Narrow pasts and futures: how frames of sustainability transformation limit societal change
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Narrow pasts and futures: how frames of sustainability transformation limit societal change Janina Priebe 1,2
&
Erland Mårald 1
&
Annika Nordin 3
Accepted: 19 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Two frames dominate present-day interpretations of sustainability and approaches to sustainability transformation in national and global policy arenas. One frame relates to transformation in global environmental governance that promotes goal-oriented agendas. The other frame relates to earth system sciences where sustainability transformation means breaking the devastating trends of the Anthropocene. In this paper, we examine the historical and cultural underpinnings of these two frames, each invoking particular relations and approaches to sustainability transformation. Our contribution is to discuss the role of the past in these frames and to illuminate how current outlooks toward the future still rely on principles that emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and thus hinder alternative approaches to transformation in the present. Keywords Sustainability . History . Sustainability transformation . Frame . Climate change . Agenda 2030 . Sustainable development goals . Earth system sciences
Introduction Calls for societal transformation toward sustainability have come from all levels of public and corporate policy-making in recent years. Non-governmental organizations as well as research suggest that climate and ecological crises require an unprecedented effort and societal change (Adloff and Neckel 2019; UN 2015). The IPCC special report released in October 2018, as a response to the United Nation’s Paris Agreement signed in 2016, pointed out that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and ensuring
* Janina Priebe [email protected] Erland Mårald [email protected] Annika Nordin [email protected] 1
Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
2
Arctic Research Centre, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
3
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden
the functioning of ecosystems and human health would require “rapid and far-reaching transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport and cities” (IPCC 2018). The vision of sustainability transformation, a profound and fundamental change in how society relates to nature, is seen as the only possible way out of the downward spiral. The future pathways shaped in the current discourse, however, run the risk of limiting actual transformation because they either lack legitimacy, reduce the diversity of actors and knowledge types, or represent business-as-usual approaches (Blythe et al. 2018; Colocousis et al. 2017). Two frames in particular dominate present-day interpretations of sustainability and approaches to initiating sustainability transformation. One frame relates to transformation in global environmental governance that promotes goaloriented agendas. The other
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