Values, science, and competing paradigms in sustainability research: furthering the conversation

Sustainability science is fundamentally a problem-driven and solutions-oriented science which necessitates engagement with questions of interdisciplinarity and normativity. Nagatsu et al. (2020) recently investigated the significance of these peculiar characteristics and produce a useful and timely overview of the problems facing sustainability science, as a science. Perhaps the most crucial and crosscutting challenge they identify regards the need for researchers to justify the particular values guiding sustainability research. In the spirit of advancing Nagatsu et al.’s agenda for further developing the role of values in sustainability science, I argue two things. First, that there are in practice several active and competing approaches to dealing with the problem of normativity in sustainablity science that provide options to researchers. Second, that this unresolved tension at the core of sustainability science points to a more overarching problem, namely the need to more explicitly identify coherent, competing research paradigms within the field.