Fostering transdisciplinary research for equitable and sustainable development pathways across Africa: what changes are needed?
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The transformations required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals across the African continent demand new ways of mobilising, weaving together, and applying knowledge. Research, policymaking, planning, and action must be effectively inter-linked to address complex sustainability challenges and the different needs and interests of societal actors. Transdisciplinarity (TD) - the co-production of knowledge across disciplines and with non-academic actors - offers a promising, holistic approach to foster such transformations. Yet, despite increased application of TD over the past two decades, disciplinary and sectoral silos persist. TD is not well embedded in African academic institutions and, consequently, much SDG-related research is too narrowly framed and divorced from the action space to be effective. There is an urgent need to work collectively across disciplines and society for transformation towards more sustainable and equitable development pathways. Capacities to undertake collaborative, impactful research must be strengthened, and changes in research culture are needed to support relationship building. We explore these issues by drawing on two recent online social learning processes with researchers and practitioners working on sustainability issues and TD. In each process, we built on actors’ own experiences of TD by investigating institutional, practical, and theoretical challenges and enablers of TD. Here, we synthesise our learnings, alongside key literature, and explore avenues to better: a) promote and support TD within academic institutions across Africa; b) resource TD for sustainable partnerships, and c) strengthen TD practices and impacts to support transformation to sustainability across diverse places and contexts.
Date Issued
2023-12-01
Date Acceptance
2022-11-11
Citation
Ecosystems and People, 2023, 19 (1)
ISSN
2639-5908
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Group
Journal / Book Title
Ecosystems and People
Volume
19
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Biodiversity Conservation
Ecology
Environmental Sciences
Environmental Studies
Biodiversity & Conservation
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Matthew Weaver
Sustainability
transformation
transdisciplinarity
Sustainable Development Goals
Africa
equity
KNOWLEDGE
SOCIETY
SCIENCE
ANTHROPOCENE
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
2164798
Date Publish Online
2023-01-22