Good solutions to global sustainability challenges fall through the cracks because of inherent differences between academia and practitioners, says Sustainability Institute Faculty Director Elena Irwin.
In a new video, "Bridging the Valley of Wasted Knowledge," Irwin and colleagues explain how the purpose of researchers’ work is rooted in academic knowledge and tradition, while that of practitioners is secured by challenges of the real world. In addition, academics speak the language of research, while people working in fields affected by sustainability communicate in terms of day-to-day pressures and crisis.
The video highlights the critical issues addressed in the related Nature Sustainability comment article “Bridging barriers to advance global sustainability” by Irwin and her co-authors, who produced the video to help develop and foster discussions and sustainable connections among academia, stakeholders and communities to co-produce innovative approaches to local and global problems.
“It is aimed at a broad audience within and outside the academy, and in particular any group or individual who feels the urgency, as we do, to minimize the academic barriers needed to achieve global sustainability,” says co-author Stephanie Pfirman, who is Foundation Professor, School of Sustainability, and senior sustainability scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, at Arizona State University. Pfirman sparked the idea for the video and had it produced through Arizona State. “We hope the video shows how absolutely senseless it is, as well as solution-defeating, to continue with standard academic approaches when there is so much work to be done, and so many people ready and willing to do it.”
“Academic institutions can and should be reworking the research incentives and reward systems for faculty, as well as being more purposeful in partnering with community, government and industry stakeholders to make research more relevant, useful and used to address sustainability challenges,” says Irwin. “This is not to discount the importance of basic research, which is critical, but to also advocate for closing the gap between research for academic outlets and sustainability solutions informed by research.”
Ohio State is making progress on these fronts, Irwin says, including through the Discovery Themes and its comprehensive energy management partnership with global energy company ENGIE and financial partner Axium Infrastructure.
“Building these bridges will require commitment from researchers, administrators, funders, policymakers, communities, practitioners and all stakeholders,” says co-author Patricia Culligan, Robert A.W. and Christine S. Carleton Professor of Civil Engineering and Earth Institute Faculty Member, Columbia University. “That’s what it’s going to take to improve sustainability and well-being for all of us.”
In addition to Pfirman, Culligan and Irwin, the Nature Sustainability article was co-authored by Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Institute for Social Ecology, University for Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria; Kara Lavender Law, Sea Education Association, Falmouth, Mass.; and Raghu Murtugudde, ESSIC-AOSC, University of Maryland.