تغییراتی در نظم برای یادگیری اجتماعی؟ مشارکت طرح تحقیقاتی اجتماعی - زیست محیطی آلمان در پایداری حکومت

Governance depends upon inputs from science. Whereas the conventional view portrays science as advisor of policy makers, more recent understandings see knowledge creation processes and decision processes as highly interrelated and intermingled. Against this background, we analyse the new research programme on socio-ecological research set up in Germany. In doing so, we firstly discuss current conceptual approaches to redefining the role of science in society. Secondly, we identify five challenges for scientific activities and apply these as criteria for an assessment of the socio-ecological research initiative. Thirdly, we analyse the potential limits and opportunities of this programme for social learning towards sustainable development. We also indicate what can be learned for ecological economics

Ecological economics sees itself as the science and management of sustainable development and claims to be more than “just science” in the traditional sense of the world — an activity that explicitly aims at changing the world. In this world, “traditional” science3 is under attack anyway, for the conditions of the production of knowledge have profoundly changed in the last decades. What is more, global problems of poverty and ecological damage have not only challenged the role of science, but of political processes as well. In this situation, “governance” becomes a central topic of ecological economics. Very obviously, ecological economics, with its explicit vision of a science that contributes to sustainability, must deal with the roles of different actors and institutions that are relevant for governance for sustainable development.4 One crucial factor in this context is the relationship between governance and the production of knowledge — and the fact that the line between these two realms has become blurred.

Science faces challenges that cannot be met by doing “normal science”. “Mode 2”, co-production of knowledge, sustainability science and post-normal science are all keywords of discourses reflecting this situation, the latter two being directly related to questions of sustainability governance. Drawing on these concepts, we have sketched criteria concerning the role of science for governance: transdisciplinarity, policy integration, normativity, learning approach, and the international dimension. We have described the programme “socio-ecological research” as an activity with an explicit mission concerning its contribution to the (political) goal of sustainable development. Since most projects within the socio-ecological research initiative are ongoing, it would be premature to judge its actual impact on governance. What we have done here is to evaluate key characteristics of the programme according to our five criteria which delivers insights about the potential impact on actual processes of governance. As for transdiscplinarity, socio-ecological research, albeit its bias toward social sciences, can be viewed as a success, since it actually brings together researchers from an array of different disciplines. Concerning active policy integration, the programme has not a strong record with regard to national and international policy issues.