On Sustainability Research Network

Interdisciplinary perspectives on climate, resources, and justice.

The Network’s themes set the framework for conferences and publications, highlighting the ecological, economic, and political complexities of sustainability. They encourage debate across science, policy, and lived experience.

Thirteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, Greater Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2017)
Thirteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, Greater Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2017)

Overview

Research clusters converge around four interlinked arenas: environmental change and ecological integrity; sustainable economies and circularity; governance, participation, and rights; and learning, culture, and design for transitions. Together, these perspectives illuminate trade-offs and synergies among decarbonization, biodiversity protection, social inclusion, and development—inviting comparative, cross-regional analyses and pragmatic experimentation.

Themes & Tensions

Theme 1: Ecological Realities

How do Ecological Realities Necessarily Frame Our Planetary Existence?

Living Tensions:

  • Common spaces: Ecological footprints, atmospheres, biospheres, eco-spheres
  • Shared danger signs: rising sea levels, desertification, soil degradation
  • Relations of human and ecological value: static or dynamic
  • Biological diversity: its past and prospects
  • Universal and variable impacts on environments

Theme 2: Participatory Process

Whose Sustainable Future?

Living Tensions

  • Who or what deserves equal concern?
  • Can we act locally without thinking globally?
  • Living personally without knowing politically?
  • Politics of boundaries: natural, public, private resources?
  • Women and men; children and the elderly; families and villages
  • Wellbeing and quality of life
  • Public knowledge: the role of the media and government

Theme 3: Economic, Social and Cultural Context

What are the Pressing Demands of Our Time?

Living Tensions

  • Diversity and Meanings: cultural sustainability and sustainable heritage development
  • Reconfiguring the economic equation: contesting “financial years” and “instant gratification”
  • Changing patterns and cultures of consumption
  • Science and technology vs environmental sustainability?
  • Free trade and fair trade
  • Urbanization and the sustainability of human settlement
  • Climate change: impacts and responses

Theme 4: Education, Assessment and Policy

Framing Responsibility to Act?

Living Tensions

  • Balancing good governance and responsible citizenship
  • Negotiating the hidden hand of personal self-interest
  • Biotechnology and its critics
  • self-government, self-management, and cultural autonomy.
  • Accountability: beyond financial years and bottom lines
  • Poverty and its eradication
  • Measuring impacts: environmental assessment
  • Environmental education in a time of eco-systemic crisis

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