Expert views on sustainability and technology implementation

Abstract

Twenty-one senior faculty members and researchers were interviewed about their con ception of sustainability and their understanding of implementation in projects linked to the Alliance of Global Sustainability, a joint project of MIT (Boston), ETH (Zurich and Lausanne), UT (Tokyo), and Chalmers (Gothenburg). We identified five complementary views on sustainability, i.e. i) science is sustainable per se, ii) sustainability is an ethical relationship with the past and future, iii) sustainability is the maintenance of a system within functional limits, iv) eco-efficiency, v) sustainability is a form of ongoing inquiry. In total, the conception of ethical relationship was the most dominant concep tion whereas science per se and eco-efficiency were less used. Researchers with a natural science background raised more aspects of sustainability and more emphasized limit management Eco efficiency is important for professors with a social science but not for those with a natural sci ence background. Most of the researchers regarded implementation as the process whereby their work comes into contact with social groups and processes and where concerns about taking action and social technology change became prominent. The interviewed researchers considered suc cessful implementation to be linked to value change, efficient information policy, institutional action but not regulations and supposed technology implementation to creates new alloca tions, i.e. winners and losers. The relationship between knowledge and action is considered central in views on imple mentation. Three different conceptions and habits could be identified with respect to this rela tionship, i.e. a) action: I act to change the world; b) interaction, I exchange information with my environment through my actions, c) transaction or mutual learning. I change as a result of my effort to bring about change in the word. The concept of sustainability has a surprisingly long tradition and is a child of the 17th cen tury crises in forest overuse due to shipping construction and mining. The concept goes back to the Saxonian Oberberghauptmann von Carlowitz, a “principal captain” in the Saxonian silver mining business In his volume Sylviculturum Oeconomica. Die Naturmäßige Anweisung zur Wilden Baum-Zucht (Leipzig 1713, [engl. Nature based guidelines for breeding of the wild tree.]), he was concerned about “wie eine sothane Conservation und Anbau des Holtzes anzustellen, daß es eine continuirliche, beständige und nachhaltige Nutzung gebe.” [ engl., “how to accomplish conservation and growing of wood that a continuous, steady, and sustainable can become possi ble.”] In this quote the technical term [engl. sustainable was firstly defined (DIE ZEIT, Nov. 25th, 1999, No. 48, p. 98).