Interconnected place-based social–ecological research can inform global sustainability

Research output: Journal contributionsScientific review articlesResearch

Authors

  • Patricia Balvanera
  • Rafael Calderón-Contreras
  • Antonio J. Castro
  • María R. Felipe-Lucia
  • Ilse R. Geijzendorffer
  • Sander Jacobs
  • Berta Martín-López
  • Ugo Arbieu
  • Chinwe Ifejika Speranza
  • Bruno Locatelli
  • Natalia Pérez Harguindeguy
  • Ilse Ruiz Mercado
  • Marja J. Spierenburg
  • Améline Vallet
  • Laura Lynes
  • Lindsey Gillson

Global sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum and impact, and place-based research can provide complementary insights to strengthen them. Here, we explore the current and potential role of place-based research into informing global sustainability initiatives by assessing the strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We show that place-based research allows for a better understanding of global social–ecological dynamics, and that transformations towards sustainability are often triggered at the local scale through the co-construction of local solutions. We discuss that the very nature of place-based research can hinder its transferability because its global integration faces temporal, spatial and governance scale mismatches, and we identify some of the key challenges of scaling-up its findings. We highlight new opportunities to mainstream place-based research that are emerging from first, long-term networks of place-based research, second, new institutional research settings that contribute with conceptual comprehensive frameworks and capacity building tools, third, a global community of practice, and fourth, the concept of region as a bridge between local and global sustainability initiatives. We believe that the time is ripe to promote the role of place-based social–ecological research as a key contributor to achieve global sustainability goals.

Original languageEnglish
JournalCurrent Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
Volume29
Pages (from-to)1-7
Number of pages7
ISSN1877-3435
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.12.2017