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NOTE AND COMMENT

How to run a sustainability science research group sustainably? Tobias Plieninger1,2   · Nora Fagerholm3   · Claudia Bieling4  Received: 29 May 2020 / Accepted: 13 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020

Abstract Rigorous sustainability science includes addressing pressing real-world problems, weaving multiple knowledge systems, and striving for transformative change. However, these key attributes of sustainability science often conflict with university structures and established academic work practices, for instance with regard to frequent long-distance travel. Such contradictions between key principles of sustainability and everyday practices are experienced by many researchers not only at university level, but also in their individual behaviors. To help resolve this widespread divergence, we present ten principles to foster the sustainability of a research group working in sustainability science, based on our personal experiences and experiments as research group leaders. These principles comprise: (1) monitor the environmental footprint, (2) foster learning and innovation, (3) reduce the environmental footprint, (4) nurture campus sustainability, (5) embrace sustainability in private life, (6) constructively deal with environmental anxiety, (7) design research projects for sustainability impact, (8) engage with stakeholders, (9) capitalize on sustainability teaching, and (10) recognize biases and limits. Applying sustainability principles in everyday research practices can provide important social tipping points that may trigger the spreading of new social norms and behaviors. Keywords  Advocacy · Eco-anxiety · Research lab · Social tipping elements · Sustainability education · Sustainability transformations

Introduction Sustainability science has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. Being considered “not yet an autonomous field or discipline” in the early 2000s (Clark and Dickson 2003, p. 8060), sustainability science has now come of age for a while, as demonstrated by numerous journals, conferences, professorships, university departments and faculties, and Handled by Osamu Saito, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan. * Tobias Plieninger plieninger@uni‑goettingen.de 1



Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences, University of Kassel, 34109 Kassel, Germany

2



Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 5, 37073 Göttingen, Germany

3

Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland

4

Division of Societal Transition and Agriculture (430b), University of Hohenheim, Schloss, 70593 Stuttgart, Germany



research programmes (Spangenberg 2011). To guide society toward sustainability is a most central characteristic of sustainability science (Horcea-Milcu et al. 2019). Correspondingly, identifying, conceptualizing, and supporting seeds (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2019), leverage points (Abson et al. 2017), scenarios (Kishita et al. 2016), visions (Wiek and Iwaniec 2014), and pa