Work

Three principles for co-designing sustainability intervention strategies: Experiences from Southern Transylvania

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: Transformational research frameworks provide understanding and guidance for fostering change towards sustainability. They comprise stages of system understanding, visioning and co-designing intervention strategies to foster change. Guidance and empirical examples for how to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention strategies in real-world contexts remain scarce, especially with regard to integrating local initiatives. We suggest three principles to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention strategies that integrate local initiatives: (1) Explore existing and envisioned initiatives fostering change towards the desired future; (2) Frame the intervention strategy to bridge the gap between the present state and desired future state(s), building on, strengthening and complementing existing initiatives; (3) Identify drivers, barriers and potential leverage points for how to accelerate progress towards sustainability. We illustrate our approach via a case study on sustainable development in Southern Transylvania. We conclude that our principles were useful in the case study, especially with regards to integrating initiatives, and could also be applied in other real-world contexts.

Source: AMBIO

DOI: 10.1007/s13280-019-01302-x

Authors: David P. M. Lam, Andra I. Horcea-Milcu, Joern Fischer, Daniela Peukert, Daniel J. Lang

Institutions: Leuphana University of Lüneburg, University of Helsinki

Language: English

Topic: Sustainability and Climate Change Governance

Subfield: Global and Planetary Change

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Climate action

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,760