Transforming Innovation for Sustainability
Date
2012-08-01Author
Rockström, Johan
Olsson, Per
Folke, Carl
Arond, Elisa
Thompson, John
Ely, Adrian
Millstone, Erik
Smith, Adrian
Stirling, Andy C.
Scoones, Ian
Raskin, Paul
Leach, Melissa
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Abstract
The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a "safe operating space" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary article argues that ambitious Sustainable Development Goals are now required along with major transformation, not only in policies and technologies, but in modes of innovation themselves, to meet them. As examples of dryland agriculture in East Africa and rural energy in Latin America illustrate, such "transformative innovation" needs to give far greater recognition and power to grassroots innovation actors and processes, involving them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics. The three dimensions of direction, diversity, and distribution along with new forms of "sustainability brokering" can help guide the kinds of analysis and decision making now needed to safeguard our planet for current and future generations.
Citation
Leach, M., J. Rockström, P. Raskin, I. Scoones, A. C. Stirling, A. Smith, J. Thompson, E. Millstone, A. Ely, E. Arond, C. Folke, and P. Olsson. 2012. Transforming innovation for sustainability. Ecology and Society 17(2): 11.More details
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art11/Rights holder
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ESRCCollections
- ESRC STEPS Centre [225]