Transformations are often discussed as necessary to achieve a just society that thrives within planetary boundaries. However, the research of transformations to sustainability, which involves the capacity to solve problems while creating conditions for "the good life" for people and the planet is still in its infancy. A key question for understanding transformative capacity is: what are the conditions and mechanisms for achieving large-scale systemic changes that fundamentally improve people-planet relationships and that have an impact at scales that match the challenges of the Anthropocene? Although there are promising efforts across disciplines to address these issues, we argue that the Anthropocene construct challenges much of the scholarship that examines change-making efforts to sustainability, including social innovation, earth system governance, resilience thinking, social movement, and transitions management.
Results/Conclusions
Drawing on relevant literature and a number of empirical case studies, including marine stewardship and agriculture and food systems, this paper proposes and describes three interlinked, strategic imperatives that are crucial for future studies of sustainability transformations in the Anthropocene. The first imperative, referred to as ‘Confronting the “Social-Ecological” Challenge’ draws attention to the need to analyze the linked social-ecological dynamics of transformations, rather than favouring only social or only ecological. Secondly, transformations to sustainability will require ‘Confronting the “Bricolage” Challenge’, in order to recognize the systemic implications of the Anthropocene and find clusters and connections among partial solutions to create integrated approaches for social-ecological problems. Lastly, it is imperative to ‘Confronting the “Scale” Challenge’ and ensure that both agency and innovations are appropriate in light of the cross-scalar nature of the issues associated with the Anthropocene and the unprecedented temporal scale in which change is occurring.
Discussing these three imperatives, and the conditions of the Anthropocene, can help to critically examine whether the global sustainability solutions currently promoted by various change agents and agencies contribute to the large-scale transformations that humanity needs, or whether they reinforce current unsustainable pathways.