbreaks and water shortages,
particularly in the dry season, as scientists and planners attempted to plant a new
round of resistant crops and develop new pesticides to stay ahead of the next
potential rice pest.To the extent that social systems and the water temples entered
into the analysis of the scientists and planners, it was largely in terms of the
resistance of communities to the new technologies of the Green Revolution. Calls
for return of the control over irrigation to water temples were perceived by the
Bali Irrigation Project as religious conservatism and resistance to change. As one
irrigation engineer responded, the farmers ‘don’t need a high priest, they need a
hydrologist!’ (Lansing 1991: 115).
Lansing (1991) poses what he views as a fundamental question – why was the
functional role of water temples not a matter of common knowledge? He argues that
the success of the water temples and traditional management practices made them
invisible to scientists and planners studying them.Agriculture was viewed as a purely
technical process. The invisibility of the water temples was also the result of the
epistemic and disciplinary practices of the planners and scientists. The traditional
management practices based on rituals performed at the water temples fell outside
the boundaries of analysis for hydrologists, agricultural scientists and the like.These
rites and rituals were not considered credible or legitimate by the planners, scientists
and bureaucrats of the Bali Irrigation Project as they produced and utilized
knowledge in different ways (Hacking 2004; Martello 2004; Miller 2008).
Scientific knowledge about coupled systems, their risks and vulnerabilities can
shape discussion by highlighting certain aspects of the system and legitimizing
 Reclaiming sustainability 71

some knowledge claims over others. As Norton (2002: 22) notes, in such contexts
where interests vie to affect policy and management outcomes, ‘the relevant
language cannot be the specialized languages of either a narrow, disciplinary science
or of a narrow theory about what is meant by a small subset of the society.’While
the efforts of sustainability scientists may not be as heavy-handed as the Balinese
Irrigation Project, the scientists still must be aware of the ways in which their
epistemic viewpoint can be both limited, resulting in certain factors becoming
invisible, and constrain discourse and alternative understandings of sustainability,
through its perceived power as value-free.
Interdisciplinary research has emerged as a core characteristic of sustainability
science and similar applied efforts in an attempt to overcome the fragmented and
partial picture of problems presented by isolated disciplines. Many adherents of an
interdisciplinary approach argue that it will provide a more complete and holistic
account of the system or problem under investigation. For example if, in addition
to engineers, hydrologists, and agricultural sciences, social scientists and humanists
had been included in the Bali Irrigation Project, the importance of the water
temple institution might have been realized and taken into account. While an
interdisciplinary approach can provide insights that may not have been possible
from a strict disciplinary perspective, the quest for a more holistic picture of reality
does not overcome the epistemic limitations of sustainability science (Sarewitz
2012).There still may be a variety of valid interpretations (Miller et al. 2008) and
there are limits to what we can know, particularly in the face of complexity (Crow
2007; Stirling 2010).
To the extent that sustainability problems become settled, this will be through a
social and political effort of which science is but a part. Sustainability and its
problems cut across disciplinary boundaries and defy both problem definition and
easy solutions; they challenge not just the analytical tools and approaches of
scientists but the use of scientific knowledge in society.As Nelson (2003) notes, this
is not a comment on the quality of research in fields such as sustainability science.
Instead, it is related to limitations on the scope of scientific research to advance
action in areas that are highly social and contextual.

Normative limitations
As discussed in Chapter 4, science can at once reveal issues that are of normative
concern and constrain what is considered appropriate dialogue on the very same
issues (Bocking 2004; Latour 2004; Longino 2002). How sustainability science
navigates this tension can either empower or limit the ability of communities to
articulate visions and goals for sustainability.
Most sustainability scientists acknowledge that they are indeed motivated by the
problems and concerns of sustainability (Chapin et al. 2009). As F. (Terry) Stuart
Chapin III noted in an interview, ‘[i]t [sustainability] may be more of a calling on
ethics and a sense of responsibility to the planet, a sense of responsibility to future
generations.’ However, the core of the sustainability science agenda is fundamental
72 Reconstructing sustainability science

research into the dynamics of coupled human–natural systems (Carpenter et al.

2009; Levin and Clark 2010; Matson 2009).Values, many scientists argue, are better
dealt with by decision makers and other stakeholders. Citing the Brundtland
Report (WCED 1987) or the National Research Council (1999) definition of the
term, sustainability scientists embrace the values of sustainability, while at the same
time maintaining a distance from such values by focusing on fundamental research.
The role of the sustainability scientists is to supply knowledge that is perceived as
credible, salient and legitimate and will inform decision making in a value-free
manner (Cash et al. 2003; Clark et al. 2002). In so doing, sustainability science is
able to maintain an epistemic core of fundamental research that is value-free
(Douglas 2009; Gieryn 1983, 1995).
For all this, key concepts in sustainability science such as risk and vulnerability
(Turner et al. 2003a,b), tipping points (Scheffer et al. 2009; Schellnhuber 2009),
planetary boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009), and even defining the boundaries
and interactions between human and natural systems are suffused with values.The
act of defining aspects of a wicked problem for scientific inquiry is inherently
value-laden, with implications for democratic problem-solving and the pursuit of
potential solutions (Fischer 2000; Jasanoff 2007; Latour 2004).
For example, the climate science community has predicted that a doubling of
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from pre-industrialization levels will
result in a 1.5°C to 4.5°C increase in the global average atmospheric temperature
(Rayner 2000; van der Sluijs et al. 1998). Beyond this temperature threshold, cat-
astrophic climatic events await. Nonetheless, the estimated temperature increase
as a result of a doubling in CO2 has barely changed since Arrhenius’s work on
the greenhouse effect in the late nineteenth century (van der Sluijs et al. 1998).
This is despite significant advances and investments in global circulation models
and climate science more generally. Research has focused on classifying the un-
certainties around this prediction and attempting to specify potential
consequences (Rayner 2000). This has come at the expense of an expanded
discussion that includes local (rather than just global) risks and vulnerabilities,
adaption and technological solutions (Hulme et al. 2009; Pielke, Jr. et al. 2007;
Rayner and Malone 1997). The scientific framing of climate change as a global
problem that science can appropriately manage is also a social and political
framing that has made it more difficult to introduce alternative understandings
and normative concerns into the discussion (Sarewitz and Pielke, Jr. 2007;
Jasanoff 2001; Miller 2004).3
The epistemic power of science, especially when presented or perceived as
value-free, can come to dominate normative and political concerns (Douglas 2009;
Latour 2004). The normative limitation of sustainability science is in its potential
failure to recognize the degree to which supposedly value-free science is in fact
value-laden and how scientific analyses can influence necessary and important
political debates in society in complex ways.The challenge is to construct a science
that is able to convey important information in a way that allows a plurality of
values and understandings to emerge.
 Reclaiming sustainability 73

Each of the limitations discussed above is maintained and reinforced by the

institutional structure of science. Scientists are incentivized through their training
and evaluation to advance knowledge in their home discipline. Many of the
activities that might be necessary to contribute to such outcomes, including inter-
disciplinary or participatory research, are challenging, time-consuming and rarely
rewarded within the academy (Miller et al. 2008, 2011; Roux et al. 2006; Rowe
2007).Any change in the research agenda for sustainability science must be pursued
in conjunction with institutional change.

Conclusion
A sustainability transition, however defined, will be a social, cultural and political
process (Miller et al., 2009). The scientific community has certainly recognized as
much (Kates et al., 2001), but has not adequately considered precisely how science
is to fit into this process. If sustainability science is to work towards providing
knowledge for a sustainability transition, the science cannot be considered as separ-
ate from the social, ethical and political dimensions.This is because of the structure
of disciplines and the ways science interrogates the world and of the ways in which
we have fragmented the tasks of science, politics and society.
Sustainability up to this point has done admirably well in defining what Toulmin
(1990) calls our ‘horizons of expectations.’ Horizons of expectations frame possible
futures. Popular definitions of sustainability, like those put forth by Brundtland
(WCED 1987) and the NRC (1999), formulated reasonable horizons of expect-
ations or a desirable space in which humanity would like to exist; i.e. society should
develop in a way that limits negative impacts on (or even seeks positive interactions
with) ecological support systems, reduces social injustices including hunger and
poverty, and takes a long-term perspective. What is missing is how to navigate
within these horizons and carve out more specific future pathways.
Futures, notes Toulmin (1990: 2),‘do not simply happen of themselves, but can be
made to happen, if we meanwhile adopt wise attitudes and policies.’ Toulmin
continues:

A well formulated approach to the future – a realistic range of available

futuribles, within reasonable horizons of expectation – does not depend on
finding ways to quantify and extrapolate current trends: that we may leave to
enthusiastic weather forecasters, stock exchange chartists, or econometrists.
Rather, the questions are,‘What intellectual posture should we adopt in con-
fronting the future? What eye can we develop for significant aspects of the
years ahead? And what capacity do we have to change our ideas about
available futures?’ Those who refuse to think coherently about the future,
correspondingly, only expose themselves to worse, leaving the field clear to
unrealistic, irrational prophets.
74 Reconstructing sustainability science

This is fruitful ground for development a schematic definition of sustainability that

allows for a more constructive and open role for science. Sustainability is a way of
articulating visions of human and natural well-being and devising strategies to pursue those
visions. This definition is more schematic in nature rather than setting specific goals
or indicators. It allows the moral and ethical vision of well-being to reside along-
side the social, political, scientific and technological issue of how we might actually
bring it to fruition. Science alone cannot make a future to happen; however, it can
help us identify implications of such futures and their plausibility. Science is nece-
ssary to help get a sense of possible futures and frame our horizons. Sustainability
science is well positioned to fit in this role.
In the following chapter, I develop a sustainability science of design that is con-
cerned with the pursuit of sustainable futures, as opposed to simply understanding
problems in the past and present.

Notes
1 See, for instance, Davison 2000, Edwards 2005, Parr 2009, Moore 2010,Thompson 2010.
2 The perceived scientific consensus on climate change may seem to counter this claim.
However, the consensus on the basic mechanisms behind climate change has not
translated into concerted social action. Furthermore, as research in science studies has
shown, this supposed consensus is fragile and hides significant and legitimate differences.
The ability to achieve consensus is driven by social norms and processes, as well as
institutional configurations (Jasanoff and Wynne 1998; Miller 2004; Schackley 2001; van
der Sluijs et al. 1998). In addition, as recent events such as ‘Climate Gate’ have shown,
such consensus is liable to be reopened and challenged, providing a glimpse into the
social, political and normative dimensions of scientific knowledge-making. This has as
much (if not more) to do with social norms of scientific communities and institutions
and political consensus (or lack thereof) as it does with the strength of scientific findings
(Hulme 2010; Jasanoff 2010).
3 Normative and ethical critiques of climate change-normative analyses have focused
primarily on issues related to the responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and a fair
and just allocation of future emissions (Jamieson 1992; Brown 2002; Gardiner 2004).
Largely missing from this discussion is an intra-generationally more important question
of how to help those currently vulnerable to climate and weather variability adapt in
fair and just ways.

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6
SUSTAINABILITY AS A SCIENCE
OF DESIGN

Angelus Novus
Upon viewing Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus at a gallery exhibition, Walter Benjamin
was deeply affected. In On the Concept of History (1940), Benjamin describes this
encounter:

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus.An angel is depicted there

who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something
which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and
his wings are outstretched.The Angel of History must look just so. His face
is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of
events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top
of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment
so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But
a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so
strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him
irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap
before him grows sky-high.That which we call progress, is this storm.

Science, in many respects, provides us with the viewpoint of the Angel looking to
the past for knowledge about our present and future. Scientific knowledge has
been, and continues to be, an incredibly powerful tool for society to understand our
world. In Beck’s (1992) risk society, this increasingly entails understanding the
myriad social and environmental problems that our use of science and technology
has generated. Even efforts like sustainability science, concerned with use-inspired
research, are but attempting to understand ‘how the rubble-heap before’ us is being
built up; yet this understanding of sustainability problems is not enough.
80 Reconstructing sustainability science

Benjamin sees the Angel being driven ‘irresistibly into the future, to which his
back is turned.’ So, too, has sustainability science, and science more broadly, had its
gaze focused on the past, attempting to understand underlying problem dynamics.
We hope this improved understanding will help us act in a future to which our
backs are turned. Can sustainability science turn, and find a pathway into the future,
instead of being propelled into it? Put differently, how can science shift from identi-
fying and describing problems in the ecophysical realm to contributing to potential
solutions in social and political realms? This chapter takes up this question.

A science of design
This chapter repositions sustainability science as a ‘science of design’ – that is, a
science of what ought to be in order to achieve certain goals, rather than a science
of what is. This follows Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s (1996) notion of the
artificial sciences as sciences of design. The artificial sciences are concerned with
how things ‘ought to be in order to attain goals and to function’ (Simon 1996: 4–5).
Here, I also utilize John Dewey’s (1920, 1938) pragmatism which serves to ground
sustainability science in lived experience with advances in inquiry measured by
progress in achieving goals. The knowledge produced by sustainability should be
helpful in bringing desired outcomes to fruition. Following Simon and Dewey, this
chapter develops a more pragmatic sustainability science that is evaluated on its
ability to frame sustainability problems and solutions in ways that make them
amenable to democratic social action.
It is not enough for sustainability science to focus on the analysis of the system
dynamics underlying certain problems; it must move toward research that is focused
on the design of solutions. Following the sustainable solutions agenda of Sarewitz et
al. (2010), sustainability science must not be limited to research into the ‘problem
space,’ but also be concerned with the space in which solutions are formulated and
implemented, the ‘solution space.’ This is not say that sustainability science should
only focus on the development of ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions. Rather, the point is to
focus on the context in which solutions might be developed and deployed, exploring
how scientific knowledge or other tools might help in advancing desirable outcomes.
Sustainability is a forward-looking, future-oriented concept that provides a con-
ceptual platform for communities to articulate visions of social and natural
well-being. Ironically, it is also partially backward-looking in that what is being sus-
tained is a set of goods and values that have come to define a community over time.
The mission of sustainability science should be to help bring such visions to fruition.
Accordingly, I develop two core objectives for this reconstructed field: (1) to under-
stand and contribute to the design of sustainable solutions; and (2) to promote
reasoning and deliberation over the meanings, goals and pursuit of sustainability.
Sustainability science, however, is ill-equipped to meet these objectives. This is
not a result of an obvious flaw in how sustainability scientists have constructed their
research agendas. On the contrary, part of the reason that the field has attracted
attention is its ability to speak to a major gap in scientific research – interdisciplinary
 Sustainability as a science of design 81

approaches to human–environment interactions and the claim that the knowledge

gained from such research will support decision making. This approach, however,
falls short on fostering sustainable outcomes as a result of certain epistemic and
normative limitations as well as a research agenda limited to addressing fundamental
questions about coupled human–natural systems.

Objectives for a science of design

Sustainability presents a unique set of epistemic, normative and institutional
challenges to science and its ability to contribute to positive, more sustainable social
and environmental outcomes.The core question now facing sustainability science is:
How can sustainability science shift from identifying problems in the biophysical
realm to contributing to the pursuit of solutions in the social and political realm?
This question requires scientists to face another that is deeper yet: To what extent
and in what ways is science necessary to advance sustainable outcomes? In order for
sustainability science to address these questions, changes are necessary in the way
sustainability is conceptualized, how sustainability science investigates problems and
their potential solutions, and in the way we act to address them (Mitchell 2009).
In this section, I utilize Simon’s notion of a science of design supported by
Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy to reconstruct sustainability science as a more
pragmatic mode of inquiry focused on problem solving and the design of solutions.
Following Dewey’s (1920) own reconstructive project, I consider how science can
best contribute to sustainability and propose two core objectives for the field that
heretofore have been either underdeveloped in or entirely absent from sustain-
ability science:

1 to understand and contribute to the design of sustainable solutions: and

2 to promote reasoning and deliberation over the meanings, goals and pursuit of
sustainability.

This follows Dewey’s (1938) method of inquiry, which as Minteer (2002: 43) notes,
acts as ‘the social process for transforming problematic situations into ones that are
more settled and secure.’ This method maintains a ‘critical link between reflective
practice – thought – and the world of lived experience’ (Minteer 2002: 43) and
remains open to revision and refinement as new problems arise or existing
problems come to be viewed in new ways.
The vision for a new sustainability science of design presented here is empirical,
normative and, most importantly, pragmatic. It is empirical in that it seeks to
advance the state of knowledge about how sustainable solutions can be created and
how deliberation can be enriched and facilitated. It is normative in that I argue
sustainability science ought to meet these objectives. Finally, it is pragmatic in that
the test of its effectiveness in meeting its objectives ultimately lies in changes that
result in more sustainable outcomes as defined through a deliberative process in
society.
82 Reconstructing sustainability science

Design of sustainable solutions

By design, I do not necessarily mean the creation and manufacture of a techno-
logical artifact such as a greener building or cleaner burning fuel (though these
would still qualify). Rather, following Simon (1996: 111), the process of design is the
choosing of a ‘course of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred
ones.’ A science of design attempts to understand what the preferred or sustainable
situations are and contribute to the identification and navigation of a course(s) of
action that might achieve them. It is concerned with how things ought to be.
As Simon argues, the natural and social sciences have been preoccupied with
how things are.As previously noted, sustainability science has also been stuck in this
mode of inquiry. Research in sustainability science has focused on the ‘problem
space’ – the understanding of current conditions and dynamics. This often comes
at the expense of inquiry into preferred (i.e. more sustainable) situations and how
we might get there – the ‘solution space.’ A design science for sustainability must
move beyond analyzing how things are and engage with the question of how
things ought to be. Even with a perfectly accurate and uncontested representation
of the current state of affairs (which is likely to be ontologically, epistemologically
and normatively impossible), the degree to which such information would lead to
consensus in pursuing a common vision of the future is questionable. A design
science for sustainability aims to support what Simon would call a ‘satisficing’
solution. In the face of real-world complexity, real-world optimization is impossi-
ble. Therefore, we should aim for and accept ‘good enough’ alternatives that
satisfice (Simon 1983, 1996). Such satisficing design solutions avoid getting stuck
in in the ‘knowledge-first trap’ in which more knowledge is required to reduce
uncertainty before action is appropriate (Sarewitz et al. 2010).They are robust in a
range of possible conditions and further experience allows for learning and changes
in design and action (Hickman 2001; Lee 1993; Norton 2005; Simon 1996).
Design science, argues Simon (1996), devises artifacts to attain goals.Artifacts do
not necessarily have to be material objects. Following both Simon (1996) and
Hickman (2001), artifacts are defined as technological objects, assemblages,
institutions, knowledge and conceptual frameworks that can be used to attain
desired ends. Similarly, Dewey (1920: 60) argues that theories, systems and hypo-
theses are but tools whose ‘value resides not in themselves but in their capacity to
work shown in the consequences of their use.’ Dewey (1920: 21), for instance,
defines knowledge as ‘purposeful, experimental action acting to reshape beliefs and
institutions.’ Even our futures are artifacts, which we construct and continually
build and rebuild (Hickman 2001). However, as both Simon (1983, 1996) and
Dewey (1920) argue, advances in inquiry into the way things are have not been
matched by similar advances in inquiry into how things ought to be. It is this
imbalance that sustainability science must begin to rectify.
The brief case study of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Lowell included next presents an example of how a design
science for sustainability can contribute to the analysis and design of solutions
 Sustainability as a science of design 83

through the production of artifacts (in the form of knowledge not just about the
problem, but of the social system and through a demonstration of alternative
solutions).

THE LOWELL CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION

The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production focuses on the redesign of pro-
duction and consumption systems. Sustainable production is defined as the
creation of goods and services using processes and systems that:

• do not pollute;
• conserve energy and natural resources;
• are economically viable;
• are safe and healthful for workers, communities and consumers; and
• are socially and creatively rewarding for all working people (Sustainable
Production Project 2009).

The Lowell Center works with government, industry, community groups and
others to develop practical solutions to environmental problems, particularly
those related to occupational health and safety.
There are two core characteristics of the Center’s approach that are especially
relevant for a design science for sustainability. First, systems of production and
consumption are viewed as both social and technological. Second, as co-Director
David Kriebel notes (interview), it is important to make the distinction ‘between
the system in which the problem occurs and the system in which the solution
occurs’ or, in other words, to distinguish between the problem space and the
solution space. Two brief examples serve to illustrate these points.
The Lowell Center’s Sustainable Hospitals Program works to reduce or
eliminate worker and patient exposure to environmental hazards while main-
taining patient care and costs (see www.sustainableproduction.org/proj.shos.
abou.php). Formaldehyde, a carcinogen regulated by several national, state and
local government agencies, is used in many hospital laboratories for tissue
preservation and fixation. A Massachusetts hospital had been served several
violation notices relating to formaldehyde in its waste water, the source of which
was the histopathology laboratory. Despite the installation of expensive
engineering controls, violations continued. Hospital managers sought to replace
formaldehyde with another chemical and a microwave oven; however, the
laboratory’s chief pathologist disagreed on their interpretation of the problem
and argued that the managers’ alternative would not allow the lab to produce
the same quality of work. An alternative, glyoxal, was identified after learning of
its use by a prestigious hospital nearby and a pilot study concluded that its use
would maintain the quality of the laboratory practices while reducing the
harmful side effects of formaldehyde (Quinn et al. 2006).
The second example illustrating the benefits of focusing on solutions is the
conversion of dry cleaning facilities using the solvent perchloroethylene (Perc)
84 Reconstructing sustainability science

to a water-based or ‘wet cleaning’ process (www.turi.org/TURI_Publications/

TURI_Chemical_Fact_Sheets/Fact_Sheet_-_Alternatives_to_Perchloroethylene_
Used_in_Professional_Garment_Care). The water-based process substantially
reduces adverse human and environmental health consequences but involves
significant capital investments including a full equipment replacement. Working
with the Toxic Use Reduction Institute (TURI) at the Lowell Center for Sustain-
able Production, researchers realized that the cost of new equipment (for which
the state provided financial assistance) was not the only barrier to moving away
from perc use in dry cleaning. In addition to cost barriers, retraining of
personnel would be required to make the switch to wet cleaning and Lowell
Center and TURI researchers needed to demonstrate that the new systems
would enable cleaners to grow their businesses. TURI worked with community
leaders to set up sites to demonstrate the wet cleaning processes and show the
public (i.e. the consumers of cleaning services) the health and economic
benefits of switching away from perc and dry cleaning (Silver Hanger Case
Study Brochure 2010).
In both of these cases, the nature of the problem was clear – the use of
formaldehyde and perc are harmful – and alternatives were known to exist and
were easily accessible. Nonetheless, the harmful practices and processes
persisted. In each case, the barriers to more sustainable practices were in the
solution space not in the problem-space (Sarewitz et al. 2012). Lab workers knew
that formaldehyde was harmful, but did not believe that there was a viable
solution that would allow them to continue their work effectively. New wet
cleaning practices required effectiveness to be demonstrated, and training.
Lowell Center researchers and their partners viewed each of these issues as much
more than a simple technological fix – i.e. substitute glyoxal for formaldehyde
and wet cleaning practices for dry cleaning. Such ‘drop-in’ attempts rarely work
as they fail to systemically examine alternative strategies that minimize adverse
consequences while achieving the desired outcome (Sustainable Production
Project 2009). The critical barriers and opportunities to more sustainable out-
comes were also social. It was not enough for researchers to analyze the problem
and point out the harmful products and practices. Researchers, working with
partners and stakeholders, demonstrated the viability of solutions (Rossi et al.
2006).

The Lowell Center case demonstrates that understanding the problem is not suffi-
cient to overcome barriers to change towards sustainability. Systems of production
and consumption are not just part of the problems, but crucial contributors to
sustainable solutions. By focusing on the social and technological barriers to
change, the Lowell Center is able to work with partners to identify products and
practices that result in positive, more sustainable outcomes.
 Sustainability as a science of design 85

Reasoning and deliberation over the meanings and goals

of sustainability
The objective of a sustainability science of design is not to develop more complete
knowledge of underlying system dynamics that will lead to the identification of an
optimal solution. Instead, it seeks to create artifacts, including knowledge and
conceptual frameworks, that ‘permit functional reasoning’ (Simon 1996: 146).That
is, it should promote and enrich purposeful deliberation over preferred or desirable
outcomes – what is sustainability, what should be sustained and for whom – and
how to pursue them.To some extent, existing efforts in sustainability science may
serve this role. However, this proposal seeks to broaden current research in sustain-
ability to move beyond coupled systems research and engage with the social,
political and normative aspects of not just the creation of sustainability problems,
but the formulation of potential solutions (Miller et al. 2014).
As Norton (2005: 335) argues, ‘…the problem of how to measure sustain-
ability… is logically subsequent to the prior question of what commitments the
relevant community is willing to make to protect a natural and cultural legacy.’
Part of the role of sustainability science is to support deliberation over such
commitments and, from there, help communities monitor and navigate progress.
This role for sustainability science stems from a democratic understanding of
sustainability as a platform for the articulation and pursuit of community goals.
This also follows Dewey’s own notion of democracy, which, as Minteer (2002: 41)
notes,‘is not just one form of social life among other workable forms of social life;
it is the precondition for the full application of intelligence to the solution of
social problems.’
A design science for sustainability explores how to achieve the goals of sustain-
ability (i.e. the ‘ought’) that communities and society articulate. Following Dewey
and Norton (2005), design science is pragmatic in nature. It does not seek to fully
characterize underlying system dynamics or define the ‘right’ sustainability; rather,
it serves to clarify and formulate questions of practical importance that will help
communities act in the world. Sustainability science must focus on constructing the
necessary artifacts (e.g. deliberative space, conceptual frameworks) for discussion
and dialogue over the values that ought to be sustained in a given community.
Sustainability science should help to clarify and formulate questions that have
practical import in the pursuit of sustainability (Norton 2005).
As Dewey (1920) notes,‘the isolation of thinking encourages the kind of obser-
vation which merely accumulates brute facts… but never inquiris into their
meaning and consequences.’Thinking, for Dewey, is not just confronting facts but
also involves moral, aesthetic and political reflection on the process of inquiry and
into the found reality. Dewey also argues that advances in inquiry, invention and
control by the biophysical sciences have not been matched by a similar command
over our social and moral welfare. It is for this reason that we so often appeal to the
biophysical sciences to help us solve difficult environmental problems.There is an
embedded assumption by sustainability scientists that a confrontation with the facts
86 Reconstructing sustainability science

of human–environment dynamics isolated from moral and political reflection will

help to change beliefs and institutions.
For pragmatists, as Norton (2005) notes, a shared focus on real-world problems
and experience unites inquiry. Inquiry here is not limited to the purely scientific
kind. Rather, it is inquiry used more broadly – as Dewey (1920) employs the word
– to mean a confrontation with facts by a community of inquirers and as a way to
make sense of experience. In this sense, a sustainability science of design follows
both Dewey and Norton in attempting to bind inquiry to experience and to
ensure that it includes not only fact finding but also moral and political reflection.
Reasoning and deliberation are necessary for more than just political means –
to practically achieve some predetermined end. Sustainability necessarily must be
defined through democratic processes as communities engage in both fact finding
and reflection about what is important. Furthermore, deliberative processes have
been shown to be epistemologically and pragmatically valuable (Brown 2009;
Newig et al. 2010; Norton 2005;Thompson et al. 2007). Such deliberation attempts
to avoid an appeal to transcendent principles, whether they are scientific, ethical or
otherwise. As Longino (1990: 141) argues, ‘[t]he point is that there is nothing
further, that appeal to standards or methodological norms beyond those ratified by
the discursive interactions of an inquiring community is an appeal to transcendent
principles that inevitably turn out to be local.’ Sustainability science, instead, should
promote what Miller (2008) and Jasanoff (1998) refer to as reasoning together – a
mutual learning and accommodation among people with highly divergent
approaches and knowledges (Miller 2008). Deliberation is also potentially transfor-
mative, changing beliefs and values via learning and discussion (Habermas 1984;
Griffith 2010).
In this way, the epistemological – how we know what we know – and the
normative – what ought to be – questions of sustainability can be brought together
to foster social learning (Latour 2004; Norton 2005). This approach rejects the
boundary that sustainability science has drawn around a detached epistemic core,
bringing together questions of epistemic and normative significance. It promotes
research that is relevant to widely held social values and allows communities to
evaluate the impact of their experience and values on the environment or desired
futures (Norton 2005; Redman 1999). As Norton (2005: 118) argues, this ‘social
learning is expected to improve understanding of the environment through an
iterative and ongoing process that will require not just unlimited inquiry but also
the encouragement of variation in viewpoints and the continual revisiting of both
scientific knowledge and articulated goals of the community.’
This objective also endorses what Verweij et al. (2006) call ‘the case for clumsi-
ness.’ As mentioned previously, many sustainability problems – from climate change
to water management – involve endemic conflict and may involve multiple under-
standings of the problems and potential responses. Problem-solving strategies that
limit ways of knowing and social values are likely to fail in contexts where there
are a diversity of definitions of the problem, needs and stakeholders (Lach et al.
2005). Instead, so-called ‘clumsy solutions’ (which are similar to what Simon would
 Sustainability as a science of design 87

refer to as satisficing solutions) are preferable.They require deliberation and com-

munication in order to develop ‘creative, flexible mixes of four ways of organizing,1
perceiving and justifying that satisfy the adherents to some ways of life more than
other courses of actions, while leaving no actor worse off. As such, they alleviate
social ills better than other courses of actions do’ (Verweij et al. 2006: 840).
Processes of reasoning and deliberation are necessary to address many sustain-
ability problems faced by society. As such, sustainability science must explore ways
to contribute to these deliberative processes and enrich the debate over the mean-
ing, goals and pursuit of sustainability.There is a wide literature on various modes
of deliberation, including consensus conferences (Einsiedel and Eastlick 2000;
Guston 1999) and citizen juries (Smith and Wales 1999; Ward et al. 2003). The
concern here is not with the exact mode of deliberation; instead, it follows Dewey’s
(1927) concern in The Public and Its Problems, that there be an ‘improvement in the
methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion’ (Fischer 2000: 7).
The following case study, of the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions
(DRIFT) at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, illustrates how sustainability
science might be able to foster deliberation and social learning.

DRIFT: TRANSITION ARENAS AS DELIBERATIVE SPACES

DRIFT (www.drift.eur.nl/) aims to identify and facilitate transitions – changes in
social (sub)systems resulting from cultural, economic, technological, behavioral,
ecological and institutional developments at various scales (Rotmans and
Loorbach 2009; Rotmans et al. 2001). Theoretically, DRIFT examines how
transitions come into being and how to identify them. Practically, it works with
stakeholders on how to envision, manage and monitor transitions.
Of particular interest to design science for sustainability are the concepts of
transition management and arenas. Rotmans and Loorbach (2009: 186) define
transitions management as ‘a deliberative process to influence governance
activities in such a way that they lead to accelerated change directed towards
sustainability ambitions.’ Transition arenas are experimental spaces ‘in which the
actors involved use social learning processes to acquire new knowledge and
understanding that leads to a new perspective on a transition issue’ (Rotmans
and Loorbach 2008: 193). They allow a network of actors to then envision what
a transition might look like (i.e. the desired sustainable goals) and establish an
agenda to achieve it.
One particularly interesting example is a health-care transition program
initiated in 2007 by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports that
included community groups, Dutch health-care sector organizations, DRIFT and
others. Several transition experiments were set up to test alternative approaches
that might act as possible solutions to persistent problems in health care in the
Netherlands. Transition experiments included a youth-based mental-health
program, in-house care for the elderly and the development of social support
systems for patients. A transition arena was set up to run parallel to the transition
88 Reconstructing sustainability science

experiments. The experiments allowed participants in the transition arena to

better understand how the current health-care system operates and what strat-
egies for change might be successful. They also identified a basic gap between
the ‘system’ and the ‘human’ (Rotmans and Loorbach 2009). According to Jan
Rotmans, former Director of DRIFT, the transition arena resulted in a vision for
the future of health care in the Netherlands that is ‘human-oriented, econom-
ically viable and socially embedded’ (interview with Rotmans, 24 November
2009).
Critical to the transitions management process is the dialogue and deliberation
enabled by the transition arena. This allows for information flow, articulation of
values and goals, and the development and acquisition of new knowledge.
Appropriate methods, tools and policies are then pursued relative to the vision for
a transition. While understanding of the existing system is important, the focus is
on how to shift to a more desirable system as articulated in the transition arena
(Loorbach 2007). DRIFT contributes to the process by producing artifacts
(including the transition arena itself) that enrich deliberation (e.g. knowledge
about the current system, potential pathways) and courses of action (e.g. con-
crete actions and management to move towards articulated goals).

Design imperatives
There are several key characteristics, or design imperatives, for sustainability science
that are necessary to position the field as a science for the design. This is not a
proposal for a specific research agenda. Instead, these design imperatives act as
guidelines for an effective sustainability science that can meet the objectives set out
above (as illustrated in Figure 6.1).To address the limitations discussed in the pre-
vious chapter, the research agenda for sustainability must be expanded and
refocused to meet a new set of objectives based on sustainable solutions and the
fostering of public reasoning and deliberation over the goals of sustainability. I pro-
pose four design imperatives for the sustainability science research agenda.
Sustainability science must be:

1 contextual, in its approach to sustainability problems and the design of potential

solutions;
2 plural, taking multiple values and epistemologies into account;
3 robust in the formulation of its research agenda in order to remain responsive
to a diverse set of sustainability issues; and
4 reflexive, meaning that sustainability scientists must be aware of their role in
shaping the societal discourse around sustainability.

These imperatives and objectives act as a significant first step in repositioning sus-
tainability science as a science of design.
 Sustainability as a science of design 89

Contextual Pluralism
Sustainability goals, Values,
role of artifact and epistemologies
knowledge

Artifact
Knowledge, technology,
scenario, deliberative
support

Reflexivity Robustness
Shaping of object Socially robust
and discourse, knowledge, diverse
ʻopen upʼ research pathways

FIGURE 6. 1 Design imperatives.

1 Contextual
Sustainability science must be contextual its approach to sustainability problems
and in efforts to contribute to societal action. Sustainability itself is contextual – the
meaning and goals of sustainability are dependent on who is involved in a given
issue in a given place and what values are to be sustained (Norton 2005). Sustain-
ability scientists have already recognized this by emphasizing place-based research
(Kates et al. 2001; Turner et al. 2003a). Though it may be place-based, much of
current sustainability science is not fully contextual in its approach as it is focused
on producing a single type of artifact (i.e. more knowledge about the problem
space) in each context.
The artifacts sustainability science devises must be contextual. First, they are
dependent on specific circumstances and social practices. Artifacts (including know-
ledge) are contextual in the ways in which they are generated and in terms of the
reality they attempt to reflect or manipulate. Second, their role in action, policy and
decision making are contextual. The artifacts required to facilitate deliberation and
the development of solutions will differ depending on needs specific to a given
situation. As Dewey (1920: 71) argues,‘[a]ction is always specific, concrete, individu-
alized, unique. And consequently judgment as to acts to be performed must be
similarly specific… How to live healthily or justly is a matter which differs with every
person.’ An effective design science must be contextual in its approach to the given
problem (and solution) and the ways in which it seeks to foster deliberation.
This design imperative follows the concept of socially robust and contextualized
knowledge developed by Nowotny et al. (2001). Nowotny et al. (2001: 168) argue
90 Reconstructing sustainability science

that ‘…the more highly contextualized the knowledge, the more reliable it is likely
to be… because it remains valid outside the “sterile spaces” created by experi-
mental and theoretical science, a condition we have described as “socially robust”.’
This echoes Dewey’s (1938) assertion that, as Brown (2009: 159) puts it, ‘the
“complete test” of scientific theories requires assessing their consequences in the
world outside the laboratory.’ Rather than being rooted in disciplinary structures,
socially robust knowledge is more responsive to the values and concerns of society
and is produced in conjunction with public knowledge ways, or civic episte-
mologies (Jasanoff 2005). It is therefore more likely to be useful to society across a
wider range of circumstances. In this case, it provides the means to enhance the
ability of society to design more sustainable solutions.

2 Pluralism
Sustainability science must embrace both value and epistemological pluralism.
Instrumentally, pluralism must be recognized and dealt with as a means that is
politically necessary to achieve desired ends. Pragmatically, this pluralism will
enhance the capability of sustainability science to meet the objectives presented
earlier by enabling a richer deliberation over meanings of and potential pathways
to sustainability (i.e. value pluralism) and a more robust account of current prob-
lems and the consequences of future actions (i.e. epistemological pluralism).
While sustainability scientists have attempted to involve stakeholders in their
research, pluralism is utilized as a means to enrich the goal of enhanced under-
standing of coupled human–natural system dynamics (Clark and Dickson 2003;
Matson 2009). Instead, argue Thompson et al. (1998), plurality is located in
discourse, not in the multiplicity of rationally similar actors. Pluralism emerges
‘in a dynamically patterned arrangement of social constructions, and in the
divergent perceptions of risk and of fairness that those constructions give rise to’
(Thompson et al. 1998: 352).
As a result of the diversity of ways in which humans interact with each other
and the environment, sustainability is laden with a plurality of irreducible values
(Minteer 2006; Norton 1991; O’Neill et al. 2008). To some, the idea of value
pluralism within science is at odds with the perception of the value-free ideal of
science (Douglas 2009). Yet, as science studies scholars have shown, ‘there are
multiple possible ends that science can serve, multiple ways in which we might
want to shape our world. Not only are values part of science, but science is very
much tied to society and our decisions about its future’ (Douglas 2009: 53; Frank
1953). Science does not simply provide facts, but shapes our world in particular and
complex ways (Douglas 2009; Jasanoff 2004b, 2005; Sarewitz 2010b). Deliberation
requires value pluralism to ensure that appropriate values shape sustainability
science, the artifacts it designs, and the pathways to sustainability that might be
pursued. Incorporating multiple values in an explicit and transparent manner
enhances democratic accountability and ensures that science addresses issues of
social importance (Douglas 2009; Jasanoff 2003; Norton 2005).Value pluralism is
 Sustainability as a science of design 91

especially important for supporting several of the four proposed design imperatives
discussed below, especially reflexivity and robustness.2
This pluralism is also epistemic.That is, there are multiple ways of knowing the
world as well as different notions of what constitutes knowledge, how it is pro-
duced and how it is applied (Miller and Erickson 2006; Miller et al. 2008; Rescher
2003; Healy 2003). Sustainability science must find approaches to incorporate and
negotiate multiple ways of knowing, particularly civic epistemologies (Jasanoff
2005; Miller 2005), in order to develop a more robust view of current conditions
and desirable futures. Furthermore, diversity significantly enhances group problem-
solving abilities and improves the epistemic quality of deliberative practices (Brown
2009; Page 2007). These epistemological communities must be willing to learn
from experience and are an essential aspect of sustainability because outcomes are
not definable in advance but must emerge from a program of deliberation, active
experimentation and learning (Miller et al. 2008; Norton 2005).

3 Robustness
As Simon (1996) notes, real worlds are not additive.Actions have unforeseen conse-
quences, giving rise to new problems. We can rarely be certain that a particular
sequence of actions will provide the solution that satisfies all conditions and attains
all goals. Instead, in some cases it may be necessary to pursue multiple tentative
paths. Robust strategies are insensitive to uncertainty about the future (Lempert
and Schlesinger 2000).A robust framework asks:‘what actions should we take, given
that we cannot predict the future? The answer… is that society should seek strate-
gies that are robust against a wide range of plausible… futures’ (Lempert and
Schlesinger 2000: 391).
As problems emerge, change or come to be viewed in new ways, sustainability
science must be adaptive in its approach. As the context changes, visions and
strategies may have to be adjusted. This follows the concept of adaptive manage-
ment (Lee 1993; Norton 2005), which recognizes that knowledge will rarely be
certain, but that action is still necessary and so it is best to proceed on a course that
might be effective over a range of possible conditions.
For sustainability science, this requires the pursuit of multiple research agendas and
the exploration of alternative pathways to sustainability.The existing research agenda
for sustainability science has been narrowed to focus on problem spaces. While a
robust research strategy would continue research on coupled-system dynamics, it
would also be part of a broader research agenda focused on sustainable outcomes.

4 Reflexivity
Reflexivity requires that a community not just respond to changing conditions but
also re-examine and re-evaluate fundamental assumptions regarding desirable
‘futuribles’ and horizons of expectations – i.e. re-examine their very definitions of
sustainability and be open to alternative articulations of sustainability.
92 Reconstructing sustainability science

The artifacts produced by sustainability (including knowledge) influence how

sustainability challenges come to be understood by society, future research agendas
and the framing of problems in complex ways (Porter 1995; Sarewitz 2010c; Smith
et al. 2009). Therefore, it is especially important that sustainability science is fully
reflexive in considering the ways it frames social understandings of sustainability –
an ambiguous, contested and value-laden concept (Davison 2000; Norton 2005).
Sustainability scientists must re-examine and re-evaluate their assumptions and
‘open up’ to alternative representations and the pluralism discussed above (Miller
2008; Miller et al. 2011; Stirling 2006).
Reflexivity involves attention to the representation of sustainability, its problems
and proposed solutions, and the ways in which such representations end up
conditioning how we view sustainability (Stirling 2006). More broadly, Grunwald
(2004: 158) argues that reflexivity ‘implies… a far-reaching obligation for trans-
parency of sustainability research with regard to the normative premises which are
employed in the production of knowledge.’ These premises influence the way
sustainability is represented and will influence subsequent action and condition
appropriate behaviors.
Reflexivity requires openness to alternative approaches that may be more effective
in advancing positive social and environmental outcomes. As Voß and Kemp (2006:
6) note, the consequence is that ‘problem solving becomes paradoxical in that it is
oriented towards constriction and selection to reduce complexity but is forced into
expansion and amalgamation to contend with the problems it generates.’ Reflexivity
requires a careful balance between opening up to alternative explanations, values and
representations in the design and deliberation process and closing down in order to
reduce complexity and take action (Voß et al. 2006). A more reflexive sustainability
science must respond to changing conditions and re-examine and re-evaluate funda-
mental assumptions regarding the way sustainability, its problems and potential
solutions are conceptualized and investigated.

The way forward

As Dewey (1920: 10) noted, eventually ‘the environment does enforce a certain
minimum correctness under penalty of extinction.’ To date, sustainability science
has focused on advancing our understanding of coupled human–natural systems.
Sustainability scientists have attempted to discover the places where society might
be in danger of operating beyond its limits. Such research, however, faces significant
epistemic, normative and institutional challenges that limit its ability to provide
useful artifacts, including knowledge, to society and is divorced from the more
critical question of how to act. If sustainability science is to contribute to societal
efforts to act more sustainably, a new and expanded pathway for sustainability
science as a science of design is necessary.
I have proposed a new set of objectives for the field that reposition sustainability
science to focus on solutions rather than on problems through the active design of
sustainable outcomes and an enrichment of deliberation.Table 6.1, below, presents
 Sustainability as a science of design 93

a breakdown of sustainability science as it has developed thus far and as a sustain-

ability science of design. These new objectives will also advance knowledge and
understanding of the social, political, natural and technological processes necessary
to foster the creation of sustainable solutions. The design imperatives proposed
above move sustainability science to engage the role of knowledge, both scientific
and public, in social action. Each of the imperatives addresses the normative and
epistemic limitations of science in the context of sustainability problems.
A design science must be contextual in terms of both the production and the
use of artifacts that contribute to solutions in context. Value and epistemological
pluralism require a diversity of perspectives and ways of knowing beyond the mere
inclusion of stakeholders. Pluralism not only shapes the understanding of problems,
but is critical in contributing to the design of solutions. Sustainability science must
also take a more robust approach in terms of its research agenda. It must be broad
enough to be useful in a wide range of contexts and substantive enough to add to
our understanding of the social, political and technical processes that present either
barriers or opportunities to the design of sustainable solutions. Finally, sustainability
science must be reflexive in its approach to the design of solutions.As sustainability
scientists move to become more engaged with sustainability and social action, they
will shape the way society understands sustainability. Sustainability scientists must
be careful to reflect on how they are influencing discourse and deliberation.
One looming issue is whether or not academia is capable of meeting the
objectives set here, and training the next generation of sustainability scientists. A
science of design requires a different and expanded skill set from those typically
gained in the natural and social sciences. Miller et al. (2011), for example, propose
that for this new breed of sustainability scientists it is not enough just to acquire
substantive knowledge in a set of disciplines or problem areas; they suggest that
future sustainability scientists must have a skill set that enables them to work

TABLE 6.1 Analytical focus, characteristics and objectives for potential sustainability science
pathways.
Sustainability science Sustainability science of design
Analytical focus Problem-space: coupled Solution-space
human-natural systems

Key characteristics • Interdisciplinary • Contextual

• Place-based • Plural (value and epistemic)
• Problem-driven • Robust
• Reflexive

Core objectives • Fundamental knowledge • Design and understanding

• Link knowledge to action of solutions
• Foster societal deliberation
in process
94 Reconstructing sustainability science

between science and society, be aware of the normative and value dimensions of
various issues, and understand and work amongst multiple of ways of knowing, or
practice what Wiek (2007) refers to as ‘epistemediation.’
A sustainability science of design requires thinking beyond the current state of
affairs to explore how preferred, more sustainable, futures might be developed and
pursued. Institutional changes in the incentives offered to researchers, partnerships
with other sectors and groups, and education must be pursued in parallel with the
objectives and imperatives proposed here (Crow 2010; Miller et al. 2011). Just as
Dewey encouraged experimentation in democracy, experimentation should also be
fostered in the design of academic institutions that are performing sustainability
science research and training the next generation of sustainability scientists.
From here, the next step must be to ground the objectives and imperatives that
I have proposed in experience. In order to develop further the framework proposed
here, exemplary case studies must be identified that have successfully generated
sustainable outcomes.This will help identify certain best practices that might act as
guidelines for implementing the design imperatives.

Notes
1 Cultural theory developed four ways of organizing, or plural rationalities (Douglas and
Wildavsky 1983; Schwarz and Thompson 1990).These rationalities are based on myths
of nature (benign; ephemeral; perverse/tolerant; capricious) and typologies of social
relationships (individualist; hierarchical; egalitarian; fatalist) which map onto each other.
This pluralism allows groups to hold contradictory certainties based on conflicting per-
ceptions of the natural environment and social organization. In environmental
controversies and other political spaces, it is not a question of determining ‘the real risks
versus a whole lot of misperceptions… but the clash of plural rationalities, each using
impeccable logic to derive different conclusions (solution definitions) from different
premises (problem definitions)’ (Schwarz and Thompson 1990: 57).
2 There is much debate within environmental ethics as to whether value pluralism can
accommodate the intrinsic value of nature (Minteer 1998; Norton 2009; Rolston
1994). Following Minteer (2001), I would argue that the truth-claims related to
intrinsic value, while perhaps philosophically important, miss the point.The pluralism I
endorse accommodates social actors that promote the intrinsic value of nature as part
of a larger discourse regarding the value of and our responsibilities to nature. That is,
intrinsic value exists insofar as it influences and motivates elements of social discourse
and action.

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7
CONCLUSION
Sustainability and our
socio-technical future

The greatest challenge facing humanity in the twenty-first century is to move our
interconnected social, technological and ecological systems toward sustainability –
advancing human well-being while maintaining the natural life support systems on
which it depends. Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since the concept of
sustainable development emerged on the global stage with the publication of the
World Commission on Economic Development’s seminal report Our Common
Future. Since then, sustainability has captured global attention. New institutions
have emerged at every scale, from global to local, and in every sector, from edu-
cation to business, that is attempting to articulate a new path for social and
economic progress, linking widespread concern over ecological degradation, social
justice and responsibilities to future generations.
Nonetheless, the growing urgency and complexity of many problems – from
climate change and biodiversity loss to ecosystem degradation and persistent
poverty and inequality – continue to challenge our institutions at every level.This
has led many scientists to call for research agendas that are problem-focused,
applied, interdisciplinary and useful to decision making (Kates et al. 2011; Palmer
et al. 2005; Reid et al. 2010). Scientists and the knowledge they generate have
played a significant role in shaping how sustainability is understood by society and
will continue to contribute to our ability to wrestle with the world’s most pressing
problems.
While there is little doubt that science and technology have a crucial role to play
in addressing such wicked problems, there has been less attention paid to the social,
ethical and political dimensions of sustainability and the dynamic between
scientific research and social action in the sustainability science community. The
critical question for scientists concerned with linking knowledge to action is how
can knowledge be connected to actions and decision making that advance our
visions of natural and social well-being? Put somewhat differently, how can science
100 Reconstructing sustainability science

shift from identifying and describing problems to fostering the development of

solutions in social and political realms?
Part I, ‘Constructing sustainability science,’ explored how researchers in the
emerging field of sustainability science are attempting to define sustainability,
establish research agendas and link the knowledge they produce to societal action.
Chapters 1 and 2 reviewed the challenges the wicked problems of sustainability
present to knowledge production and disciplinary organization. Science and tech-
nology studies, particularly the concepts of boundary work, co-production, and
reconstruction, offer fruitful conceptual and theoretical tools for exploring how
sustainability scientists frame sustainability and develop knowledge to both
understand and act on sustainability problems.
Chapter 3 presents the results of an analysis of the content of the sustainability
science literature and interviews with leading researchers in the field.This chapter
focuses on the boundaries sustainability scientists draw around the core normative,
epistemic and socio-political claims of the field.This analysis of the programs, goals
and commitments of sustainability scientists grounds Chapter 4, which explores the
boundaries and tensions between emerging research pathways and decision making
for sustainability. There, I develop a number of insights into the implications of
transforming the contested and value-laden concept of sustainability into the
subject of scientific analysis.
For example, sustainability can be viewed as a platform from which communities
can articulate visions of social and natural well-being, including responsibilities to
nature and future generations. On one hand, science has brought many environ-
mental problems to the world’s attention, including ozone depletion, acid rain and
climate change, which have in turn become the subject of normative and political
concern. On the other hand, in offering objective and epistemically powerful
explanations of natural phenomena, science can also constrain what is considered
appropriate, legitimate or necessary discourse (Collingridge and Reeve 1986;
Jasanoff 2004a; Latour 2004). Similarly, though the knowledge generated by sustain-
ability scientists may, in theory, contribute to better decision making, the
institutional and epistemological contexts that link knowledge to societal outcomes
are complex and may require changes in scientific focus and practice.
Exploring these issues, Part I provides an essential understanding of the complex
relationship between science, social change and the normative dimensions of
sustainability. It also serves to enhance the ability of sustainability to act as a concept
for articulating normative notions related to nature, social justice and future
generations. Each of these points developed in Part I lays groundwork for Part II –
the reconstruction of sustainability science.
Part II reformulates the sustainability science research agenda and its relationship
to decision making and social action. The current approaches to investigating
sustainability problems, while valuable, fall short on fostering sustainable outcomes
owing to epistemic and normative limitations as well as a research agenda limited
to addressing fundamental questions about coupled human–natural systems. In
Chapter 5 I discuss the epistemic and normative limits of sustainability.This creates
 Conclusion 101

a foundation for reconsidering the role of sustainability science in the broader

sustainability discourse.
Chapter 6 creates a framework for a sustainability science of design that is more
overtly normative in nature, focusing on what ought to be in order to attain sustain-
ability goals. It is evaluated based on its capability to frame sustainability problems
and solutions in ways that make them amenable to democratic and pragmatic social
action. To support this new framework, I examine two case studies of innovative
sustainability research centers, the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions at
Erasmus University in Rotterdam (DRIFT) and the Lowell Center for Sustainable
Production at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, that act as examples of how
a science of design can be constructed. I reposition sustainability science as a
‘science of design’ – that is, a normative science of what ought to be in order to
achieve certain goals – rather than a science of what is. This is a proposal for a
sustainability science that is oriented towards the social, political and technological
space in which solutions are formulated and deployed – one that aims to enrich
public reasoning and deliberation while also working to generate social and tech-
nological innovations for a more sustainable future. A sustainability science of
design requires thinking beyond the current state of affairs to explore how
preferred, more sustainable, futures can be developed and pursued. This requires
that we rethink research priorities, the role of science in society and the training of
the next generation of sustainability scientists.

Transforming research and education for sustainability

As sustainability becomes the focus of new educational programs, research centers
and funding agencies (not to mention a priority for global governance, urban
development and the like), this project has presented a timely analysis of the
emergence of sustainability science and both the opportunities and barriers faced
by scientific efforts to contribute to social action. Just as importantly, it offers a
framework for moving sustainability science forward with a renewed focus on
innovation and the search for solutions. As such, it fills a critical gap between
attempts to build research agendas focused on human–environment interactions
and a better understanding of how science can effectively contribute to positive
social outcomes.This project creates an opportunity for the emergence of a more
reflexive sustainability science and demonstrates the necessity of addressing the
social, political and normative dimensions of sustainability.
Sustainability and sustainability science, more specifically, are rapidly growing
fields as evidenced by the proliferation of undergraduate and graduate programs,
research institutes, funding from governmental and non-governmental sources and
academic journals.
However, many of these programs carry implicit assumptions about the role of
knowledge in decision making and broader social action that have been shown to
be problematic. Further, these developments have largely, though certainly not
exclusively, focused on the merging of insights from the natural and social sciences
102 Reconstructing sustainability science

with the assumption that a more integrative, or holistic, understanding of sustain-

ability problems will enable us to act more quickly and effectively.A design science
for sustainability expands that focus of research to the production of artifacts that,
following Dewey, can help us act in the world. Artifacts can be integrative know-
ledge, but can also include technologies, decision frameworks, scenarios, even
stories or narratives. This design science positions sustainability science as co-
creating the tools for helping communities and society to act.
This focus on artifacts has substantial implications for how research and edu-
cation is organized around sustainability science. Rather than a sole concern with
interdisciplinary knowledge, the focus is on the production of an artifact in the so-
called solution space (i.e. the social and political context in which action might take
place). It is this context that will determine the disciplines, expertise and stake-
holders needed at the table; as opposed to a more abstract notion that we need
natural and social sciences to understand coupled human–natural systems. As such,
there must be a more fluid incorporation of engineering and technical expertise as
well as knowledge from the humanities, for artifacts focused on stories, ethics or
narrative scenario-building. So, too, must the boundaries between the ‘real world’
and academia be broken down.The ability of artifacts to contribute to substantive
social action depends on their being contextualized and socially robust (i.e. valid
beyond the laboratory). A co-construction of these artifacts with stakeholders,
decision makers and the public is necessary to develop, test and deploy them.
Finally, these artifacts can themselves act as boundary objects (Star and
Griesemer 1989), bringing together different knowledges, expertise, values and
stakeholders. As the cases of DRIFT and the Lowell Center for Sustainable Pro-
duction illustrate, a focus on artifacts and the solution space moves beyond
disciplinary thinking to consider how sustainability goals are articulated and
pursued into socio-technical systems.
As Miller et al. (2009: 5) note,‘…the sustainability challenge is largely about how
human societies in the 21st century choose to build, maintain, and reform the
socio-technological systems of the future.’ Sustainability transitions, however
defined, will be a social, political and cultural process enabled in part by technology.
While sustainability science has made substantial inroads into our understanding of
complex problems in coupled human–natural systems, progress on how this
knowledge will foster decisions that lead to more desirable outcomes and analyses
of the processes necessary to move to sustainability are lacking. In order for sustain-
ability science to contribute to solutions, we must pursue a design science
approach. I hope this is but the beginning of an earnest and challenging discussion
on new approaches and research pathways that are urgently needed to ensure a
more relevant future for sustainability science and advance social-technological
change towards sustainability.
 Conclusion 103

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Appendix A
INTERVIEW SUBJECTS

Subject Position Interviewed How/where

James Buizer Science Policy Advisor to the 1.29.10 Telephone
President, Arizona State
University
F. Stuart (Terry) Professor of Ecology, University 9.30.09 Gabriola Island,
Chapin III of Alaska Fairbanks Canada
William C. Clark Harvey Brooks Professor of 11.18.09 Telephone
International Science, Public
Policy and Human Development,
Harvard University
Nancy Dickson Co-Director, Center for 11.13.09 Cambridge, MA
International Development,
Harvard University
Carl Folke Professor, Science Director, 9.30.09 Gabriola Island,
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Canada
Stockholm University
Mike Hulme Professor of Climate Change, 7.13.09 East Anglia, UK
University of East Anglia
Jill Jäger Senior Researcher, Sustainable 11.18.09 Telephone
Europe Research Institute
René Kemp Professor of Innovation and 7.9.09 Maastricht,
Sustainable Development, Netherlands
Maastricht University
David Kriebel Co-Director, Lowell Center 11.16.09 Lowell, MA
for Sustainable Production,
University of Massachusetts
Lowell
 Appendix A 105

Subject Position Interviewed How/where

Simon Levin Moffett Professor of Biology, 12.16.09 Telephone
Princeton University
Derk Loorbach Senior Researcher, Dutch 7.8.09 Rotterdam,
Research Institute for Transitions, Netherlands
Erasmus University
Donald Ludwig Emeritus Professor, University 10.5.09 Vancouver,
of British Columbia Canada
Pim Martens Scientific Director, International 7.9.09 Maastricht,
Centre for Integrated Assessment Netherlands
and Sustainable Development,
Maastricht University
Pamela Matson Dean of the School of Earth 9.26.09 Palo Alto, CA
Sciences, Professor of
Environmental Studies, Stanford
University
Takashi Mino Professor, Department of 7.22.09 Tokyo, Japan
Environmental Studies, Graduate
Program in Sustainability Science,
University of Tokyo
Lennart Olsson Director, Lund University Centre 10.30.09 Washington, DC
for Sustainability Studies
Elinor Ostrom Distinguished Professor, 9.30.09 Gabriola Island,
Indiana University Canada
Thomas Parris Vice President, ISciences 7.8.09 Utrecht,
Netherlands
Paul Raskin President,Tellus Institute 12.17.09 Telephone
John Robinson Executive Director, UBC 10.5.09 Vancouver,
Vancouver Sustainability Inititative, Canada
Professor, University of British
Columbia
Jan Rotmans Director, Dutch Research 11.24.09 Telephone
Institute for Transitions, Erasmus
University
Kazuhiko Takeuchi Vice-Rector, United Nations 7.17.09 Tokyo, Japan
University, Deputy Executive
Director, Integrated Research
System for Sustainability Science
B.L.Turner II Gilbert F.White Professor of 6.5.09 Tempe, AZ
Environment and Society, School
of Geographical Sciences and
Urban Planning, Arizona State
University
106 Appendix A

Subject Position Interviewed How/where

Richard Welford Deputy Director, Corporate 7.6.09 Utrecht,
Environmental Governance Netherlands
Program, Hong Kong University
Jinguo (Jingle) Wu Professor of Ecology, Evolution 6.4.09 Tempe, AZ
and Environmental Science,
School of Life Sciences,
Arizona State University
Masaru Yarime Associate Professor, Graduate 7.22.09 Tokyo, Japan
Program in Sustainability Science,
University of Tokyo
Appendix B
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

I What is sustainability?
1 To start, please describe or define what sustainability means to you.
2 Do you think that sustainability is a meaningful concept?
i Prompt: In terms of science or societal action?
ii Can there be multiple definitions? (Positive? Liability?)
iii Is it something that is achievable?
3 What are some potential barriers or obstacles to sustainability?
4 What are some of the ways you see science and technology (S&T) contributing
to sustainability?

II Sustainability science
1 Now I would like to turn to the role of S&T in sustainability. Sustainability has
come to mean many things to many people. Please list what you consider to be
the most important goals S&T should be pursuing to contribute to sustainability
(i.e. what to solve).
2 What are the key research questions and priorities for S&T for sustainability that
you as researchers are pursuing?
i What are the issues and concerns that are driving the agenda?
1 Prompt: Why is this an important issue?
2 To what extent is the S&T-for-sustainability research agenda defined by
the problems it addresses?
a What problems? How are they defined?
ii What are the big problems/obstacles/challenges to addressing these issues?
iii What do you think the gaps in the research agenda are?
1 Why do you think these gaps exist?
2 How might they be addressed?
3 Does S&T for sustainability have distinct normative characteristics (e.g. what to
sustain, for whom, how long)?
i What are they?
1 What should they be?
108 Appendix B

ii What does this mean for science?

iii How is S&T for sustainability distinct from other approaches such as those
more traditionally based in ecology or environmental science, for instance?
4 Much of the literature on S&T for sustainability stresses the importance of
involving stakeholders in research and in linking knowledge to action.
i In your view, who is driving the S&T-for-sustainability research agenda?
1 Who is missing from this?
2 What is the public’s role? What should it be?
3 Do stakeholders need to be involved in S&T for sustainability?
4 What role do scientists play in shaping research agendas for
sustainability? What role should they be playing?
ii Has S&T been successful in linking knowledge to action?
1 How so? Why not?
2 What might this entail?
3 How might S&T for sustainability influence policy more effectively?
4 What kind of policy/action do you envision S&T affecting?
5 Do scientists involved in sustainability research have different responsibilities than
those in traditional disciplines?
i Prompt: Do they have different responsibilities to science/society?
ii What does this entail?
6 Are there different subcommunities within the S&T-for-sustainability
community?
i What are the differences between them? The similarities?
ii What would you not consider S&T for sustainability?

III Personal research and motivation

1 Please briefly describe your own research.
i Has sustainability shaped your own research agenda? How?
1 How do you see sustainability making your research different?
2 Prompt: How is it shaping the questions you are asking? The problems
you are addressing?
ii Do you see your research contributing to sustainability? How?
1 Do you consider your own work to be sustainability science?
2 How is it different from other types of interdisciplinary research (or research
performed in your home discipline?)
i How would you identify yourself as a researcher? (What field?)
3 What has motivated you to perform research to address sustainability concerns?
4 Where would you like to see S&T for sustainability go in the next ten years?
INDEX

academic journals 16, 22 coupled systems research 15–16, 34–5,

adaptive management 91 41–2, 71–2
agriculture, scientification of 57–8 cultural theory 94n
American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS) 16 decision makers: identification of needs
Angelus Novus (Klee) 79 37; knowledge relevance and credibility
artifacts: co-construction, value of 102; 54–6
contextual design 89–90; definition deliberation: local knowledge dismissed
and purpose 82; deliberation process 70–1; public communities 85–7; value
85; reflexivity 91–2; robust strategies pluralism 90
91; value and epistemological pluralism Dewey, John 67–8, 80, 81, 85, 89
90–1 Dutch Research Institute for Transitions
artificial sciences 80 (DRIFT) 59, 87–8

Bali Irrigation Project 70 epistemic claims: boundary work 41, 41–2;

Beck, Ulrich 30, 79 coupled systems research 34–5; social
Benjamin,Walter 79–80 change approach 35–6
Berkes, Fikret 59 epistemological pluralism 90, 91
boundary work: boundary management
37–8, 38, 39; claims in sustainability Folke, Carl 31
science 41, 41–2; definition and functional integrity 42
purpose 20–1; misguided by science Future Earth initiative 4
58; normative distancing 32, 40–1
Brundtland Report (1987) 15, 72 German forestry science 51
Bush,Vannevar 18 Green Revolution 57, 70

Cartwright, Nancy 69 horizons of expectations 73

civic epistemologies 49, 91
Clark,William C. 16–17, 31, 34–5, 56–7 International Council for Science (ICSU)
climate science 72, 74n 3–4, 14, 16
clumsy solutions 86–7
constructivist approach 19–22 Jäger, Jill 35, 39
convergent/divergent thinking 47–8 Jamieson, Dale 32, 41, 52
110 Index

Kates, Robert 30, 32 15–16; coupled systems research 15–16,

knowledge-first trap 53–6, 82 35–6, 41, 71–2; methodological analysis
Kriebel, David 39, 83 22; process-orientated approach 38–40,
Kuhn,Thomas 47–8 40; reconstructivist approach 23–4;
science and technology studies (STS)
Lansing, Stephen 70 19–22; social change approach 35–6,
limitations: complexity and conflicting 41; use-inspired research 16–19, 17
guidance 69–70; knowledge-first Rittel, Horst 6, 10n
approach 68, 70–1; traditional Robinson, John 33, 39–40
knowledge dismissed 58, 70; values, Rotmans, Jan 31, 33, 39, 88
articulation of 71–3
linear model of science 18, 19, 47 Sagoff, Mark 42, 52
Longino, Helen 21, 52, 86 Sarewitz, Daniel 55, 57
Loorbach, Derk 35–6, 39 satisficing solutions 82
Lowell Centre for Sustainable Production science and technology studies (STS):
82–4 constructivist analysis 19–22;
Lubchenco, Jane 18 reconstructivist approach 23–4
science of design: design imperatives
Matson, Pam 32, 37, 55 88–92, 89, 93; design of solutions 80–1;
medical science, selective priorities 57, 58 reasoning and deliberation processes
moral maximalism 31–2 85–7; reconstruction objectives 81,
moral minimalism 31–2 92–4, 93; sustainable solutions, design of
82–4; transition management and arenas
National Academy of Sciences 16 87–8
National Acid Precipitation Assessment scientific knowledge: certification and
Programme (NAPAP) 55–6 decision making 54–6; interpretation
National Research Council (US) 15, 30, and contested values 47–8, 53–4, 58–9;
32–3, 72 perceived epistemic value 70–1, 72;
Nelson, Richard 7, 54 social action, contribution to 4–5,
normative claims: boundary work 41; 39–40, 40
defining sustainability 30; procedural Scott, James 51
sustainability 32–3, 41; universalist Simon, Herbert 58, 80, 82
sustainability 30–2, 40–1 social change approach 35–6, 41
Norton, Bryan G. 9, 31, 33, 41, 71, 85, 86 social learning 86
socially robust knowledge 89–90
Olsson, Lennart 38 socio-political claims: boundary work 41;
Our Common Journey (NRC) 15 knowledge first approach 36–8, 38;
process-orientated approach 38–40
Parris,Thomas 30, 32, 34 Stoker, Donald 17, 17
Pasteur’s Quadrant (Stoker) 17, 17 sustainability science: core objectives
place-based research: case studies 16; proposed 80–1, 92–4; fundamental
fundamental element 15, 50, 54 aims 5–6, 71–2; future research and
planetary stewardship 3, 4 education 101–2; institutionization of
Planet under Pressure Conference 2012: 16; interdisciplinary research 71, 102;
State of the Planet Declaration 3–4 multigenerational perspective 9, 73–4,
problem and solution space: evaluative case 91; problem context 6–8, 56–7;
study 83–4; focus of inquiry 80, 82, tensions within 47–8; value-laden
102 definitions 30
procedural sustainability 32–3, 41 sustainability transition: scientific
process-orientated approach 38–40, 40 knowledge 15, 73; transition
management 35–6, 39, 87–8
reconstructivist approach 23–4 sustainable development 14–15, 24–5n
reflexivity 23–4, 91–2 sustainable production 83–4
research agendas: academic institutions
 Index 111

Takacs, David 22 United Nations Environment Programme

tame problems 6–7, 8 (UNEP) 14
technological fixes 7–8 universalist sustainability 30–2, 40–1
tensions within science: constraining use-inspired research 16–19, 17
concepts and categories 50–3;
knowledge certification and decision value pluralism 90–1, 94n
making 54–6; knowledge interpre- values and goals, shaping of 48–50, 58–9,
tation and social action 47–8, 53–4; 72
scientizing of social problems 56–9;
values and goals, shaping of 48–50, Walzer, Michael 31–2
58–9 Webber, Melvin 6, 10n
Thatcher, Peter 14 wicked problems: characteristics 10n;
thin/thick sustainability 31–2, 40 concept 6; interpretation difficulties 7,
Third World Academy of Sciences 30–1 8, 69, 72
Thompson, Paul 19, 42 World Commission on Economic
Toulmin, Stephen 73 Development (WCED) 15, 30
traditional knowledge: integration and
collaboration 59; overruled by science
57, 70
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