Transdisciplinarity for social learning? The contribution of the German socio-ecological research initiative to sustainability governance

Governance depends upon inputs from science. Whereas the conventional view portrays science as advisor of policy makers, more recent understandings see knowledge creation processes and decision processes as highly interrelated and intermingled. Against this background, we analyse the new research programme on socio-ecological research set up in Germany. In doing so, we firstly discuss current conceptual approaches to redefining the role of science in society. Secondly, we identify five challenges for scientific activities and apply these as criteria for an assessment of the socio-ecological research initiative. Thirdly, we analyse the potential limits and opportunities of this programme for social learning towards sustainable development. We also indicate what can be learned for ecological economics. 2 2 The present paper is based on a presentation by the authors at the conference “Science and Governance—The Ecological Economics Perspective” of the European Society for Ecological Economics, June 14–17 2005, Lisbon. We thank the participants of the session “Participation and Governance — Actors, Institutions and Processes in Environmental Decision-Making” for critical comments and discussion. We are also indebted to two anonymous referees. We also thank Laura Glauser-Layadi for helping us preparing the final version of this text. The paper draws on research funded by the programme “Socio-Ecological Research” (SÖF) of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Financial support is gratefully acknowledged. Of course, we are solely responsible for the content of this paper and the opinions expressed.