On March 30, Erik presented our initiative for a larger research program on Global Sustainability History for Sustainable and Inclusive Futures at an NWA |(Nationale WetenschapsAgenda) matchmaking event. Please find the main idea below:
Different regions across the globe face sustainability challenges that are simultaneously highly diverse and highly interconnected. Yet such challenges are overwhelmingly studied in mutual isolation—in historiography and future-oriented sustainability studies. This is a problem, because it entrenches parochial visions for domestic ‘inclusive’ sustainable futures that exclude situated implications for overseas actors and species (i.e. these are not researched but assumed, ignored, or black-boxed in a ‘footprint approach’).
Examples include some of the most pressing sustainability challenges in contemporary history. The Dutch Nitrogen Crisis (and its histories of factory farming and pollution) is typically studied as a Dutch challenge begging Dutch solutions. Deforestation and conflicts following soy monoculture in South American bioregions are studied as a South American issues. Their connected histories (much emitted Dutch nitrogen stems from soy; much South American soy is produced for export to the Netherlands) are obscured; so is the need for envisioning connected sustainable futures for plural livelihoods in both regions. Other examples include the connected histories of the post-war transitions to a Dutch oil economy and oil export economies in Nigeria and other regions; a Dutch sustainable energy transition will greatly affect those regions. The histories and futures of Southeast-Asian palm oil regions and Dutch/European attempts at a bioeconomy are equally entwined.
Global Sustainability History develops connected historiographical knowledge for envisioning connected sustainable futures for distant-yet-connected regions across the globe. N.B. Producing historiographical knowledge that is actionable and transformative has vast implications for the research design. Therefore historians collaborate with transdisciplinary sustainability researchers specialized in making transformative knowledge for sustainable futures, and with diverse (quadruple helix) scientific and societal partners in the Netherlands and abroad to jointly develop relevant historiographical research questions and mobilize historiographical findings for knowledge on connected sustainability futures.
Routes:
Levend verleden
Sustainable Development voor inclusieve mondiale ontwikkeling
Global sustainability, sustainability history, Trans Disciplinary Research, Nitrogen Crisis, deforestation, biodiversity, inequality
Stichting Historie der Techniek, Athena Instituut, VU, Universiteit Leiden, Wageningen University & Research, Discovery Museum