Sustainability as a Concept of the Social Sciences

Sustainability as a Concept of the Social Sciences - Decleration

Enhancing Social Scientific Understanding of Sustainability

Declaration on the occasion of the conference "Sustainability as a Social Science Concept" within the UNESCO-MOST Programme, held in Frankfurt, November 1996

AGENDA 21, the final document of the Rio-Conference on Environment and Development emphasises the importance of new scientific efforts and approaches for achieving sustainable development. The following four "programme areas" are identified:

Strengthening the scientific basis for sustainable development
Enhancing scientific understanding
Improving long-term scientific assessment
Building up scientific capacity and capability.

With respect to the understanding of sustainable development, AGENDA 21 proposes a need to "intensify research to integrate the physical, economic and social sciences to better understand the impacts of economic and social behaviour on the environment and of environmental degradation on local and global economies". While the natural sciences traditionally are involved in environmental research to a very high degree, the support for the social sciences as well as the systematic enlisting of social scientific contributions to interdisciplinary research in this field have not yet been matched to the expectations of the post-Rio-process. A new strategic effort is needed both on the part of scientists and policy-makers, all the more so as sustainable development does not merely deal with the conservation of nature or the management of ecosystems, but more broadly and fundamentally aims at new models of societal development and social transformation. Sustainability refers to the viability of socially shaped relationships between society and nature over long periods of time. Therefore, environmental sustainability is closely linked to supposedly "internal" problems of social struc-ture, such as social justice, gender equality and political participation of local actors.

With regard to such issues, there can be little doubt that substantial and problem-oriented contributions of the social sciences are indispensable for the understanding of sustainability. This means it is necessary to open both the natural and social sciences to local environmental knowledge and different cultural and gender experience in order to deepen the understanding of sustainability in its environmental, economic, social, political and cultural aspects and to avoid the supremacy of hegemonial, technocratic and ethno-centric approaches.

We feel the following points reflect burning needs as how science and related research policies should strengthen the role of the social sciences within the research into sustainability:

Of crucial importance is the establishment of new interdisciplinary research programmes on the national as well as international level. Within such new research programmes, the social sciences should not only play an instrumental role for national governments or natural scientific experts, but must express the multiplicity of cultural, regional or gender perspectives on sustainable development.

Closely linked to this issue, the building of scientific capacities for sustainability research has to get started, particularly in the so-called developing countries.

Social scientists themselves must get involved in a process of re-orientation towards new issues as well as towards inter- or transdisciplinary work not only among the social science disciplines but also in conjunction with natural sciences.

Given this situation in general and with the aim of strengthening chapter 35 of AGENDA 21 we claim:

1. The MOST-Programme ("Management of Social Transformations") of UNESCO which can be regarded as an appropriate institutional frame for sustainability-related and policy-relevant research in the social sciences must play a central role in international research activities on sustainable development. There-fore, we exhort both national governments, particularly those of the industrialised countries, and international institutions to give more and adequate financial and organisational support to the MOST-Programme in order to create a basis for interdisciplinary and problem-oriented social scientific research into sus-tainability.

2. Regarding the building of sustainability research capacities in the social sciences, there is a strong need for new forms of interdisciplinary research institutes and organisations able to adequately study the problems raised by the objective of sustainable development. Establishing new interdisciplinary "Centers for Sustainability Studies" on international, national and especially regional levels could be a suitable and successful way to meet this need. In addition, existing institutions for development studies ought to incorporate the different dimensions of sustainability in their research. This implies a re-orientation of training and research in the industrialised countries of the North as well as the building of independent training and research capacities in the countries of the South. Interdisciplinary post-graduate programmes with appropriate curricula should be established at the universities of the North and South. The UNITWIN UNESCO Chairs programme can be used as an appropriate framework in this respect. Here too, the industrialised countries should engage much more in supporting and enhancing this process.

3. As the concept of sustainability represents a fundamental challenge at the theoretical and methodological levels, re-orientation within the social sciences themselves is required, implying

firstly, to give more attention to now vital issues such as land use, the social use of natural resources like water or wood, production and consumption patterns, the loss of biodiversity, etc.;
secondly, to improve and intensify interdisciplinary cooperation among the various social science disciplines. This is necessary to achieve a more integrated and comprehensive understanding of development processes, as well as the relationships between individuals and the environment in their social, political, economic, psychological and cultural aspects. With regard to this, the historical boundaries between the disciplines must be re-examined and methodologies of interdisciplinary research are to be developed;
thirdly, to expand the problem-oriented cooperation between the social and the natural sciences on issues and questions of sustainability. Of crucial importance here is that natural and social sciences cooperate on an equal basis, starting from the phase of defining the problems under study.

4. The project "Sustainability as a Concept of the Social Sciences" within the MOST-Programme of UNESCO has given an important impulse for enhancing re-orientation of both the research policies and the social sciences towards the new issues of sustainability. Moreover, it is intended to be the starting-point for building an international discussion and research network of (social) scientists concerned with sustainability as well as sustainable development policies. Policy-makers interested in sustainability issues should also be part of this network. In order to promote social science research on sustainability, exemplary research projects, especially in a cross-cultural and comparative perspective, are to be sketched out. Within this framework a main concern should be the examination of policies followed by the industrialised countries in order to contribute to a global change towards sustainable development strategies.

Substantial steps towards sustainable development can only be made, if national governments, Development Aid Agencies in industrialised countries, the UN system, particularly UNESCO, UNDP, UNEP, the World Bank, GEF (Global Environmental Fund), the European Union as well as private foundations are willing to support social scientific research on a broad organisational and financial basis. As a first step, political and financial support must be given to cross-national, social scientific pilot projects on sustainability, including scientists from countries of the North and the South.

List of first signatories

Prof. Henri Acselrad
Institute for Urban and Regional Planning (IPPUR), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Prof. Egon Becker

Institute for Social-Ecological Research, Frankfurt;

and Dept. of Educational Sciences, University of Frankfurt, Germany

Dr. Tatjana Bochkareva

Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Prof. Rosi Braidotti

Women's Studies Department, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

Prof. Lothar Brock

Dept. of Social Sciences, University of Frankfurt, Germany

Prof. Nazli Choucri

Dept. of Political Science, MIT, Cambridge MA, USA

Prof. Margrit Eichler

Dept. of Sociology in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,

University of Toronto, Canada

Dr. Marina Fischer-Kowalski

Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Continuing Education, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Wien, Vienna, Austria

Prof. John Gowdy

Dept. of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, USA

Dr. Ramachandra Guha,

Bangalore, India

Prof. Paulina Makinwa-Adebusoye

Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), Ibadan, Nigeria

Prof. Joan Martinez Alier

Dept. of Economics and Economic History, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Prof. Hisayoshi Mitsuda

Dept. of Sociology, Bukkyo University, Kyoto, Japan

Prof. Robert Paehlke

Dept. of Political Studies and Environmental and Resource Studies Program

Trent University, Peterborough, Canada

Dr. Shalini Randeria

Institute of Sociology, Free University, Berlin, Germany

Prof. Carlos Reboratti

Director, Institute of Geography, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Prof. Michael Redclift

Wye College, University of London, Great Britain

Prof. Rusong Wang

Dept. of Systems Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China

Prof. Carol Werner

Dept. of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA

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