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Fostering transdisciplinary research for equitable and sustainable development pathways across Africa : what changes are needed?

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Date
22/01/2023
Author
Shackleton, Sheona
Taylor, Anna
Gammage, Louise
Gillson, Lindsey
Sitas, Nadia
Methner, Nadine
Barmand, Shayan
Thorn, Jessica
McClure, Alice
Cobban, Leigh
Jarre, Astrid
Odume, Oghenekaro Nelson
Keywords
Sustainable Development Goals
Equity
Sustainability
Transformation
Transdisciplinarity
Africa
NDAS
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Abstract
The transformations required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals across the African continent demand new ways of mobilising, weaving together, and applying knowledge. Research, policymaking, planning, and action must be effectively inter-linked to address complex sustainability challenges and the different needs and interests of societal actors. Transdisciplinarity (TD) ? the co-production of knowledge across disciplines and with non-academic actors ? offers a promising, holistic approach to foster such transformations. Yet, despite increased application of TD over the past two decades, disciplinary and sectoral silos persist. TD is not well embedded in African academic institutions and, consequently, much SDG-related research is too narrowly framed and divorced from the action space to be effective. There is an urgent need to work collectively across disciplines and society for transformation towards more sustainable and equitable development pathways. Capacities to undertake collaborative, impactful research must be strengthened, and changes in research culture are needed to support relationship building. We explore these issues by drawing on two recent online social learning processes with researchers and practitioners working on sustainability issues and TD. In each process, we built on actors? own experiences of TD by investigating institutional, practical, and theoretical challenges and enablers of TD. Here, we synthesise our learnings, alongside key literature, and explore avenues to better: a) promote and support TD within academic institutions across Africa; b) resource TD for sustainable partnerships, and c) strengthen TD practices and impacts to support transformation to sustainability across diverse places and contexts.
Citation
Shackleton , S , Taylor , A , Gammage , L , Gillson , L , Sitas , N , Methner , N , Barmand , S , Thorn , J , McClure , A , Cobban , L , Jarre , A & Odume , O N 2023 , ' Fostering transdisciplinary research for equitable and sustainable development pathways across Africa : what changes are needed? ' , Ecosystems and People , vol. 19 , no. 1 , 2164798 . https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2164798
Publication
Ecosystems and People
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2164798
ISSN
2639-5908
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
The work was supported by the National Research Foundation University of Cape Town.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/26813

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