AbstractsSociology

This dissertation describes a transdisciplinary research project undertaken at the University of Iceland in 2009 to 2013, that focused upon the creation and testing of a public participatory process through which individual communities can take steps towards sustainability and social equity within Earth’s boundaries. If the United Nations’ prediction of more than nine billion people in 2050 is realized, and if a large number of those people aspire to today’s Western lifestyles with larger than sustainable ecological footprints, then humanity as a whole faces an enormous dilemma. Earth cannot support that many people living unsustainably, and the growing pressure on current mechanisms for the allocation and management of resources leads to an increasingly ‘unfair’ planet. As we only have one Earth, a possible solution to this dilemma might be to change the way resources are divided between nations, communities and individuals, towards new processes of management and allocation that are fair and within biological planetary limits. This dissertation describes the creation and testing of the Convergence Process; a collection of principles, tools and methods meant to aid communities in moving down the path to sustainability and social equity, while keeping in mind our planet’s biophysical boundaries. The process consists of a systems approach and organized public participatory World Café-style workshops, where systems analysis is applied when carefully selected local citizens draw causal loop diagrams of a chosen system. The idea is that those who live with the system collectively know it better than others, and can therefore draw forth solutions unpredictable to outsiders. By using the Convergence Process, communities can identify changes necessary within their systems – for example within policies or lifestyle choices – that may increase convergence and contraction of resource use in their communities and bring them to a more sustainable and socially equal way of living. The intention is that different communities can apply the methodology themselves, without the intervention of academic researchers or other specialists. The process was tested with action research eight times in three countries in the years 2011 and 2012 – on the island of Iceland, in Bristol City in the United Kingdom, and in Tamil Nadu in India. During the testing, the World Café, systems approach and causal loop diagrams functioned well together within this public participatory process, resulting in the citizens identifying necessary changes that can bring their community towards greater sustainability and social equity on both a local and a global level. However, this research could not conclude the process’ full effects as it was not brought to conclusion in any of the communities due to financial and time restraints, in addition to being outside the scope of this research. Further hindrance was that the study was researcher-driven, as opposed to community-driven, so the full effects of the process in a community could not be interpreted. The…