Co-creating change: experimenting with values for sustainability transformation

Project Information

COEXIST

Grant agreement ID: 840207

DOI

10.3030/840207

Project closed

EC signature date 23 April 2019

Start date 17 August 2020

End date 16 August 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 141 778,56

EU contribution

€ 141 778,56

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI
Romania

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COEXIST (Co-creating change: experimenting with values for sustainability transformation)

Reporting period: 2020-08-17 to 2022-08-16

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

COEXIST addressed the issue of how to engage with values as leverage points for sustainability transformation using knowledge co-production as both an interventional experimental setting, but also as a way to produce scientifically appropriate and socially relevant knowledge for sustainability transformations. COEXIST is part of a growing discourse revolving around how sustainability science can contribute towards the goal of transformative change in response to complex global problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion. The overall objectives were to: i) identify, review and synthetize theories and bodies of knowledge that can support developing an experimental approach involving value-based interventions; ii) identify knowledge (co-)production practices that can support an experimental approach involving value-based interventions; iii) develop an integrated model of an experimental approach involving value-based interventions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

COEXIST achieved three main results:
1. Advancing the notion of values as leverage points with transformative potential that can be unleashed (leveraged) for sustainability transformation. Considering values as leverage points goes beyond measuring values, understanding values, eliciting values, doing valuation, incorporating values into decision-making. Avenues for engaging with values as leverage points relate to: i) recognizing sustainability as a normative concept together with the ethical dimension of guiding, catalyzing or inciting sustainability transformations; ii) designing and organizing intentional deliberate practices for exercising values consciousness, awareness and reflexivity; iii) exploring and contemplating values from a philosophical and teleological perspective as moral principles of what is to be desired in human life.
2. Consequently, clarifying the role that science can play in mobilizing values, for example by designing instances of co-production of knowledge as an intervention, as an experiment that on the one had allows for the production of empirical evidence through iterative prototyping, tracking, documenting, evaluating and learning from cumulating outcomes, and on the other hand is weaved to and embedded in processes of social change.
3. Systematizing how to engage with values for sustainability transformation employing a complementary top-down and bottom-up perspective, at an individual, collective and societal level, and drawing on different theoretical traditions and interdisciplinary bodies of knowledge researching the link between values and change. For example, values are predictors or determinants of human behavior according to the behavioral sciences; values are leverage points according to sustainability science and social-ecological systems communities; values as guiding elements of how the world should be according to the humanities; dominant (regime) values are an expression of power according to political ecology.

These results are covered by recent publications, publications under review and in preparation. Example: Horcea-Milcu, A.-I. (2022). Values as leverage points for sustainability transformation: two pathways for transformation research. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 57, 101205. doi:10.1016/J.COSUST.2022.101205

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

COEXIST highlighted how crucial it is to clarify that engaging with values for sustainability transformation demands becoming critically aware of and rethinking the relationship between science and society (e.g. mode-1 and mode-2 science). This clarification is vital not only for the particular case of values, but for any attempt of science aiming to contribute to societal transformation. If science aims to be a critical lever in realizing the 2030 Agenda then a branch of science itself needs to transform. Dominant research modes are not enough to foster the societal transformations necessary to achieve the SDGs. Unlocking the full potential of science to respond to current sustainability crises requires a system change in the way science is conducted and harnessed. COEXIST terms this reform of the scientific institutions as transformative research, a mode of knowledge production that couples generating knowledge to co-creating change.

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