Keywords

Introduction

The quick pace of the radical transformations required to face environmental problems challenges the social sciences’ focus on the change, its factors and dimensions—economic, political, social, environmental—and on their running to deal with its interpretation (Delanty, 2020). Among all the other scientific targets, what is relevant seems to be the highlighting of the transformations that affect the social sciences principles, theories and methodologies themselves in order to better understand social change, especially its connection to the crisis—not only of the environment—and the development trade-offs.

The authors suppose that three key factors characterise social change and, at the same time, are constitutive elements for social sciences: time, space and relations (Nocenzi & Sannella, 2020). Sustainable change and the change towards sustainability, as research subjects, are based on the transformation of these concepts, and their adoption in social research outlines a real paradigm shift for the social sciences. Thanks to the pandemic experience, it is possible to make use of a pivot study for the application of the sustainability paradigm. It contemplates that the models of human actions are not sustainable to preserve the environment and society from their negative effects. The production and the consumption processes, the use of raw resources and waste management assume a different meaning as social processes and, with them, the meaning that the individuals assign them, and, at the end, the individual and collective behaviour itself (Jorgenson et al., 2019).

After a mature theoretical interpretation of environmental sociology about the interaction between humans and the environment, it seems the time for sociology is arriving for a revision of the basic concepts of the discipline to analyse society and individuals as they appear, thanks to the crucial common awareness and scientific knowledge of the current cultural transformations (Gallino, 2016). Some aspects can be considered strategical: what the shared assumption of the carbon footprint reveals is, firstly, a limit of human action and, secondly, its outlines in terms of temporal, spatial and relational dimensions. The article aims at highlighting how social actions could be redefined starting from their consequences, represented by the carbon traces produced in particular and sustainable development in general.

From the New Meaning of a “Human” Footprint to New Perspectives for a Changing Social Theory of Sustainability

Over the last few decades, environmental issues have gradually permeated all social spheres with their relevance and urgency, manifesting themselves in their consequences and triggering a reflection on their causes that can no longer be postponed. Since these are mainly attributable to human action in a specific geological era, such as the present one, which is why we call it the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2006), it is not surprising that the mark left by a body, which constitutes a clear indication of its passage, can only be increasingly evoked by that left by man on the ecosystem.

It is no coincidence that when the two scholars Wackernagel and Rees (1996) conducted their analysis of the consequences of the environmental crisis in the 1990s, they preferred to replace the measurement tool that was widespread at the time and based on the planet’s ability to regenerate its resources—consumed by man—with a new one, namely, the units of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced also by man. This allowed them to measure the gases emitted into the atmosphere and the primary cause of climate change, leading them to focus attention on the consequences of each individual action and no longer on the sum of collective actions acting on the planet’s resources.

As many awareness-raising campaigns that followed the definition of this new indicator underlined, it would be possible for each individual to calculate his or her own personal trace left in the environment by estimating the emission of CO2, to which everyone knew the deterioration of the environmental balance was linked.

The subjective dimension acquired by this indicator probably made the representation of human responsibility for the environmental crisis more effective than a norm or a scientific explanation but, above all, also the possibility of what it would be possible to do—or not do—thanks to daily micro-actions to try to reverse the course (Puech, 2019). Although there are now widespread smartphone apps that allow us to estimate this indicator while eating a plate of meat or more and more tickets of our travels indicate how much CO2 our movement involves, the measurements are becoming increasingly complex, and the effectiveness of human action is limited. Carbon dioxide emissions come from the production and consumption processes of goods and services, affecting the whole chain of transformation and the use of each individual resource (Moore & Rees, 2013).

Despite the increasing visibility of the traces left on the planet with one’s behaviour, many factors contribute to the repetition of those that leave the most unsustainable traces with respect to the use of resources: lower economic cost in the present, habits, traditions, poor knowledge of direct and indirect consequences and low level of trust in science, in its definition of consequences and in the preparation of these tools. In short, a mix of lack of knowledge, poor connection with institutions and the persistence of a past model of development are natural opposites to the evidence of a change in progress (Urry, 2009).

Compared to the past, however, there is now a more shared awareness that human action can affect physical and symbolic spaces even more extensively than those directly affected by an act performed and can have a temporal development no longer limited to its implementation. If we add to this the fact that the globalised and hyperconnected world makes the actions of each individual particularly integrated with those of the other (Giddens et al., 1999), we define the conditions for a redefinition of the constitutive principles of social life: space, time and relationships.

It can be agreed that the worsening of the problems of nature has accelerated the process of crisis of the previous model of social development, the so-called modernity model, on the basis of which the social sciences had precisely defined those constitutive quantities, giving priority to man and recognising his/her action as a capacity without limits, not even those placed in the coexistence of nature (Nocenzi, 2019). The downsising of man, of the potential of his/her actions and of his/her expectation of development today is witnessed not only by the irreversible trace (s)he has left on the planet but also by the comparison with other agent beings, non-humans, whose actions and connected space, time and relationships circumscribe even more those of humans: for instance, software, sensors, algorithms and cyborgs that are increasingly present in every human action and that populate relationships with humans, on par with them and even independently of humans themselves (Accoto, 2019).

In this specific context, that is, technological and cultural, political and economic, the change taking place cannot but appear radical because it transforms the constituent magnitudes of social life, as already mentioned, but also the identities of the social actors themselves and the purpose towards which social action, whether individual or collective, tends, in light of the traces it leaves behind.

The shift away from a previous model of development, the modern one, can be recognised by the elements described so far, relating to the increasingly intrinsic limitation of human actions and their changed spatial, temporal and relational conditions (Meadows et al., 1972; Turner, 2008). To have clear evidence of this, it is sufficient to refer to the definition of development coined as early as 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development set up by the United Nations and chaired by the Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland, which stressed that “development is sustainable when it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations, 1987). The objective towards which individual and collective social action tends, therefore, according to the alternative model of development that was being proposed, changes the very nature of social action:

  • Its results extend through direct and indirect effects beyond the present, influencing, however, the same present in terms of its preconditions, expectations and realisation.

  • The beneficiaries of the action are identified in those future generations that symbolically open up the potential involved to the whole of humanity, insisting, therefore, in a space coinciding with that of the entire planet.

  • The object of the action oriented towards future generations on the planet is needs, the fundamental basis for building social relations and redefining them in their deepest meaning, i.e. that which sees their satisfaction in nature.

The revisiting of the constitutive principles of social action could not fail to prefigure a real paradigm shift for the social sciences, and among those that have attempted it, the one proposed by Dunlap (2008) with the manifest name of new ecological paradigm is of some interest. Starting from the four assumptions of (a) the nature of human beings, (b) the causes of human actions, (c) the context within which humans act and, indeed, (d) the limits on those actions, Dunlap recognises environmental crises as determinants of equally radical transformations in social action that go beyond the modern anthropocentric and exemptionalist models (Dunlap & Catton, 1980, 1994):

  • The exceptional, but no longer dominant, capacities of human action referring to cultural, technological, economic production, etc. are part of a composite set of actions implemented also by other living species with which humans are interdependent in the global ecosystem.

  • Human actions are not only characterised by social and cultural determinants but also by a complex set of causes and effects located within the natural system, not only social but such that unintended consequences of human actions can be identified.

  • On the other hand, human action is limited by objective biophysical resources that are exhaustible and whose accessibility and usability cannot always be modified by human capabilities.

  • The laws of nature cannot be abrogated by the potential of human action.

This is a new paradigm of analysis of human action and, more generally, of social life, which for many scholars has meant recognising the crisis of society itself in favour of a “more extensive and composite system”, which some have called no longer society but ecology as a set of spatio-temporal constructs experienced by all sentient species (Latour, 1995; Serres, 2009). That this is also a challenge for science in general, and not only for social science, is evident in the very scope of the reformulation of basic cognitive categories.

Factors and Dimensions of Change: Development Trade-offs and Citizen Science

The change described so far, which focuses on the sustainability-oriented development model, seems to affect the very dynamics in which the change manifests itself. Indeed, it is no longer conceived as a linear development but as a contingent emergence or social becoming, that is, as a process of construction/destruction of cultures and societies by their members, under the conditions created by previous constructive and destructive efforts. The result of these efforts, the social world that emerges (or becomes), is not necessarily marked by progress; there is at most a possibility of progress (Beck, 1999, 2000). Societies are no longer reified systems but rather as fluid networks of interrelated actions, as sociocultural fields of various dimensions that contract and expand in terms of uncertainty (Bauman, 1999). The outcome depends entirely on human decisions and choices, and whether they are aware of it or not, individuals are confronted with a range of alternative options and choices (Bauman, 2000).

Although human actions seem to remain at the centre of the dynamics of change, it actually experiences for the first time since its “modern” definition (Eisenstadt, 1973) the relocation of its meaning to the realm of human actions: the set of transformations in the structure and organisation of a society in a given period of time (Tilly, 2004) measurable through the factors of rapidity, direction, flow, driving force and governability. Precisely through these identifying factors, it is possible to reduce the human dimension to one of the dimensions of change: more likely, it is the human dimension that is the most tangible for human knowledge, which, however, inevitably ends up absorbing all the other—interrelated—dimensions, for example, the ecological one. It’s the case of the factor of the governability of change, according to which it can be managed by following rules that leave a certain margin for personal or collective initiative but which also occur spontaneously, not foreseen by man.

It is on this “ecological” meaning of change that the model of sustainable development insists, which sections “Social Change and Human Action: The Case Study of the Complex Construction of Environmental Policies” and “An Effective Environmental Policies Evaluation Model: The Positive Thinking Framework” will illustrate through a case study applied precisely to the construction of environmental policies and the evaluation of their results. To complete the description here by linking it also to human action and its traces—understood as the outcomes of the action carried out—it is possible to dwell on two aspects characterising change: trade-offs and the shared creation of knowledge.

Starting with the first element in order, it has already been pointed out that change does not necessarily follow improving trajectories. This acquisition, which seems to be consolidated in the history of human organisations, has actually seen change connoted as an ineluctable destiny or an error in the line of progress when it has brought negative transformations to social life. Thus, a partial meaning of change has in fact been recognised. Experts from different disciplines, for example, are aware of this, as they were brought together by the United Nations to agree on the objectives of change for a sustainable development model. First the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and then the 2030 Agenda Goals (SDGs) incorporate all the strands of change, even providing for development trade-offs. Although they are aimed at achieving sustainable development, the achievement of the latter is not the ultimate evolutionary stage but rather the result of the combination of several factors and outcomes that produce profitable synergies but also trade-offs that must be constructive. The realisation of one SDG can slow down the achievement of another, just as it can be independent of another—think, for example, the industrial innovation activities envisaged by SDG9 that can have deleterious effects on the survival of animal species, hindering the achievement of SDG15. This in itself constitutes a limit to human action to control its results and effects, which fits well with the conceptual framework of sustainability. It will be observed in the following paragraphs how theoretical models, such as positive thinking (Lo Presti & Stame, 2015), allow useful outcomes to be obtained from action more from successes than from failures, from which the causal dynamics are explained and not only the predetermined objectives and desired effects of the intervention itself (Stame, 2016) but a reversal of the understanding of change.

However, this reversal also requires the widest possible sharing of knowledge and expertise in order to be able to describe and analyse all possible actions. Models such as citizen science, for example, not surprisingly much discussed in the last decade, propose activities relating to scientific research to which non-experts, such as citizens, can also contribute (Bonney et al., 2016). These contributions take place in different collaborative processes from which possible problem-solving strategies or new projects are determined. In addition to providing an effective representation of the different potentials for change linked to human action, this collaborative model also offers evidence of how change itself is transforming, drawing a new relationship between science and society.

Social Change and Human Action: The Case Study of the Complex Construction of Environmental Policies

In recent years, the evidence (EEA, 2016) has led to the evolution of environmental public policies, with an increasing focus on behavioural and attitudinal changes in society, starting from the policy design stages. Today, environmental public policies can be regarded as one of the most important drivers of change, the cornerstones on which all efforts of the international community to address environmental issues rest. They are also the means to induce individuals towards a more responsible and concrete action as an active and conscious part of change.

Looking at individual behaviour, however, does not mean looking away from the systemic problems of human beings and their production patterns. It is very clear that it is not possible to solve the climate crisis or halt the loss of biodiversity simply by changing people’s behaviour. Similarly, it is also correct to consider the systems and patterns underlying environmental problems as the resulting sum of several individual behaviours implemented by different groups of people. The social changes that have taken place over the last decade necessarily imply a rethinking of the impact on environmental issues that the change of an individual can have. The increasing availability and constant access to information related to environmental issues, advances in information and communication technologies and the intensification of action-oriented social networks around the world make it possible to consider citizens as infinite potential agents of change with respect to the current environmental situation (EEA, 2016). In this sense, rethinking the role and type of environmental communication carried out at the institutional level can also be a decisive and effective strategy in supporting the social transition needed for sustainable change. Better communication can help to make environmental policies more efficient by fostering their social acceptance. The integration of behavioural studies in the process of public policy design and implementation has shown that obtaining a higher level of engagement of people leads them more strongly to adopt truly sustainable behaviour and to support the policies adopted at the public level.

Similarly, a decisive focus on behaviour and attitudes in the field of systemic change-oriented environmental public policies could also be imagined. The individual’s acceptance of the policy always plays a key role. As observed by Hirschman (1967), in the field of development cooperation projects, very often the difference between the failure and success of a project can be found in the project behaviour of the people involved in the front line of implementation. Attitudes, beliefs and actions of individuals interact with each other and define the mechanisms and structural characteristics that produce project results. This, in the field of environmental public policy, is a strategy that should be considered.

Most environmental policies require a behavioural change, very often a radical one, not only for individual citizens but also for those who occupy operational and decision-making positions within public administration structures and who, therefore, have a duty to implement the policy in question. A lack of acceptance of these roles within the public administration can be a crucial factor in determining a reduced structural effectiveness of public environmental policy. As an example, one could apply this reasoning to one of the best-known environmental public policies: the Green Public Procurement (GPP) system. GPP is one of the main tools through which the European Union is trying to contain the carbon footprint of the public administrations of the Member States and, consequently, of the private actors involved in the market of goods and services on which they rely. The criteria and standards introduced by GPP have, in some respects, led to changes in the way public procurement is managed by many public administration employees and managers. The degree to which these changes are integrated into existing management processes and, therefore, the degree of acceptance of the environmental policy by the employees and managers of the public administration as a whole can make a difference in terms of the overall effectiveness of the implemented policy and, therefore, the positive impact on the carbon footprint of the public administration.

An Effective Environmental Policies Evaluation Model: The Positive Thinking Framework

The relevance of environmental public policy and the ever-increasing urgency of fostering sustainable change make the use of evaluation theory and practice in environmental public policy imperative.

With regard to sustainable change and change towards sustainability, the evaluation of environmental policies makes it possible to investigate in detail the mode and nature of this “movement” in time and space. Unfortunately, it should be noted that Italy does not yet have a robust and extensive system for evaluating public policies. Moreover, the term “evaluation” is often used with a profoundly different and limited meaning from the one deepened in social science studies as a research methodology that adds a value judgment and as a democratic process of social learning (Stame, 2016).

To date, public policy evaluation has focused on the relationships between policy inputs and outputs, and on ex post, exclusively effectiveness evaluations conducted through mostly quantitative methods. But, as mentioned, sustainable change plays its game on people’s behaviour and attitudes. These aspects, which are so crucial for social change, can hardly be grasped and analysed in the context of effectiveness evaluations that mainly focus on policies.

Examining environmental public policies both ex ante and in itinere in the evaluation process allows us to “get inside” the proposal, in both the design and implementation phases. The proposal is therefore to use evaluation approaches that can shed light both on the “black box” (Weiss, 1997) of the management and decision-making processes that determine the successes and/or failures of public policies and on the real social, economic and cultural impacts these policies have on the population, on those that are unexpected as well as expected. Therefore, an integration of current evaluation systems is envisaged, using the theoretical and applicative framework of positive thinking approaches (Lo Presti & Stame, 2015; Lo Presti, 2020), which share the idea that we learn more from successes than failures, as a proactive driver for action. Moreover, success adds information about the causes of events, while failure merely reproduces the initial lack of knowledge, highlighting obstacles to change (Hirschman, 1967; Tendler & Stame, 1992).

The approach is based on the analysis of available resources and strengths, directly observing what in the specific context is considered a positive outcome rather than the predetermined objectives and desired effects of the intervention itself (Stame, 2016; Lo Presti, 2016). Evaluation is understood in a positive sense as a valid tool for improving the effectiveness of environmental policy in order to add information about why and how change occurs, and not just its mere occurrence. This type of evaluation is not only concerned with what the public policy does but also with how all stakeholders, implementers and recipients respond. Thus, it is possible to investigate aspects that mediate between input and output, such as intermediate processes and psychological and organisational factors. A useful reflection is to observe the effects that arise from the policy beyond the expected and desirable direct results (Hirschman, 1967 in Stame, 2017). Thanks to its intrinsic democratic nature (Bezzi, 2016), the involvement of all policy actors allows this type of participatory evaluation to retain every nuance of the phenomenon studied in terms of knowledge and thus in empowerment capacity, whereby one only learns what increases one’s ability to master a change, unleashing new and better ideas (Senge, 1990 in Stame, 2016).

A concrete example of a case study in which this methodological crisis is being tested is the creation of an evaluation model for Italian National Parks. SDG 15 “Life on Earth” of the 2030 Agenda aims to protect and restore terrestrial ecosystems and safeguard biodiversity. The rate of biodiversity loss is considered among the most serious threats to human well-being in the twenty-first century (Rockstrom et al., 2009; Cardinale et al., 2012). Robust scientific evidence confirms the substantial role of protected areas in national environmental public policies (Costanza et al., 1997; Hoffmann et al., 2018; da Silva et al., 2017). Among the most important challenges for protected areas are the search for efficient management close to the needs of populations and the ability to estimate and communicate the multiple effects of nature conservation (Lopoukhine et al., 2012). The overriding prerogative of national parks is nature conservation, which must nevertheless be able to consider the persistence and prosperity of the local communities living within them.

Protected areas are the expression of one of the most important national environmental public policies: the tool of evaluation appears decisive in deepening their strengths and weaknesses and in analysing the impacts they have on the territories in which they exist, with a view to improving them. However, it also represents a valuable opportunity to broaden the research and knowledge horizons of evaluation in an area that is still too little explored.

At the international level, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has established effectiveness evaluation as the main evaluation approach for protected areas, defining the IUCN-WCPA framework for management effectiveness evaluation (Hockings et al., 2000). This framework, later revised in 2006 (Hockings et al., 2006), still constitutes the basis for most of the methodologies and evaluation systems for protected areas applied worldwide, which are flexible and able to return homogeneous and standardised results, allowing them to be compared globally.

In Italy, the only experiment is MEVAP (Metodologia di Valutazione delle Aree Protette) (Marino, 2012). As a quantitative and structured methodology, MEVAP allows for a macro-level assessment of the management of protected areas to the extent that they achieve national and international nature conservation objectives, as well as a micro-level assessment of the management of protected areas at the local level. MEVAP makes it possible to assess the effectiveness of the protected area and to set standards by making reasonable and objective comparisons without, however, paying attention to the processes, mechanisms and causes that lead to certain results, failing to understand the process of why and how they occur. In this regard, there is an attempt to integrate the existing systems of effectiveness evaluation with the use of positive thinking, which are complementary evaluation approaches in providing a vision that is certainly more comprehensive than the current one. The importance of the human and social elements is such that recourse to an intellectual background of the human sciences in the evaluation of the Italian National Parks is more than necessary, following a largely interdisciplinary and not exclusively quantitative approach. Protected areas represent a real experience of sustainability capable of imagining new scenarios of coexistence between man and nature and innovative territorial development strategies. With Italy’s immense natural heritage, it is important for there to be greater attention to the instrument of evaluation, which, however, goes beyond the idea of mere performance monitoring. The hope, as a courageous attempt, is to increase political, social and cultural attention to the issue of the environment, questioned by professionals with different and at the same time complementary points of view and preparation (Gallino, 1992).

The importance of the relationship between research in the natural sciences and research in the social sciences should be strongly emphasised, and this should be encouraged and supported. As many points of view as possible are needed when talking about the environment, ecology and nature conservation in the full and most recent holistic vision of sustainable development. Scientific and biological knowledge, which studies ecosystems and their functioning, must be easily integrated with social and economic knowledge, which is indispensable for the interpretation and implementation of development processes. Only through such an association will it really be possible to devise evaluative research designs capable of investigating sustainable development in a comprehensive and functional manner, especially on a local scale, whose aspects are so peculiar and difficult to transfer elsewhere.

The position that evaluation is gaining within the design and management of ecosystem conservation is an excellent signal for all environmental evaluations. Environmental policies need to be able to engage with the dynamics and processes of both natural and man-made ecosystems.

Some Concluding Remarks

Looking at the environmental crisis we are discussing from a conceptual and anthropological point of view, it is possible to say that it stems from a profound cognitive crisis in the construction of environmental policy linked to the existing fracture between the socio-human and natural sciences (Saragosa, 2005). It is absolutely necessary to rethink development in a version that is sustainable, shifting from a strictly environmentalist vision to an ecological vision (Gallino, 1992). The same is true for human action that promotes change. The models that organise all the structures of our existence must always represent starting points for reflection and never points of arrival: they must be confronted with reality, and they must be destroyed and reconstructed because they live in action and therefore in change and always in a given context that brings all the elements together. A social ecology capable of overcoming the dichotomy and antagonism between man and nature is required, since it is not suited to respond to the requirements of a global discipline, to the instances of the different territorial realities or, even less, to the elements capable of guaranteeing a future and the safeguarding of the natural heritage (Giacomini, 1980).

But what is even more relevant is that the expression “sustainable development” is increasingly a protagonist of the common language, as the signal of a deep change in sensitivity, of a more widespread and conscious ecological awareness, of a sustainable change. Understanding how sustainable development can be achieved in practice on the ground in every part of the world is a matter of fundamental importance. We have the technology and the know-how to be able to direct energies and ideas towards a concrete and possible transformation of our usual mental clothes. Sachs (2015) is convinced that through a great deal of effort in the study and design of sustainable business processes and new technologies, sustainable development is achievable and within our reach: an alternative to today’s “business as usual”(BAU) scenarios must be found, because it is a truly viable, as well as necessary, path.

The role of research in this is absolutely crucial; there is an urgent need to understand the problems and find the best solutions as far as possible. In the current state of affairs, it is no longer the task solely of naturalists and biologists to deal with the “sciences of planet Earth”, and, in an absolutely holistic and interdisciplinary vision, this definition must include all the disciplines useful and necessary to study the complex processes that enable life on the Earth ecosystem (Wilson, 2016).

The role of the social sciences in this research is far from secondary or marginal. On the contrary, it is now more crucial than ever to study the connections between societies and ecosystems from a social perspective too, with the aim of the continuing quest for a longed-for sustainable, equitable, just and inclusive development.