Summer School on Global Sustainability-Working Group Wiki Page

Please refer to the Complex Systems Summer School groups page to get an idea of self organization and working groups.

Cluster Research Ideas

Ecosystem Services, Biodiversity, Food and Ag

1) How can the global food and land-use systems decrease their negative environmental impact and adapt to climate change while mitigating its effects?

2) Expanding and standardizing measurement, monitoring, and verification of global ecosystem services.

3) How can we sustainably use ocean and freshwater systems (drinking water, fishing, aquaculture, recreation, and biodiversity)?

Developing World

4) How to foster innovation/knowledge sharing within the developing world in regards to improving livelihoods & ensuring sustainability? (e.g. Indeigenous Knowledge, solutions appropriate for agricultural lifestyles)?

5) How would technological transfer from developed to developing nations (or vice versa) for climate change adaptation and mitigation actually occur? (e.g. acocuntability, $$, open source software, govt to govt, private to private, incentives for innovation)

6) How do we get to an equitable distribution of responsibility for climate change mitigation & adaptation around the globe? (e.g. emission reduction burdens, adaptation funds, ranking vulnerability)

Policy/Regulatory Environment

7) How can complexity science support streamlining development and adoption of technologies and practices?

8) How to effectively translate research into policy, practice and intervention (with diverse collaborators, partnerships, initiatives, etc.)

9) How do we transform policies affecting global sustainability (path dependence, complex adaptive policy, integration, scalability, etc.)

10) What types of policies can promote sustainability and how to meaningfully enforce them? (individual initiatives, systems approaches, international agreements)

Decision Sciences

11) How do we understand/how do we change/what are the rules of the game, especially as applied to: economic growth theory agricultural/eco systems social systems?

12) What drives societal transformation (in terms of values, norms, practices, and livelihoods strategies) & how can complex system science help to productively shed light on those processes?

Climate Change

13) How can we better quantify uncertainty when we are in uncharted territory of the climate system (where change is happening faster and involving feedbacks we don't yet understand?

14) How do we develop useful integrated models? Are there feedback mechanisms that we don't understand?

15) How does climate change affect uncertainties and challenges in modeling de-carbonization & the energy system?

Human Well-Being, Sociology, Advocacy

16) How can we best change consumption and political behaviors?

17) How can population growth be part of the dialogue?

18) What techniques & strategies from past social movements can be used to initiate and sustain new social movements?

19) How do cultural conceptions of nature influence sustainability? What kind of educational strategies are needed to foster values that facilitate sustainability?

20) How can we anticipate & mitigate resource-based human conflicts?

Mitigation and Adaptation

21) What technologies are still needed to evaluate environmental impacts?

22) What is our vision for a sustainable future?

23) Which low-carbon or carbon neutral technologies or practices are needed, or need to be developed for a sustainable future?

Complexity

24) To what degree does heterogeniety facilitate the adoption & spread of sustainable technologies or practices?

25) Are entropy and sustainability opposing or supporting forces? Under what conditions?

26) Can ideas from complexity be used to improve integrated design practices for new technology (and retrofit technology?)

Proposals for Combination

1. 2 and #21
2. 7 and #26 and #4
3. 12 and #18
4. 15 and #23
5. 8 and #9 and #16