Mapping Epistemological Challenges of Studying Transformations to Sustainability

Organized by Working Group on Governance of Social-Ecological Systems

Studying governance transformations to sustainability in a world that undergoes multiple crises entails epistemological challenges that are specific to this object of study. The purpose of this session from the Working Group on Governance of Social-Ecological Systems is to facilitate an interdisciplinary dialogue to identify key challenges to systematic knowledge generation about transformations. For instance, what criteria do we use to claim that something has transformed? At the center of this question lies a deeper issue of how transformations to sustainability are defined. Multiple non-synonymous definitions exist across approaches, and the way and extent to which they are linked to empirics varies widely, which raises additional questions on how theoretical findings from different approaches relate to each other.

This session of the Working Group will start with a short presentation about studies exemplifying transformation in an era of polycrisis, highlighting definitions and the kind of knowledge about transformations that is produced and how. Then, breakout groups will focus on identifying epistemological challenges related to session participants’ approaches. The outcome of the session will be a map of different epistemological challenges across approaches. We will close the session by identifying key challenges to which we suggest ways forward that will be further discussed in subsequent meetings.