Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Science
Summary
Pressing global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity demand approaches that move beyond single-discipline perspectives. Transdisciplinary research integrates academic disciplines with non-academic stakeholders, co-creating knowledge and fostering reflexive inquiry across scales. It emphasises the equal valuation of scientific, local and practitioner insights to frame ill-defined, real-world problems and generate socially robust orientations for sustainability transitions. Key elements include boundary-spanning roles, inclusive governance structures and iterative learning processes that adapt to evolving social-ecological contexts. By combining consensus-building on system boundaries, purposeful differentiation of tasks and evolving codes of knowledge representation, transdisciplinary efforts enhance the relevance, credibility and legitimacy of research. Applications range from sustainable urban water management and energy transitions to ecosystem governance, demonstrating improved policy integration and practical impact in diverse settings.
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Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Science publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in transdisciplinary approaches to sustainability science across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Transdisciplinary research: An integrative approach that transcends academic disciplines and engages stakeholders in joint knowledge creation to tackle complex sustainability problems.
Knowledge co-production: The collaborative generation of research questions, methods and outcomes by researchers and non-academic actors to produce actionable solutions.
Social-ecological system: A coupled, dynamic system comprising ecosystems and human societies interacting across temporal and spatial scales.
Multiple evidence base (MEB): An approach that respects diverse knowledge systems by evaluating each on its own terms and combining insights for enhanced understanding and decision-making.
References
- Transdisciplinary knowledge integration – PART I: Theoretical foundations and an organizational structure. Technological Forecasting and Social Change (2024).
- Creating favorable conditions for inter- and transdisciplinary integration – An analytical framework and empirical insights. Global Environmental Change (2025).
- Connecting Diverse Knowledge Systems for Enhanced Ecosystem Governance: The Multiple Evidence Base Approach. Ambio (2014).
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