The Dutch scientific research funder NWO awarded two new projects in the Open Competition round. Both projects contribute to the broader program Global Sustainability: Past(s) Present(s) Future(s) that we have been developing over the past year together with our partners.
The projects are:
Sustainability trade-offs in the Netherlands’ entangled modernisation, 1900-2020.
Frank Veraart, Jan-Pieter Smits Smits (TUE), Johan Schot (UU)
(together with WUR and CBS. EHL staff Mila Davids, Harry Lintsen and Jan Korsten also contributed)
Imports of resources affect economic, social, and environmental conditions elsewhere in the world. Regarding sustainability trade-offs abroad, the Netherlands has the worst track record in Europe. Its performance has historical origins: over the past two centuries, scientific knowledge production, colonial developments, and industrial modernization have helped to create global production chains. Systematic science-based commodification attributed economic and use values to natural resources. This changed western perceptions of the natural environment. It had a severe impact on global environment and indigenous people’s livelihoods. Our research investigates this commodification process in conjunction with the development of global supply chains and their effect on sustainability. It traces the activities of global supply chain entanglers, the actors who constructed transnational socioeconomic systems. The research consists of four work packages. The first, conducted in collaboration with Netherlands Statistics, develops two databases: (1) on the import of commodities to the Netherlands, and (2) on the sustainability indicators for selected periods and regions. In conjunction, work packages two and three study qualitatively the processes of commodification, global system entanglement, and the distribution of these systems’ sustainability trade-offs in edible oils and metals. This enables a system comparison and analyses of cross-system dynamics in package 4. Our findings will contribute to nascent academic fields of sustainability histories and deep transitions. Furthermore, this research will provide perspectives for contemporary policy initiatives in the field of sustainability transitions. The project is supported by an experienced multi-disciplinary team of scholars and relevant societal partners, ensuring broad dissemination of the knowledge gained.
SOY STORIES: Connected sustainability histories and futures of the global Soyacene
Erik van der Vleuten (TUE), Evelien de Hoop, Jacqueline Broerse (VU), Claiton M. da Silva (UFFS Brazil)
(together with multiple social partners in the Netherlands and Brazil; EHL staff Jonas vd Straeten, Henny Romijn, and Jonas Torrens also contributed)
Different regions across the globe face grave sustainability challenges that may be at once highly diverse and highly interconnected. SOY STORIES investigates diverse Brazilian and Dutch sustainability histories connected by soy, and studies how a connected diversity perspective can contribute to imagining more inclusive sustainable futures. Since the 1970s, accelerating soy production in Brazil has been associated with challenges such as large-scale deforestation, land-grabbing, and child labor, while soy-based intensive animal farming in the Netherlands came with challenges such as a 4-decades-long national manure and nitrogen crisis, public health hazards, greenhouse gas emissions and animal welfare problems. This study is important because historiography currently lacks a convincing approach to investigate the connected histories of diverse sustainability challenges. In turn, this omission entrenches a similar lack of connected thinking in future imaginaries.
To tackle this problem, SOY STORIES combines expertise in sustainability history and transnational history on both sides of the Atlantic (History Lab TUE, NL and UFFS, Brazil) withexpertise in transdisciplinary research (TDR) for sustainable futures (Athena Institute, VU, NL). We combine in-depth historical research based on written source analysis and oral history on both sides of the Atlantic with regular stakeholder interaction. We continuously monitor and evaluate the effects of this combination of methods and approaches to make novel contributions to the fields of sustainability history, soy historiography and TDR.
The projects will run approx. 5 years.