Click here to Download Poster

The SDG Shortcut

Questioning wood stove heat in Lancaster as coproduction of knowledge 

Joanna Stanberry, PhD Student, University of Cumbria
Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability
Institute of Industry, Business, and Leadership
Institute for Science and Environment

As an area of applied research the UN Sustainable Development Goals represent the coming together of diverse actors across knowledges, nationality, region, and academic disciplines–every nation signed on. The goals, indicators, and targets and their encapsulation into People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnerships, represent the outcome of these collaborations (Brown & Rasmussen 2019).  However, the implementation of the SDGs is falling far short of targets (Ciarli et al, 2022), and criticisms of the economic and consumption models on which it is based suggest systems-wide failures are likely (Bendell 2022). This poster describes a heuristic framework to introduce the possibility that, when taken as a whole and not in parts, the SDGs could organize human imagination towards the project of highlighting the conceptual inconsistencies of the Goals and sparking co-creation of convergence research that shifts paradigms by integrating knowledges and sectors (NRC, 2014).

Heuristics are an effective tool for integrating theory and practice (Kahneman & Frederick, 2005). Instead of conclusive or validated distinctions, they provide “provocative and catalytic” categories and reveal their use and implications in concrete examples (Stirling 2014). In participatory frameworks for research they can be reflexive processes that help the researcher explore, focus, and raise awareness (Alexakos 2015).

This heuristic exercise begins with the question—In light of both the climate emergency and the energy crisis, what part could or should wood stove heat play in the energy transition in Lancaster? Then moving through the five “Ps” under which the 17 SDGs are grouped, the framework reflects each “P” concept with its requisite goals onto the problem. When data generated from the heuristic exercise is then located within a Sustainability Science framework for crafting usable knowledge in Socio-Ecological Systems (Clark et al, 2016), a sketch of possible novel pathways for knowledge coproduction and “informed agitation” emerges (Sen 2013, Clark & Harley 2020). 

References

Alexakos, K. (2015). Being a Teacher | Researcher: A Primer on Doing Authentic Inquiry Research on Teaching and Learning. Springer.

Bendell, J. (2022). Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters. Sustainability, 14(13), 8185. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14138185

Brown, K., & Rasmussen, K. (2019, July 9). The Sustainable Development Goals in 2019: People, Planet, Prosperity in Focus. Unfoundation.org. https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/the-sustainable-development-goals-in-2019-people-planet-prosperity-in-focus/

Ciarli, T. (editor), AlDoh, A., Arora, S., Arza, V., Asinsten, J., Assa, J., Chataway, J., Colonna, A., Confraria, H., Kombo, P. N., Mittal, N., Mulgan, G., Ndege, N., Noyons, E., Ouma-Mugabe, J., Bhuvana, N., Rafols, I., Steenmans, I., Stirling, A., … Yegros, A. (2022). Changing Directions: Steering science, technology and innovation towards the Sustainable Development Goals. University of Sussex. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/108587/

Clark, W. C., & Harley, A. G. (2020). Sustainability Science: Toward a Synthesis. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 45(1), 331–386.

Clark, W. C., van Kerkhoff, L., Lebel, L., & Gallopin, G. C. (2016). Crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(17), 4570–4578.

Committee on Key Challenge Areas for Convergence and Health, Board on Life Sciences, Division on Earth and Life Studies, & National Research Council. (2014). Convergence: Facilitating Transdisciplinary Integration of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Beyond. National Academies Press (US).

Dryzek, J. S., & Pickering, J. (2018). The Politics of the Anthropocene. Oxford University Press.

Kahneman, D., & Frederick, S. (2005). A Model of Heuristic Judgment. In K. J. Holyoak & R. G. Morrison (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning (pp. 267–293). Cambridge University Press.

Sen, A. (2013). The Ends and Means of Sustainability. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 14(1), 6–20.

Stirling, A. (2014) Emancipating Transformations: From controlling ‘the transition’ to culturing plural radical progress, STEPS Working Paper 64, Brighton: STEPS Centre