Research
Sustainability Research
Population growth, the still ongoing rise of global energy and resource consumption, limited capacities of the earth's ecosystems for absorbing our emissions, overharvesting of biological resources, enduring poverty in many societies together with political and economic malfunctioning provoke substantial risks for today's and the upcoming generations.
The global discourse on sustainable development reflects these societal issues and strives towards development of global human well-being by decoupling societal development from ongoing energy and resource consumption. Not surprisingly, searching for new development pathways is a complex and long-lasting endeavor. Moreover, uncertainty is a dominant feature, as sustainable development is about how to shape the human future.
Sustainability science represents a broad interdisciplinary field reaching from basic research to application-oriented projects. It strives for informing the according societal processes by providing reliable knowledge on the social-ecological system(s) and the impacts of human actions. And it scrutinizes claims on societal goals by operationalizing the ubiquitous reference to intra- and intergenerational justice into a legitimate normative framework.
Research focus
Theoretical level
Contributions to the theory of sustainable development:
- Relating the normative basis (approach to intra- and intergenerational justice based on the Capability Approach) with the factual system approaches (appraoch to social-economic systems);
- Relation between intrinsic and instrumental values through work on sustainability criteria and 'what to sustain';
- Theories of social transformation and governance.
Empirical level
We carry out empirical research projects mainly within Switzerland and Europe. Additional projects are mainly carried out in Africa.
Our main focus is on:
- Using metrics of well-being and action-abilities (capabilities) as criteria for assessing sustainable development projects;
- Analyzing governance, societal learning and socio-ecological regimes regarding drivers and barriers for implementing sustainable development;
- Specific topics are, among others, energy transition, implementing sustainability in political administrations, and regional governance.
Research Colloquium
The research colloquium takes place every semester and serves two purposes. Firstly, it provides an opportunity for PhD students and Master's students to sit together and present their current research and discuss open questions. Secondly, it serves as a platform to discuss current research in the field of sustainability research.