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Contents
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Message from the president
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Message from the Past President
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In memory of Donald I Lyons
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Join our discourse on Ground Rules for Product-level Full Cost Accounting
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PLOS Sustainability and Transformation call
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News from the University of Graz
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3. The Top Five Organizational Sustainability Schemes
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4. How will we study in the future?
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5. Sustainable transitions in industry need a national approach to design: report
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1. Message from the President
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I am honoured to be chosen as the next president of such a great group of people!
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The conference in 2023 in Malaysia was a huge success as it gave us access to a country which taught us a lot by showing us how they deal with their sustainability issues. Moreover, the hybrid version of our conference once again was proven to be successful, Something that we will be using as a default for future conferences. During my presidency, I will continue the work of past presidents, especially that from Professor Peter Dobers with an emphasis on the conferences, our upcoming journal, the new professionals group and all the other ISDRS members, maintaining a financially sound society. I will give extra emphasis to the in-between conference activities based on the ideas and motivation of our members. Do you have an idea how we can get more benefit from being a worldwide group of enthusiastic sustainability researchers that want to actively contribute to a better world? Please let me know and let's see how we can make it reality!
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I wish you all peace and good health for the last weeks of 2023 and am looking working with you in 2024 and hopefully see you in June in Kathmandu!
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All the best,
Sjors Witjes
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Message from the new Past-President
September 30, 2023 was the date when my ISDRS presidency ended. Having served ISDRS as Board Member for over ten years, its Vice President under professor Pauline Deutz during 2019-2020 and now recently, as its President between January 2021 up to September 2023, with professor Volker Mauerhofer and professor Gyula Zilahy as Vice Presidents, has been an honor of my life!
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My time of almost five years in the presidency has been highly influenced by the covid 19 pandemic. In February-March of 2020 we were witnessing how it quickly became impossible to wish for an on-campus conference in Budapest. The conference host for ISDRS 2020, professor Gyula Zilahy and Budapest University of Technology and Economics, was harshly over-washed by the corona virus and Gyula bravely had to turn a lovely on-campus event into a new event of online-only. Once the designated conference host for ISDRS 2021 withdrew from hosting the conference, professor Volker Mauerhofer and the Mid Sweden University quickly embraced the one-year planning horizon and arranged another wonderful online-only event, learning from more than a year of online learning and meetings. After horrific years of Covid 19, we were all thankful and happy when we eventually could meet again in hybrid conferences of ISDRS 2022 (Stockholm and a consortium of six universities as hosts) and of ISDRS 2023 (Malaysia with Rasyikah Md. Khalid as hosts). If you are into going down memory lane, please have a look at the links below to recent conferences.
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Already discussed at the board meeting at ISDRS 2019, in Nanjing, we had to embrace the online element of meeting and conferencing to become more inclusive and keeping the discussions alive for the many reasons why we also should enable participants to avoid intercontinental flights. After two years trying to organize inclusive hybrid conferences, and with its many challenges and opportunities, we understand that this is a format that needs to be further developed, but also, that it most probably is a format of the near future of ISDRS conferences.
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With associate professor Sjors Witjes as ISDRS President, and professor Gyula Zilahy as ISDRS Vice President, I am most happy to see the energy and ambitions they bring to ISDRS. Together with ISDRS Board in general, and with you all in the ISDRS community in particular, I feel very safe in peeking into the future, that we are well into the phase of being “beyond” the pandemic of Covid 19 and can focus on research, exchanges, and progress for “sustainability and beyond”.
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Thanks again for wonderful years in ISDRS leadership and its wonderful board and community!
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ISDRS Past-President 2023.10-2024.12
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2. Announcements
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In memory of Donald I Lyons
Don Lyons died unexpectedly on the 12th March this year. He was a regular at ISDRS conferences from 2005 to 2014 and during that time co-chaired an Industrial Symbiosis and regional development track of ISDRS (now subsumed in Circular Economy). Born in Cork, Ireland 2 April 1960, Don studied Geography at University College Cork before heading to the USA for a masters at University of Illinois and PhD at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After 20 years as an economic geographer in the Department of Geography at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, Don returned to UCC as professor and head of department in 2012.
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Don and I were put in touch originally by mutual acquaintance who spotted we were both seeking contributions on industrial symbiosis for the Association of American Geographers (AAG) conference in Philadelphia 2004. Combining forces, we ended up with an excellent day’s worth of talks on the theme of geography and IS, which later became our first journal special issue together. Aside from a shared geographical slant on industrial symbiosis and sustainability more broadly, we also had in common the experience of being Europeans who had been through graduate school in the USA, in a similar era, and (coincidentally or otherwise) quickly forged a friendship and effective working relationship. A friendly, good humored and unusually modest academic, Don was a pleasure to work and travel with – we organized sessions together at numerous ISDRS conferences from Helsinki in 2005 to Trondheim in 2014 (with notable excursions to Hong Kong, New Delhi New York in between).
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Unfortunately, health issues overtook Don and prevented him from coming to more recent conferences. The fond memories as well as his work will survive for many years to come.
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ISDRS 2023 conference
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What was the Best Sustainable Development Article in 2022?
The winner of the ISDRS 2022 Best Sustainable Development Article 2022 was announced in Malaysia and is:
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"Exploring evolving spiritual values of forests in Europe and Asia: a transition hypothesis toward re-spiritualizing forests"
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Roux, J-L., A.A. Konczal, A. Bernasconi, S. A. Bhagwat, R. De Vreese, I. Doimo, V. Marini Govigli, J. KaÅ¡par, R. Kohsaka, D. Pettenella, T. Plieninger, Z. Shakeri, S. Shibata, K. Stara, T. Takahashi, M. Torralba, L. TyrvÃinen, G. Weiss, and G. Winke
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Call for papers: What is the relationship between circular economy and economic growth?
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Contributions are invited for a special issue of Frontiers in Sustainability devoted to this question. The aim of the special issue is to untangle the increasingly complex relationship between a circular economy and (implicit or explicit) ideas about growth. There are multiple understandings of what a circular economy is or should be achieving in sustainable development. Similarly, the concepts of post/degrowth are also contested in that the various approaches differ both in terms of the basic normative questions, the objectives, and the basic assumptions regarding the possibilities of decoupling economic growth and resource consumption. We welcome abstracts relating to one of two approaches: the notion of circular economy related to the different growth discourses and what requirements arise from the growth discourses for the form and nature of the circular economy. Deadline for abstracts 21 February 2024.
Click on the button below for further information.
Frieder Rubik, Ulrich Petschow and Pauline Deutz.
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Are you considering a PhD related to urban sustainability?
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Please apply for the PhD fellowship for research on Translanguaging and Sustainability, based at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, with partnership universities in France, Denmark and Finland! Our call for applications can be found here.
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Join our discourse on Ground Rules for Product-level Full Cost Accounting (FCA)
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A range of environmental and social impacts occur throughout the value chains of products, and many of those are currently unaccounted for in their price. The challenge for sustainability scientists and practitioners is how to calculate a product’s full cost, including these ‘hidden costs’ to the environment and society. We just published our article in the Q1 journal Environmental and Sustainability Indicators: on such 'full cost accounting' (FCA) methods, in which we review the foundations of monetization and introduce a new categorization to align terminologies. We summarize the connections between monetization and life-cycle assessment methods and sketch the monetization landscape and its challenges: we review product-oriented FCA methods such as True Price, Product Impact-Weighted Accounts by the Harvard Business School and Oiconomy Pricing of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University and more. We describe their monetization philosophy, data sources, scoping, aggregation, and transparency. We propose four provisional ground rules for product-oriented FCA methods, addressing (1) theoretical framing, (2) the time dimension, (3) the integration of positive impacts and (4) transparency. With this we aim to encourage comparability, rule out green washing and enable wider application.
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We invite scholars and practitioners around the world and across scientific disciplines to contribute to this discourse. First we have an online discourse and ultimate in early 2024, we will organize an online ISDRS Workshop to discuss the results of this.
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YOU ARE INVITED to join this discourse
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We are interested in reflections of sustainability scholars and practitioners on these topics:
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- What are, in your views, the most appropriate theoretical foundations for sustainability-oriented full-cost-accounting and what are possible arguments pro and con for currently applied theoretical foundations.
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- Does our mapping of approaches in your views, adequately and fully present the currently available approaches?
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- For the four proposed ground rules, in your views, are they sufficient, valid, necessary and workable. Would you have alternative or additional suggestions.
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You can join the online discourse at: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12862281/
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Please post you contribution with substantive argumentation and refences where possible.
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Product value chains cause environmental and social impacts, of which many are currently unaccounted for in the price of products. Several methods exist to calculate the pressures of such impacts, as well as their monetization. In the context of life cycle assessment (LCA), expressing environmental and social impacts in monetary terms allows for aggregation and easier communication. Many methods for monetization exist, with fundamental differences in their underlying monetization approach, accuracy, availability and application. Scientific and private sector initiatives have introduced full cost accounting methods that also use different monetization approaches. We reflect on the differences between such existing methods. First, we review the foundations of monetization and introduce a new categorization to align terminologies. We summarize the connections between monetization and life-cycle assessment methods, since both categories of methods can be seen as the building blocks of existing full cost accounting methods. We then sketch the monetization landscape and its challenges. Next, we inventory current product-oriented full cost accounting methods and, through interviews with their developers, provide insights into their underlying monetization philosophy, data sources and quality, scoping, aggregation, and transparency. From this review, we propose four provisional ground rules for product-oriented full cost accounting methods in the discussion section, addressing theoretical framing, the time dimension, the integration of positive impacts and the methods’ transparency.
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Please see our Academic Editor role description here
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News from the University of Graz
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In an effort to support the ambitious Circular Economy Strategy action plan adopted by the European Union, the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable Product Management enabling a Circular Economy acts as a creative space for developing and conducting research in sustainable product management, the results of which will support the transition toward a circular economy.
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Recent publications from 2023
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- Stumpf, L., Schöggl, J.-P., & Baumgartner, R. J. (2023). Circular plastics packaging - Prioritizing resources and capabilities along the supply chain. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 188. 122261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.122261
- Schöggl, J.-P., Rusch, M., Stumpf, L. & Baumgartner, R. J. (2023). Implementation of digital technologies for a circular economy and sustainability management in the manufacturing sector. Sustainable Production and Consumption. 40. 401-420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2022.11.012
- Berger, K., Baumgartner, R.J., Weinzerl, M., Bachler, J., Preston, K., Schöggl, J-P. (2023). Data requirements and availabilities for a digital battery passport – A value chain actor perspective. Cleaner Production Letters. 4. 100032. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clpl.2023.100032
Josef-Peter Schöggl, Lukas Stumpf and Rupert J. Baumgartner have been awarded both the Most Cited Paper and the Most Downloaded Paper Award 2022 for review papers from Resources, Conservation & Recycling for their study, "The Narrative of Sustainability and Circular Economy - A Longitudinal Review of Two Decades of Research". The award is given to the top 10 papers in each category, and we are honored that our researchers are recognized for their achievement. In the study, they analyzed all #circulareconomy (CE) related papers (i.e. 3822) published between 2000 and 2019 with a specific focus on their #sustainability connotation. The paper is available with open access here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105073
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Email: rupert.baumgartner@uni-graz.at
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Phone: +43 316 380 - 3237
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Christian-Doppler-Research Laboratory for Sustainable Product Management
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Department of Environmental Systems Sciences
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University of Graz, A-8010 Graz, Merangasse 18
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Sustainability beyond Sustainable Development Goals
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ERC grant for Prajal Pradhan
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For his proposal “Transformation towards long-term sustainability beyond Sustainable Development Goals (BeyondSDG)”, Prajal Pradhan received the highly prestigious HORIZON Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) amounting to 1,5 million Euro in early 2023. From this September, he started the project, moving to the Integrated Research on Energy, Environment & Society (IREES), the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, as an Assistant Professor. Prajal was a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany.
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Countries are not on track to meet the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. Although SDGs aim to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path, countries are not yet able to make transformative changes for long-term sustainability that requires building social prosperity and foundations within planetary boundaries. Failing to achieve SDGs will negatively affect billions of people and worsen environmental conditions and socio-economic problems. BeyondSDG aims to understand the necessary conditions for long-term sustainability, including rescuing SDGs from failing.
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Figure 1. A conceptual framework for ensuring sustainability beyond achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): (a) threefold scientific approach and (b) sustainability pathways. (Source: Pradhan 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwad015)
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The project that now is funded by the ERC grant will identify critical targets for prioritising SDGs, investigate the effects of (under)achieving SDGs on long-term sustainability beyond 2030; and identify sustainability targets for the post-2030 development agenda. To this end, BeyondSDG will apply a threefold scientific approach that combines statistical analysis of empirical and modelled data, qualitative analysis of literature, and knowledge co-creation with stakeholders, including sectoral experts and policymakers, based on systems thinking. The project will run from September 2023 to August 2028.
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Combining three approaches is complementary and essential to deal with the complex topic of long-term sustainability. BeyondSDG will lead to a breakthrough in interdisciplinary research by combining approaches from sustainability science, earth system modelling, and environment and resource management.
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References related to the project:
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Prajal Pradhan, A threefold approach to rescue the 2030 Agenda from failing. National Science Review, 2023. Doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwad015
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Frank Biermann, Yixian Sun, Dan Banik, Marianne Beisheim, Michael J. Bloomfield, Aurelie Charles, Pamela Chasek, Thomas Hickmann, Prajal Pradhan, Carole-Anne Sénit. Four governance reforms to strengthen the SDGs. Science, 2023 Doi: 10.1126/science.adj5434
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3. The Top Five Organizational Sustainability Schemes
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In the northern hemisphere, summer 2023 was the hottest on record, and in the southern hemisphere, winter 2023 was the warmest on record (NASA, 2023). Each year, extreme weather events intensify around the globe. Governments and businesses have been called upon to take action to address the climate crisis. Although governments and businesses are increasingly adopting sustainability initiatives, the climate crisis continues unabated, and the UN has declared we have now crossed a threshold into an era of global boiling (United Nations, 2023).
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The current reality of our climate crisis led us to examine sustainability schemes to determine which ones might help organizations do their part to address the climate crisis. There are hundreds of sustainability schemes (standards, frameworks, principles, guidelines) to support organizations on the journey to adopt sustainability. Navigating the dense terrain of sustainability schemes can be overwhelming and our goal was to provide guidance for organizations. We examined 20 environmental sustainability schemes and found that all of them aligned with weak sustainability (Demastus & Landrum, 2023). Among the worst offenders, the schemes promoted unsustainable organizational practices that contribute to the global climate crisis. At best, five schemes slowed (but continued) unsustainable practices yet simultaneously adopted genuinely sustainable practices: circular economy, doughnut economics, ISO 14001, planetary boundaries, and The Natural Step. However, none of the schemes in our study promoted strong sustainability in a regenerative manner to achieve a flourishing future. We conclude that the five best performing schemes in our study can help organizations in the transition toward sustainability until stronger schemes are developed.
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Demastus, J. & Landrum, N. (2023). Organizational sustainability schemes align with weak sustainability. Business Strategy and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3511
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4. How will we study in the future?
- ü 3 years for Bachelor + 2 for Master? Or 40 years part-time?
- ü Still 90-minute sessions? With written exams "to go"?
- ü Strict study curricula? Or flexible programmes where everyone can choose what they need right now?
- ü What will our campus look like?
- ü What qualifications will the lecturers have to bring?
- ü What kind of cooperation do we need?
- ü What should a sustainable university look like? What issues do educational institutions need to address? How can an educational institution exemplify sustainability?
Besides various traditional processes, such as administrative management, resource management, HR, and purchasing, the focus of a sustainable university is on its main competencies. These are the following LETR-fields:
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a) Learning - what is to be learned, what formats are to be offered, and how the learning process is to be organised.
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b) Educating - every learning process is not only about specific subject knowledge but about developing other competencies, the so-called soft skills (or better power skills), which are essential for the creation and implementation of ideas and for working together. This involves the following 6 Cs - Curiosity, Creativity, Communication, Critical Thinking, Collaboration and Character.
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c) Teaching - how to make teaching sustainable, so that you leave the classroom with new ideas, question the existing theories and concepts, determined to create and implement, and empowered by the way you´ve been taught to drive the necessary changes. This has a lot to do with the didactic and pedagogical competence of the teachers.
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d) Research - Orientation of research topics and research results towards all SDGs.
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Universities should not just follow, not adopt sustainability strategies, but take the lead and be an example by implementing Sustainability in its holistic way – first of all through Learning, Educating, Teaching, and Research (but also considering other levels, implementing the Holistic Approach.
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In the chapter “Six-Stage Pyramid Model for the Implementation of a Holistic Sustainability Approach in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)” of the book “Considerations on Education for Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainability” published with the IGI Global Julia Krause creates a model that would enable to see the whole picture and help HEIs find their way to a more holistic approach to tackling sustainability issues at universities.
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5. Sustainable transitions in industry need a national approach to design: report
A new series of reports unveil a critical roadmap to transition Australia to a circular economy through design, to help businesses and industry make real environmental change.
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Commissioned by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the ‘Enabling Design for Environmental Good’ reports were produced by experts in eco-design and sustainability from across research and industry to inform a coordinated approach by government and industry to transition Australia to a circular economy.
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The recommendations highlight opportunities for Australia to use design to improve the sustainability of production processes, materials, products and business models across local industries, as well as the risks of not doing so.
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Australia has a goal to transition to a circular economy by 2030, but RMIT project lead and Associate Professor Simon Lockrey said Australia was still in the early stages of its circular economy journey. Countries such as The Netherlands, who are seven years into their transition, are already making progress within fashion, water and technology.
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“We’re already seeing the impacts of climate change playing out now,” said Lockrey from RMIT’s School of Design.
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“It’s not just impacting the environment, it's also impacting the global supply chain, causing delays and driving up costs.”
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That is why the research team is calling for a central body run out of the federal government to coordinate Australia’s transition to a circular economy through design.
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“This call for a new and coordinated approach to designing sustainable products and industries is not a nice-to-have, but an urgent necessity,” Lockrey said.
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"We need an approach that ties together the interests of the federal, state and local governments, which will help businesses and industry work towards a common goal.”
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Collaboration for real change
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RMIT researchers led a consortium of experts with consultants from Arcadis Australia and One Planet Consulting to craft 10 recommendations to overhaul products made locally or allowed to be sold in Australia, and how we handle them during their lifespan, for four priority sectors – textiles, plastics, buildings and electronic goods.
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“Australian industry sectors will become increasingly uncompetitive unless these recommended actions are taken to align with leading nations on better product design, sale and circularity,” said Helen Millicer, Churchill Fellow and Director of One Planet Consulting.
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“Likewise, households and businesses will pay ever higher costs, and our environment too, if we continue our sad, excessive ‘throw-away’ systems of highly refined textiles, electronic goods, building products and plastics.”
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In line with this, major local companies, including Country Road Group and Breville, and design peak bodies Good Design Australia and Design Institute of Australia, helped co-design the recommendations to ensure they were feasible and impactful to their industries.
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Arcadis Australia project lead Richard Collins said design was crucial to ensure materials, products and systems were environmentally and economically sustainable from the start of their lifecycle.
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“Design contributes to up to 70% of the environmental impacts of a product’s lifecycle,” he said
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"For instance, before a building begins construction, design decisions made on what sort of materials are used, how it’s built, where the building will be positioned, and subsequently how it performs over its life, will determine the environmental and financial impact of the building.”
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“If poor choices are made, the building will not just have negative environmental impacts, but it will also cost more to run, maintain or upgrade. But this is much bigger than just construction – the same design principles need to be applied across textiles, electronics, plastics and more.”
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The reports emphasise the onus of design does not sit solely with designers as decision makers in management, marketing and supply chain have the final say in enabling and commissioning design.
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“We need to educate people in these positions, as well as future decision makers, to understand the environmental and economic benefits design can have on their business or sector,” said Lockrey.
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Lockrey said the activation of a rejuvenated repair industry will be important as consumers are becoming more knowledgeable about how their buying habits impact the environment.
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“People do not want to repeatedly buy the same item when it wears out, but there are few options for repair, which makes it expensive.”
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“If more businesses offered repair solutions, we could scale the cost of repairs to make it more affordable.”
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Read the reports on the DCCEEW website.
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General enquiries, please contact news@rmit.edu.au or 0439 704 077
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Colophon
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This newsletter is presented by the International Sustainable Development Research Society on a regular basis to all registered Followers and members. If you want to receive this newsletter, please register here.
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Contributions to the newsletter and announcements of relevant activities are welcomed.
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Please send any contribution to the co-editors:
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Marlen Arnold and Prajal Pradhan
Email: newsletter@isdrs.org
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Followers and members are invited to share innovative, creative and critical ideas about about the further enhancement of sustainable development in a short essay form. This would have a size of between 500-2000 words, follow the general rules of academic publishing (proper references etc.), but it would fill the gap between journal/conference abstracts and official journal publications.
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Please provide submissions in a word document and not PDF format, any images must be submitted as a media file (.jpeg, .png or similar).
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Disclaimer; the ISDRS is not responsible for any content displayed on the websites that are hyperlinked in this newsletter.
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Get more involved with ISDRS
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ISDRS maintains several topic groups closely related to the UN SDG's with the goal of organising the annual call for papers preceding each conference. These working groups focus on different areas of sustainable development corresponding to each theme.
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Colophon
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This newsletter is presented by the International Sustainable Development Research Society on a regular basis to all registered Followers and members. If you want to receive this newsletter, please register here.
|
Contributions to the newsletter and announcements of relevant activities are welcomed.
|
Please send any contribution to the co-editors:
|
Marlen Arnold and Prajal Pradhan
Email: newsletter@isdrs.org
|
Followers and members are invited to share innovative, creative and critical ideas about about the further enhancement of sustainable development in a short essay form. This would have a size of between 500-2000 words, follow the general rules of academic publishing (proper references etc.), but it would fill the gap between journal/conference abstracts and official journal publications.
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Please provide submissions in a word document and not PDF format, any images must be submitted as a media file (.jpeg, .png or similar).
|
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Disclaimer; the ISDRS is not responsible for any content displayed on the websites that are hyperlinked in this newsletter.
|
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Get more involved with ISDRS
|
ISDRS maintains several topic groups closely related to the UN SDG's with the goal of organising the annual call for papers preceding each conference. These working groups focus on different areas of sustainable development corresponding to each theme.
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