Challenging unsustainable development through research cooperation

Abstract

Although the concept “sustainable development” has scope to open up societal futures, this opportunity has been limited by dominant agendas promoting capital-intensive innovations. Civil society organisations (CSOs) have criticised these agendas, especially through campaign activities, while also intervening in these issues through research activity. Such interventions were extended by our project, “Co-operative Research on Environmental Problems in Europe”, which brought together CSOs and academics as partners to carry out joint research. Focusing on agricultural practices and innovations, the project analysed divergent accounts of sustainable agriculture. Through academic-CSO cooperation, critical concepts from CSOs (e.g. agrofuels and agroecology) became perspectives for research and for wider stakeholder involvement. These concepts helped to deepen critical analysis of the EU's dominant innovation agenda, which is seen by many CSOs as unsustainable development – perpetuating sustainability problems in the name of addressing them. Itself a societal intervention, the research process also strengthened CSOs’ efforts to intervene in EU policy frameworks, to challenge dominant innovation agendas and to promote alternatives.

Keywords:

• research cooperation
• action research
• civil society organisations
• sustainable development
• agrofuels
• agroecology

Acknowledgements

Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement n° 217647, entitled “Co-operative Research on Environmental Problems in Europe” (CREPE) during 2008–2010. We would like to thank all the research partners and other participants who contributed to the project's success. In drafting this paper, we received helpful editorial comments from Richard Worthington. He, Helen Holder and Andy Stirling advised the Coordination team on cooperative research aspects of the project.