Policy-makers and scientists dominate high-level sustainability debates but any decision that follows has consequences for ordinary people in their local communities and environments. We asked experts to reflect on the importance of embracing a culturally informed, bottom-up approach to the sustainability discourse and action.
Sustainability is not enough: we need regenerative cultures
By Daniel C. Wahl
SustainOSS: The Report
On June 19th, 2017, one hundred people gathered in San Francisco to create a cultural shift in how we think about the sustainability of…
From global trends to local realities: A multi-scale scenario-building methodology for community infrastructure planning
This paper details a multi-scale scenario-building methodology designed to explore transport infrastructure futures in rapidly changing Circumpolar North communities, bridging global trends and national contexts with local realities. Focusing on Churchill, Canada, and Kirkenes, Norway, we employed a hybrid approach that combined top-down adaptation of existing global and regional socioeconomic scenarios with bottom-up, participatory ethnographic research to ensure local relevance and incorporate stakeholder knowledge. We developed coherent scenarios across global, regional (national), and local scales, allowing higher-level archetypes to manifest differently depending on locally specific features identified through fieldwork. This consecutive, nested process utilized morphological analysis and the Factor-Actor-Sector framework to maintain consistency while accommodating local specificities. The methodology centered not just on scenario creation but also on the function of scenarios as a tool for community dialogue, utilizing artistic visualizations in workshops to engage diverse stakeholders. This approach demonstrates a way to navigate the tension between global and national drivers versus local community needs, yielding distinct yet comparable local futures grounded in broader development pathways. It offers practical insights for deliberations and planning in uncertain environments, both built and unbuilt.
The relationship between organizational culture, sustainability, and digitalization in SMEs: A systematic review
Organizational culture, environmental sustainability, and digitalization have an impact on the business development of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME). Dimensions associated with organizational culture (e.g., attitudes, norms, assumptions) give a sense of identity and determine behavior. The latter include general approaches concerning the organizational impact on the natural environment (environmental sustainability) or the adoption of digital technologies (digitalization), which can cause profound transformations of the business model. These three concepts have been investigated separately and scarce attention has been paid to their relationship. To enable SMEs to successfully manage this complex relationship, our study cumulates existing knowledge, offering the first integrative view on organizational culture, level of environmental sustainability, and level of digitalization and their interactions. Through a systematic literature review protocol supplemented where possible by meta-analysis we selected 80 significant papers out of 811 peer-reviewed papers analyzed. We developed a network map to display the relations between the three concepts. Quantitative path analysis was used on three bidirectional main paths. For qualitative analysis we developed a novel extension to the Belief-Action-Outcome (BAO) framework, presented for the first time in the paper. Our findings reveal thirteen key dimensions and identify ten links between the key constructs. Strategic orientation, internal capabilities, management, and attitudes are the most investigated cultural dimensions. Furthermore, we integrated interchangeably used terms (e.g. Green IT and Green IS) introducing the novel concept of green digitalization tools. The meta-analysis revealed trends in applied research methods, geographical locations of research, top journals, and a growing interest in the relationship. Finally, we identify gaps in existing research and challenges for future research.
Open source sustainability | TechCrunch
Open source sustainability has been nothing short of an oxymoron. Engineers around the world pour their sweat and frankly, their hearts into these passion
Urban problems: nature-based solutions and a Green New Deal everywhere
Nature-based Solutions with localised Green New Deals could save our settlements, and provide a just transition to a low-carbon society
Environment strategy: transformative changes for sustainability
This is an independent report by Professor Valerie Nelson on behalf of the Scottish Government to inform the development of the forthcoming Scottish Government Environment Strategy.
ICPA - ICPA 2026
Welcome to the 2026 International Conference on Perception and Action (ICPA). This year, we meet in Omaha, Nebraska, bringing the international ecological psychology community together in a setting that reflects a growing culture of research and innovation.ICPA brings together scholars from around the world who study perception and action as inseparable, mutually constraining processes grounded in organism–environment relations. The program features work spanning affordances, perceptual learning, coordination and control, development, social interaction, ecological design, and methodological innovation.The conference is designed to support sustained dialogue across theoretical, empirical, and applied perspectives—welcoming diverse viewpoints and participants from across institutions, disciplines, and countries. We invite you to join us for a week of scientific exchange and community building as we continue to advance ecological approaches to understanding behavior in real-world contexts.
Assessing nature's contributions to people
Recognizing culture, and diverse sources of knowledge, can improve assessments , A major challenge today and into the future is to maintain or enhance beneficial contributions of nature to a good quality of life for all people. This is among the key motivations of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a joint global effort by governments, academia, and civil society to assess and promote knowledge of Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems and their contribution to human societies in order to inform policy formulation. One of the more recent key elements of the IPBES conceptual framework ( 1 ) is the notion of nature's contributions to people (NCP), which builds on the ecosystem service concept popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) ( 2 ). But as we detail below, NCP as defined and put into practice in IPBES differs from earlier work in several important ways. First, the NCP approach recognizes the central and pervasive role that culture plays in defining all links between people and nature. Second, use of NCP elevates, emphasizes, and operationalizes the role of indigenous and local knowledge in understanding nature's contribution to people.
Climate Change: Global Crisis To Local Action By Kevin Anderson
Bioeconomy
An open access, interactive textbook with videos and Q&As on sustainability and social change in the emerging field of bioeconomy in second edition.
Social Influence and Action — Jen Christiansen
I’m wary of climate solutions that are hyper focused on the action of individuals as opposed to systems and corporations. Do you experience carbon footprint guilt every time you board a plane to visit family too? Well, that whole schema was a product of the PR firm Ogilvy & Mather for British Petroleum. It was an effort to shift focus away from oil companies and onto individual responsibility to lower greenhouse gas emissions. For more, read “The carbon footprint sham” by Mark Kaufman for Mashable in 2021, and “Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook” by Rebecca Solnit for The Guardian.
The geopolitical fight to come over green energy
The struggle for sustainable energy will soon put China, the US and Europe on a geopolitical collision course. But moving away from fossil fuels is a Herculean task, and a greener politics will not transcend tragedy.
Ecocivilization: making a world that works for all
""One of the greatest thinkers of our age" (The Guardian) presents a new way of living-one modeled on nature's design instead of capitalism's-for fans of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Doughnut Economics It has often been said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism-and yet that is what the historical moment urgently calls for. Climate change has reached an emergency state, inequality continues to grow, and, for many, the future has never seemed more bleak. Incremental policy improvements are no longer enough-we need a deep transformation of our current civilization to continue to survive. In Ecocivilization, leading thinker Jeremy Lent reimagines the basis of our civilization, and argues for a new global system of living, one based on life-affirming principles modeled after nature's own design. What enfolds is a robust framework incorporating Lent's own expertise, and the lived experiences of those on the ground already putting ecological civilization's core tenants into practice-justice, mutuality, diversity, and symbiosis. From the global economy to universal housing and income, from infrastructure to agriculture, every major aspect of our society could be redesigned to work together as a coherent whole, setting the conditions for all people to flourish. Ecocivilization shows how this future on a regenerated Earth is not only desirable, but entirely feasible"--
Projects – discover our non-empty spaces
Fostering spaces for growth is an important part of our trajectory. We seek to harness the combined power of practice, critical inquiry and creativity to address some of the issues of our times - health, environmental awareness, social equality and multilingual, trans-cultural collaborations.
Who owns nature ?
International policies for the protection of the Environment rest on a very specific conception of nature, which appeared in Europe during the Enlightenment. This conception is far from being shared by all the peoples of the earth, who value different cosmological principles. According to Philippe Descola, the preservation of biodiversity can only become fully effective if it takes into account this plurality in the understanding of nature. At the instigation of international (…)
