Stories of Transformation: A Cross-Country Focus Group Study on Sustainable Development and Societal Change

Abstract

Societal transformation is one of the most topical concepts in sustainability research and policy-making. Used in many ways, it indicates that nonlinear systematic changes are needed in order to fully address global environmental and human development challenges. This paper explores what sustainability transformations mean for lay focus group participants in Cabo Verde, China, Fiji, Sweden, and the USA. Key findings include: (a) Tightly linked to interpersonal relationships, sustainability was seen as going beyond the Sustainable Development Goals to include a sense of belonging; (b) transformations were framed as fundamental changes from today’s society, but most participants stated that transformation pathways need to splice new structures into the old; (c) new technologies are key engines of change. Yet, the most common drivers were awareness, education, and knowledge sharing; and (d) regardless of whether state-centric or decentralized governance was preferred, personal action was seen as essential. The focus groups displayed a shared understanding across the geographical settings; a common realization of profound sustainability predicaments facing societies across the world; and a desire for fundamental change towards a more sustainable way of life.

Drivers of sustainability transformations: leverage points, contexts and conjunctures

“…In each location, four focus groups were conducted, encompassing a total of 136 participants. Since we aimed for a diverse yet targeted sample of sites where transformation is high on the policy agenda, we selected culturally, politically, and economically diverse sites with different environmental and social challenges, where the concept of transformation has been explicitly grappled with in official policy documents (see Wibeck et al 2019 ).…”

Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere

“…There are suggestions for social tipping interventions to activate large-scale systemic shifts through, for example, rapidly spreading of technologies, shifts in social norms and behaviors, or structural reorganization of sectors, corporations, and societies (Folke et al 2019 ; Otto et al 2020 ). There are signs that such shifts are underway in western cultures, a desire for fundamental change towards a more sustainable way of life (Wibeck et al 2019 ) aided by social movements such as the youth-led Extinction Rebellion, as well as a strong move to more healthy and sustainable diets (Willet et al 2019 ). Again, all these changes unfold as part of cultural evolution, which needs attention as urgently as the decarbonization of our economy (Waring et al 2015 ; Creanza et al 2017 ; Jörgensen et al 2019 ).…”

Sense-making Analysis: A Framework for Multi-Strategy and Cross-Country Research

“…We 1) performed a broad international media study, 2) analyzed submissions of intended and decided nationally determined contributions to the Paris climate agreement from 190 countries (the EU makes one joint submission), 3) explored examples of historical transformations, 4) surveyed the peer reviewed scholarly literature, and 5) conducted focus group interviews and document studies in five case study countries, Cabo Verde, China, Fiji, Sweden and the USA. 2 The results are reported elsewhere , 2020Wibeck et al, 2019) and will not be discussed in depth here. In this paper, we instead use our studies in the Sustainability Transformations project to illustrate the methodological framework.…”