Governing Sustainable Futures: Advancing the use of Participatory Mechanisms for addressing Place-based Contestations of Sustainable Living

在英国各地实现可持续发展转型，需要在土地利用规划和管理、食品和饮食、能源生产、交通和机动性等不同问题上改变我们的生活和工作方式，并实现净零政策目标。与可持续发展转型相关的变化可以从赢家和输家、现任者和变革领导者的角度来看待，通常是分歧的根源，关于价值观的争论，以及对什么是公平或公正的判断；例如，最近关于所谓的15分钟城市的争议，以及关于牛津与交通措施相关的政治干预和自由的辩论。这些“爆发点”不仅与它们出现的地方有关，而且与在全国范围内提供可持续发展的地方的辩论和政策行动有关。这些引爆点提出了一些重要问题，如如何在不同的地理范围管理共同的可持续性过渡、过去的冲突如何影响当今的辩论以及不同利益集团推动和经历的参与类型和程度。因此，我们需要了解是什么导致了可持续生活的热点问题：这些问题是如何出现的，它们是如何构成的，以及管理可持续生活的变化如何能够促进与社区合作的方式，从而促进参与和共同制定解决方案。管理可持续未来(GSF)项目旨在研究我们如何建立新的方式来理解和处理基于地点的可持续发展竞赛，以解决本地和非本地冲突的原因。GSF汇集了社会科学家和地区(英国德文郡)合作伙伴的独特合作，他们与国家合作伙伴有着长期的合作历史，通过新颖和成熟的社会科学以及警觉权力和社会差异问题的参与式方法来解决这一问题。这些合作关系支撑了研究计划，在我们的研究实践中嵌入了联合生产、平等多样性和包容性(EDI)和可持续发展原则。GSF解决了与工作包相关的四个总体目标，反映了我们识别、分析和干预可持续政策冲突的理论方法：开发一种方法，帮助我们了解在特定地点出现的冲突的本地和非当地原因，但也与其他地点有联系并随时间演变。提出关于地点和地点之间关系的新思维方式，有助于解锁可持续政策冲突的新解决方案。开发创新的协作和参与式方法来应对基于地点的可持续发展冲突(在德文郡，促进公众和利益攸关方如何支持公众和利益攸关方参与地方可持续发展冲突的本地和非本地原因，并在英国的公正过渡方面取得进展。GSF的一项核心原则将是明确地区经验的见解与国家政策和实践建议之间的联系。我们的团队包括话语和参与性研究方法、地点和可持续过渡理论、环境政策和政治、环境争议和公正过渡方面的领先专家，以及关键的区域政策和实践组织。团队成员在UKRI对可持续生活的其他重大投资中发挥着主导作用。埃克塞特大学将提供匹配资金支持，这反映了相当大的研究协同效应和机构对应用该项目的知识的承诺。我们将共同提出及时的政策见解，以实现公平和可持续的地方。

Delivering sustainability transitions in diverse places across the UK entails changes in how we live and work across diverse issues such as land use planning and management, food and diet, energy production, transport and mobility and achieving net zero policy goals. The changes associated with sustainability transitions can be perceived in terms of winners and losers, incumbents and change-leaders, and often act as loci of disagreement, contestation over values and judgements about what is fair or just; for example, the recent controversy on the so-called '15-minute city' and debates about political intervention and freedom associated transport measures in Oxford. These 'flashpoints' are relevant not only to the places in which they emerge, but also for debate and policy action on delivering sustainable places nationally. Such flashpoints raise important issues about how common sustainability transitions are governed at different geographic scales, the ways in which past conflicts shape present-day contestation and the types and levels of engagement promoted and experienced by different interest groups. Accordingly, we need to understand what makes for a flashpoint issue on sustainable living: how such issues emerge, how they are framed, and how changes to governing sustainable living can promote ways of working with communities that promote participation and the co-production of solutions. The Governing Sustainable Future (GSF) project aims to examine how we can build new ways of understanding and acting on place-based sustainability contestations that address the local and non-local causes of conflict.GSF brings together a unique collaboration of social scientists and regional (Devon, UK) partners, who have a long history of working together, along with national partners, to address this question through novel and established social science and participatory approaches that are alert to questions of power and social difference. These collaborative relations underpin the research programme, embedding Co-production, Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Sustainability principles in our research practice.GSF addresses four overarching aims associated work packages, that reflect our theoretical approach to identifying, analysing and intervening in sustainable policy conflicts:To develop an approach that helps us to understand local and non-local causes of conflicts that emerge in a particular place but also have connections to other places and evolve over time.To present new ways of thinking about places and relations between places that can help to unlock new solutions to sustainably policy conflicts.To develop innovative collaborative and participatory methods for responding to place-based sustainability conflicts (in Devon, UK) and apply to policy challenges on the ground.To generate new understandings of how participatory processes can support public and stakeholder engagement with the local and non-local causes of place-based sustainability conflicts, and progress action on just transitions in the UK. A core principle of GSF will be to make clear connections between insights from regional experience and recommendations for national policy and practice.Our team includes leading experts in discursive and participatory research methods, theories of place and sustainable transitions, environmental policy and politics, environmental controversy, and just transitions, plus key regional policy and practice organisations. Team members play a leading role in other major UKRI investments into sustainable living. The University of Exeter will provide match-fund support, which reflect considerable research synergies and institutional commitment to applying knowledge from this project. Together we will co-produce timely policy insights for achieving equitable and sustainable places.