Tom Waas

A discourse-analytical perspective on sustainability assessment: interpreting sustainable development in practice

Sustainable development is a ubiquitously used concept in public decision-making: it refers to an ideal vision of global society where human development and environmental quality go hand in hand. Logically, any decision-supporting process aiming at facilitating and steering society toward a sustainable future then seems desirable. Assessing the sustainability of policy decisions is, however, influenced by what sustainable development is believed to entail, as different discourses coexist under the umbrella of the sustainable development meta-discourse. This paper proposes a typology of sustainable development discourses, and, subsequently, applies a discourse-analytical lens on two practical cases of sustainability assessment in different institutional and geographical contexts (in Belgium and in Benin). The results indicate that sustainability assessments tend to be influenced mainly by the consensual ‘sustainable development as integration’ discourse, while also providing a forum for dialogue between different discourses. The results shed light on context-specific discursive and institutional dynamics for the development and application of sustainability assessment. Acknowledging these dynamics as well as sustainable development’s inherent interpretational limits can lead to an improved use of sustainable development as a decision-guiding strategy.

Analytic framework for assessing participation processes and outcomes of climate change adaptation tools.

The assumptions and empirical evidence linking climate change adaptation to development cooperation have led to the emergence of a range of climate change adaptation tools aiming at improving the quality of development cooperation initiatives in times of global change. In order to assess the quality of these tools, we develop an analytic framework to critically assess the social learning and sustainable development outcomes of climate change adaptation tools. The analytic framework defines project objectives, participation typology, participation tools, participation stages, scenarios development, modelling exercises, stakeholder analysis and risk communication strategies that support quality participation outcomes.

Developing an Environmental Sustainability Toolkit to Integrate Climate Change Issues in Development Cooperation

The KLIMOS research platform on climate change and development cooperation is an inter-disciplinary and inter-university research platform working on climate change adaptation and mitigation in development cooperation. Within KLIMOS, our team is working on the integration of environmental sustainability issues in development interventions in Belgium’s southern partner countries, through the development of an environmental sustainability toolkit. The toolkit consists of a screening instrument and a database that need to be used together when preparing, monitoring and/or evaluating development interventions. This allows development practitioners in North and South to mainstream key environmental sustainability aspects such as climate change, but also biodiversity, desertification and deforestation, into the different aid modalities (projects, budget support, programmes, national strategies, etc.). A number of case studies will be conducted to test the toolkit in different contexts and to familiarize future users with the approach. In the context of this paper, we will describe the genesis of the toolkit, as well as the contents and the process of the proposed first version (toolkit 1.0). Finally, we will analyse the potential of the toolkit in the Sahel partner countries of the Belgian fund for food security through a brief case study in Benin. The paper concludes with some thoughts on how to fine-tune the toolkit methodology with the integrated water resources management (IWRM) approach, which is used successfully by non-governmental organizations in the region. The case study will allow us to bridge the gap between “abstract” climate change mainstreaming goals and the local realities in the South, by enriching the toolkit approach with IWRM insights.

Sustainability science in practice: discourse and action in a university-wide transition initiative

‘Sustainability science’ (Kemp and Martens 2007; Huge 2012) is an increasingly popular concept, drawing scholars and students towards inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches that are commonly believed to embody the best solutions to solve the challenges of rapidly a changing world. While the enthusiasm generated by the concept is to be welcomed, its implementation and operationalization are challenging. If it fails to deliver, it risks to trigger disillusion and discouragement and it may come to embody nothing more than semantics and ‘loose words’. Engineers are—at least perceived as—the quintessential problem solvers in academia, but global change as well as the realization that any scientific endeavour cannot be performed in a societal vacuum forces engineers to reconceptualize their role in society as well as their research philosophy. Tangible processes are needed to turn this analysis of the current situation into actions for a more sustainable future. Sustainability assessment (SA) is such a process that may turn the initial enthusiasm for the broad concept of sustainability science into actions that lead to more sustainable engineering research and teaching. The objective of this paper is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of SA in a university-wide transition exercise, focusing on the views of the academic community in engineering faculties at the University of Ghent, Belgium. Drawing on the application of sustainability assessment processes on various systems (energy systems, development cooperation projects), and on the real-life experience of the bottom-up ‘Transition at the University of Ghent, Belgium’-initiative, we use a discourse-analytical approach to sustainability assessment (Huge et al. 2013). Acknowledging the variety of discourses, frames and worldviews embodied in sustainability science is a key step in creating actor coalitions that may trigger positive change in academic institutions. We will propose a qualitative evaluation of existing and planned concrete transition activities, building on recent insights in the field of ‘sustainable higher education’ (Beynaghi et al. 2014) in order to provide recommendations on how to implement sustainability science in engineering faculties.