Mission

Transformative sustainability science – definition and aspirations

Transformational sustainability science is a fairly young scientific field, evolving since the early 2000s. It encompasses research and education in support of developing and scaling sustainable solutions. Solutions are complex constructs of goals, action plans, implementation processes and real-world outcomes. Sustainable solutions manifest in infrastructures, technologies, business practices & models, social practices and behavior that solve complex and urgent sustainability problems, such as climate change, resource depletion, economic inequalities, exploitation, epidemics, poverty, and violent conflicts. The attribute “transformational” characterizes a particular type of sustainability science that (a) actively advances solutions, not just analyzing problems (transformation as process), and (b) namely solutions with significant impact (transformation as outcome). Unlike incremental solutions, transformational sustainable solutions get close to or reach sustainable states, e.g. the Sustainable Development Goals.

Transformational sustainability research generates actionable knowledge on how to solve sustainability problems. It generates such knowledge by investigating the development and scaling of sustainable solutions. Investigating entails (a) generating evidence on established sustainable solutions; (b) testing sustainable solutions during development and scaling; as well as (c) generalizing insights from comparison of multiple sustainable solutions. To generate this knowledge in scientifically credible and practically relevant ways as well as to increase the chances of seeing actionable knowledge put into action (by practitioners), transformational sustainability research is conducted through interdisciplinary research teams and in collaboration with partners from government, administration, business as well as civil society (transdisciplinarity).

Mission of the Transformational Sustainability Science Group

The mission of the Transformational Sustainability Science Group (TSS Group) is to advance and institutionalize transformational sustainability science through the following activity domains:

Building theory and particularly methodology of transformational sustainability science, e.g. by prototyping and field testing research methods for planning, analyzing, reconstructing, evaluating, and extrapolating transformational solutions to sustainability problems
Synthesizing foundational work on transformational sustainability science, which has been developed over the past two decades, partly by members of the TSS Group, into accessible formats that can be utilized by researchers, educators, trainings, scientific societies, professional associations, funding agencies and others
Developing sustainability education and training programs through design, delivery and evaluation of programs that equip practitioners with competencies, i.e. knowledge, skills and attitudes, needed to solve sustainability problems. For this, the TSS Group adopts solutions- and competency-oriented, project-based pedagogies, with a focus on simulating professional situations. Additionally, the TSS Group offers trainings to researchers on transformational sustainability research and to transdisciplinary interface managers facilitating transformational sustainability research
Conducting empirical transformational sustainability research, particularly field experiments, on urban heat mitigation and sustainable innovations for food businesses, value chains, and economic sectors

The TSS Group cooperates with sustainability researchers and educators locally at various departments of the University of Freiburg as well as the University of Education Freiburg; nationally with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Eberswalde University of Sustainable Development; in Europe with the University of Basel, the University of Strasbourg, and Imperial College London; as well as in North America with Arizona State University, the University of Waterloo and the Sustainability Education Accreditation Commission.

The TSS Group was founded at the University of Freiburg in 2024 with funding from the Humboldt Foundation through the Humboldt Professorship for Sustainable Food Economy.