| Project Detail |
Innovative research for sustainability transformation
Climate change is a fundamental, ongoing socio-ecological challenge for society. Sustainability scientists analyse ecological challenges like climate change to create interventions that contribute to solving these problems. But often we lack the necessary knowledge to bring about a positive transformation in a given situation (i.e. transformation knowledge). Funded by the European Research Council, the LEVER project aims to develop and implement a theory and practice that supports the production of transformational knowledge. The project will combine transdisciplinary research with social science experiments to investigate values as leverage points for sustainability transformation and create an integrated theory of transformative research. LEVER represents a significant step forward for the European relationship between science and society.
Grand and persistent social-ecological challenges, such as climate change, push forward a rapidly growing discourse on how sustainability science can support society in dealing with today’s global crises. Between studying change and contributing to change, sustainability science seeks both to analytically understand sustainability problems, but also to design interventions that can contribute solution-options to these problems. However, knowledge about how to intervene in order to reach a desirable vision (i.e. transformation knowledge) is typically missing. Especially how to deliberately engage with values as places of intervention (leverage points), as proposed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, remains a critical knowledge gap. To fill these gaps, LEVER aims to critically develop and apply a transformative theory and practice to support the (co-)production of transformation knowledge, including a focus on transformation knowledge necessary to investigate and unleash values as leverage points for sustainability transformation. To this end, LEVER originally combines transdisciplinary research with the empirically rigorous methods of social science experiments. The scientific breakthrough consists in delivering an integrated theory of transformative research, capable of representing the many co-evolving links between its design principles, philosophy of science, normative assumptions, and ethical dimensions. Methodologically, LEVER opens new avenues on how to produce transformation knowledge, by experimenting with, testing and evaluating novel transformative methods. Finally, LEVER seeks to answer the globally relevant and timely question of how to unleash values. Using a treatment and control group experimental design, LEVER assesses the impact of values-targeting interventions and demonstrates the potential of values as leverage points. LEVER pioneers a salient conscious science-society relationship in Europe. |
