Department of Global Change and Social Systems

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DEPARTMENT OF GLOBAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS

We investigate possible pathways towards an environmental, social and economic sustainability transition to take place in the coming decades. In particular, we analyse socio-economic processes that drive global environmental change and that determine society's ability to avoid and respond to the consequences of such change. In the practical dimension of our research, we use the EU-declared target of limiting global warming to no more than 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels as a research focus, with which we can demonstrate the policy-relevance of our approach and the scientific validity of our tools and methods.

The interaction of global change and social systems clearly involves macro-scale processes involving humankind as a whole. However, a sound analysis of these processes is impossible without a good understanding of institutional and cultural phenomena linking the fate of humankind to the biographies of individual human beings. Without such understanding, relevant processes are overlooked or misrepresented, and effective communication with stakeholders is impeded. The state of the art in the social sciences, however, makes it very clear that our understanding of the so-called micro-macro problem in this field is painfully insufficient. Therefore, the theoretical dimension of our research is oriented at this problem and its significance to sustainability.

In our research, we develop the capacity to model a range of key processes and features in society. In this research, we address the following research questions:

• How can the dynamics of financial markets become a driver of a sustainability transition?
• How can the costs of sustainable energy technologies be reduced to levels that are viable for the relevant businesses?
• How can the dynamics of lifestyles and consumption, including its implications for agriculture and land-use, facilitate or hinder a sustainability transition?
• How can significant reductions of vulnerability to global environmental change be achieved during a sustainability transition?
• How can the mismatch between micro- and macro-economics identified in recent theoretical literature be avoided in practically relevant research?
• How can the tension between rationality as a possible virtue of human individuals and rationality as a cultural cloak for moral and aesthetic incompetence be overcome in debates about a sustainability transition?
• How can the uncertainties and ambiguities that are a pervasive feature of problems of climate policy be addressed by reasonable steps of risk management?

To address these research questions we combine computer modelling with arguments consciously developed with the means of natural language. We complement a core competence in economics by skills in other social sciences to analyse the interface between micro- and macro-processes in a possible sustainability transition.

We consciously distinguish between a few areas of research where we develop original results by highly specialised work and the much broader research fields in which they are embedded. In many important and interesting areas - including demography, human health, the economics of trade, the development of international law - we do not engage in active research because this would not be possible at the level of quality to which we are committed. However, we use the competence developed through our own research activity to follow and, where needed, assess the literature dealing with the many human dimensions of global environmental change.

Department Staff