Volume 3.0: Centre for Sustainable Fashion: tactics for change

Documenting the debates raised at the Fashioning the Future Summit, a milestone event run by the CSF in October 2008, and strategising to propose new possibilities for the fashion sector which minimise the negative social, environmental and cultural effects of our practices and maximise connection, innovation and positivity. The keynote speeches from Michael McDonough, Anthony Kleanthous and Sungjoo Kim are also available to view

Africa 2060: good news from Africa, April 16, 2010

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, As the keystone event of a research program called “Africa 2060,” the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University convened a conference on April 16, 2010 called Africa 2060: Good News from Africa. The program featured more than a dozen expert panelists from Boston University and across the world, and the approximately 100 participants included many African scholars and citizens from the continent who contributed to lively and well-informed discussion. The Pardee Center conference was co-sponsored by Boston University’s Africa Studies Center (ASC), the African Presidential Archives & Research Center (APARC), and the Global Health & Development Center (GHDC).This report provides commentary reflecting upon and information pertaining to the substance of the conference. An introductory overview looks at the major issues discussed at the event, which are placed within the larger literature on Africa’s future. Four short essays prepared by Boston University graduate students provide readers with more specific reflections and highlights of each conference session and the main issues discussed by panelists. The final section presents analyses of key trends and projections related to societal, economic, and governance issues for Africa and a commentary on what this information tells us about the drivers that will determine the continent’s future

Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition

Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New developments in information processing and information communication technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions, representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective, multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences, sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions. When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics. We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our different research fields that include information studies, computability, human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor

KBE frameworks and their applicability to a resource-based country: The case of Brunei Darussalam

Knowledge is generally considered to be one of the most important drivers of economic growth. The difference between a knowledge-based economy (KBE) and a resource-based one is that in the former, the main competition between individuals, firms, and countries is the ability to innovate. Other forms of competition, for example through pricing strategies and access to resources, become secondary. Generally, knowledge is information combined with technology that dramatically increases its impact when shared. Organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and the World Bank Institute (WBI) have developed different KBE frameworks to indicate the extent of countries' knowledge base and implicitly to guide policy. But these frameworks have little in theoretical underpinnings and applying them universally across all countries in different regions, at different stages of development and with different institutional, social and economic characteristics may be misleading and result in inappropriate policy responses. In this paper we propose a framework that clearly distinguishes input-output indicators of a knowledge-based economy under four important dimensions: knowledge acquisition, knowledge production, knowledge distribution and knowledge utilization, and attempt to adapt them in a practical policy oriented approach for an economy like Brunei Darussalam, which is attempting to transform from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy

National research and development project on healthy universities: final report

This report presents the findings of a National Research and Development Project, undertaken by the Healthy Settings Development Unit at the University of Central Lancashire and funded by the Higher Education Academy Health Sciences and Practice Subject Centre and the Department of Health. The aim of the project was to scope and report on the potential for a national programme on Healthy Universities that could contribute to health, well-being and sustainable development. The project comprised four strands: - Literature Review: A rapid review of relevant academic and policy-related literature conducted in order to clarify theory, scope practice and distil key contextual issues. - HEI-level Research: Comprising an overview audit and follow-up mapping and consultative research, this strand of the project provided an overview of Healthy University activity across English HEIs, generated in-depth data from a purposive sample of universities and explored perspectives on the potential development of a national programme on Healthy Universities. - National-Level Stakeholder Research: Using semi-structured interviews with nine key national stakeholder organisations, this strand of the project mapped current health-related roles and responsibilities and explored views regarding the potential development of a national programme on Healthy Universities. - Joint Action Planning and Reporting: In addition to reporting interim findings at relevant conferences and events, an interactive workshop was held with members of the English National Healthy Universities Network to present findings, validate data, inform the action planning process and secure further buy-in. The project highlighted that higher education offers enormous potential to impact positively on the health and well-being of students, staff and the wider community through education, research, knowledge exchange and institutional practice. It also suggested that investment for health within the sector will further contribute to core agendas such as staff and student recruitment, experience and retention; and institutional and societal productivity and sustainability. The research revealed the richness of activity taking place within HEIs and evidenced a rapid increase in interest in the Healthy University approach, pointing to a growing appreciation of the need for a comprehensive whole system approach that can map and understand interrelationships, interactions and synergies within higher education settings – with regard to different groups of the population, different components of the system and different health issues. There is a clear challenge involved in introducing and integrating ‘health’ within a sector that does not have this as its central aim, is characterised by ‘initiative overload’, is experiencing resource constraints and comprises fiercely autonomous institutions. However, there is also a widening recognition that such a system-based approach has significant added value – offering the potential to address health in a coherent and joined-up way and to forge connections to both health-related targets and core drivers within higher education. The report concludes that there is clear demand for national-level stakeholder organisations to demonstrate leadership through championing and resourcing a Healthy Universities Programme that not only adds value within the higher education sector, but also helps to build consistency of approach across the entire spectrum of education. It issues a number of recommendations with a view to responding to the findings and moving forward

Social Responsibility as a Driver for Local Sustainable Development

The increased interconnection among local and global players induced by globalization, as well as the need for a complete application of the “subsidiarity principle”, calls for a re-thinking of the “corporate social responsibility” concept. This new concept broadens the perspective of the single company interacting with its own stakeholders in relation to specific social and environmental impacts, to a network of organizations, with different aims and natures, collaborating on relevant sustainability issues. In this paper, the authors will provide a definition of “Territorial Social Responsibility”, sustaining the multi-stakeholder approach as a driver toward local sustainable development. Firstly, theoretical approaches to sustainable development at the territorial level will be examined, identifying the most innovative ideas about governance, network relation and development theories. The idea of development focuses not only on the economic aspects, but on the structural and institutional factors. The existence of cooperative territorial networks is essential to fulfil the creation of tangible and intangible assets at the local level. At the same time, the effectiveness of the decision-making and rules’ system can stimulate and empower territorial networks to tackle sustainable development. An analytical framework, scheme-shaped, will be set in order to identify the main aspects, indicators and practices characterizing the territorial social responsibility concept. It will represent a first attempt to create a feasible instrument aimed at understanding how cooperative social responsible actors, operating in the same territory, could direct the path toward sustainable development.Local Sustainable Development, Territorial Social Responsibility, Participation, Local Governance, Accountability, Sustainability Reporting, Multi-Stakeholder Approach, Networks

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed