Interconnected place-based social–ecological research can inform global sustainability

Balvanera, Patricia; Calderón-Contreras, Rafael; Castro, Antonio J; Felipe-Lucia, María R; Geijzendorffer, Ilse R; Jacobs, Sander; Martín-López, Berta; Arbieu, Ugo; Ifejika Speranza, Chinwe; Locatelli, Bruno; Pérez Harguindeguy, Natalia; Mercado, Ilse Ruiz; Spierenburg, Marja J; Vallet, Améline; Lynes, Laura; Gillson, Lindsey (2017). Interconnected place-based social–ecological research can inform global sustainability. Current opinion in environmental sustainability, 29, pp. 1-7. Elsevier 10.1016/j.cosust.2017.09.005

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Global sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum and impact, and place-based research can provide complementary insights to strengthen them. Here, we explore the current and potential role of place-based research into informing global sustainability initiatives by assessing the strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We show that place-based research allows for a better understanding of global social–ecological dynamics, and that transformations towards sustainability are often triggered at the local scale through the co-construction of local solutions. We discuss that the very nature of place-based research can hinder its transferability because its global integration faces temporal, spatial and governance scale mismatches, and we identify some of the key challenges of scaling-up its findings. We highlight new opportunities to mainstream place-based research that are emerging from first, long-term networks of place-based research, second, new institutional research settings that contribute with conceptual comprehensive frameworks and capacity building tools, third, a global community of practice, and fourth, the concept of region as a bridge between local and global sustainability initiatives. We believe that the time is ripe to promote the role of place-based social–ecological research as a key contributor to achieve global sustainability goals.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography
08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography > Geographies of Sustainability > Unit Land Systems and Sustainable Land Management (LS-SLM)
08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography > Geographies of Sustainability
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Biodiversity

UniBE Contributor:

Felipe Lucia, Maria del Rosario, Ifejika Speranza, Chinwe

Subjects:

900 History > 910 Geography & travel
500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)

ISSN:

1877-3435

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Peter Alfred von Ballmoos-Haas

Date Deposited:

31 Jan 2018 17:35

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:08

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.cosust.2017.09.005

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.107977

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/107977

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