Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part II: Motivation and Strategy

John Boik ()

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 19, 1-23

Abstract: Climate change, biodiversity loss, and other well-known social and environmental problems pose grave risks. Progress has been insufficient, and as a result, scientists, global policy experts, and the general public increasingly conclude that bold change is required. At least two kinds of bold change are conceivable: reform of existing societal systems (e.g., financial, economic, and governance systems), including their institutions, policies, and priorities; and transformation, understood here as the de novo development of and migration to new and improved systems. The latter has barely been explored in the scientific literature and is the focus of this concept paper. The main theses explored are that transformation is prudent, given risks, attractive, given potential benefits, and achievable, given political, social, and financial constraints. A body of literature is cited in support, but that body is necessarily small given the novelty of the topic. In particular, there are almost no papers in the scientific literature addressing the “how to?” of transformation, a central theme of this paper. Thus, this paper serves in part to raise topics and bring attention to possibilities and new directions.

Keywords: societal transformation; systems change; sustainability; societal cognition; climate change; biodiversity loss; active inference; cooperation; SAILS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/8047/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/8047/ (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part II: Motivation and Strategy (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:19:p:8047-:d:421564

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().