Bridging the great divide in sustainability science

Bridging the great divide in sustainability science: The concjunction of high-performance modeling transition experiment to support transformative modification towards sustainability 

Sustainability issues such as climate change, scarcity of water and land degradation endanger the long-term viability and inviolacy of societies around the world. While the theoretical and empirical comprehension of these challenges is growing, the solutions are mich less developed adjusted. In response, the sustainability science have presented a research program, which is focused on evidence-based solutions with the aim of scaling and fungibility. Still there is a considerable gap between the appreciation of complex challenges contributing contextualisation of specific solutions. Viewing this facts from a complexity and theory perspective this challenge relates to the appropriate coarse or fine adjustment of models, so that thy can capture all the relevant dimensions of each different scale.

The Center for Global Sustainability and Cultural Transformation (CGSC) intends at the university of Lüneburg building additional capacity to bridge the gap between (i) the modeling and understanding complex sustainability issues (mostly on a global scale) and (ii) the development and evaluation contextualized solutions (mostly at the regional level) to bridge.

The agenda for future excellence cluster is characterized by the fact that both approaches are connected and interdisciplinary collaborations on the two scientific communities are promoted away while existing disciplinary approaches to be developed. This is a great step towards bridging the "knowledge-action gap" is done in sustainability science. To this end, we connect relevant research communities in sustainability science, as we already use existing research and project networks, which are located at the Leuphana university and the CGSC and are coordinated from there.

More capacity and institutional connections are made to the following research questions around:

1. How can models help to find suitable places and contexts for "transition experiments"?

2. How to help "experiments transition" models in the design of more effective?

3. How can the findings of "transition experiments" transferred and generalized?

4. How can "transition experiments" help to increase the validity and significance of models?

How can a "knowledge-action loop" with respect to its promotion, communication, reflection and education be designed?