Pathways from research to sustainable development: Insights from ten research projects in sustainability and resilience

Drawing on collective experience from ten collaborative research projects focused on the Global South, we identify three major challenges that impede the translation of research on sustainability and resilience into better-informed choices by individuals and policy-makers that in turn can support transformation to a sustainable future. The three challenges comprise: (i) converting knowledge produced during research projects into successful knowledge application; (ii) scaling up knowledge in time when research projects are short-term and potential impacts are long-term; and (iii) scaling up knowledge across space, from local research sites to larger-scale or even global impact. Some potential pathways for funding agencies to overcome these challenges include providing targeted prolonged funding for dissemination and outreach, and facilitating collaboration and coordination across different sites, research teams, and partner organizations. By systematically documenting these challenges, we hope to pave the way for further innovations in the research cycle. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-023-01968-4.

Challenges: Grassroots organizations and networks face challenges when attempting to build up a participatory waste governance for more inclusive and sustainable cities. Informal waste pickers are increasingly connecting with each other through local, regional and global networks.Unlike the standardized-but difficult to apply-knowledge generated by donors and international organizations, these networks disseminate locally-developed, innovative, and flexible solutions.This project enabled meetings between waste pickers, researchers, community-based organizations, county and city officers and politicians, that sparked peer to peer knowledge exchanges between waste picker organizations from different countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua).These interactions led to the design, fabrication and testing of low-tech, locally-adapted innovations (a push cart, a manual press, and a biogas digestor), demonstrating that low-tech and low-cost solutions can be developed when grassroots organizations are given freedom to innovate according to their contextual problems and resources.
However, these innovations are often perceived as a problem rather than as a solution by municipal officers and politicians, who instead prefer large-scale technological solutions.This perception, together with structural problems of corruption, lack of resources for waste management, devolution of power, and economic crises put many of the grassroots innovations at risk of disappearing.Role of researchers: Project design, evaluation design, data analysis, writing academic outputs, facilitating knowledge co-production workshops, disseminating research findings to communities.

Roles of non-academic partners:
Knowledge co-production workshops, data sharing, dissemination, contributions to academic publications.

Plan for project continuation:
No additional funding secured, although several grant applications submitted; new applications pending; academic writing and data analysis continue unfunded.
Challenges: Planning for adaptive and resilient responses to climate change must be founded on a sound understanding of the past environmental conditions, socio-cultural, economic, regulatory, and political circumstances, and the spatial distribution of human activities and land uses.By applying a participatory scenario tool (KESHO -a Swahili word meaning "tomorrow"), stakeholder understanding of past and visions for future land use were brought together, to define the key drivers of land use transitions and how these have shaped the landscape today and are likely to evolve in the future.This approach is challenging first because it is not clear how far back in the past we need to extend our knowledge to understand present-day conditions and people´s capacity to adapt in the future.By focusing on the last 300 to 500 years, this project captured considerable changes to socio-cultural and environmental landscapes that could be used for planning sustainable and resilient futures.The second challenge is how far into the future we can and should plan for change.Here, the target dates for the SDG and African Union's Development Agenda-2030 and 2063 respectively-were selected.Using the KESHO tool, stakeholder visions for future land use were combined with spatial data, personal memories and lived experiences, each leading to four divergent land use futures in 2030 and 2063.These plausible futures can help stakeholders, communities and policy developers guide interventions and planning, including changes in Key reference: Zapata Campos et al. (2020); Zapata Campos et al. (2023c); Zapata Campos et al. (2023b); Zapata Campos et al. (2023a) Project D. Lessons from the past for adaptation and resilience to climate change (Kenya, Tanzania) Full title: Adaptation & resilience to climate change Type of partnerships: Formal partnerships with university-based researchers.These were extended to include other academic partners in the region, alongside various informal links and collaborations with local stakeholders, including CBOs, NGOs, local government departments.Researchers' Background: Archaeology, Palaeoecology, Ecology, History, Geography, Environmental Sciences.Non-academic project partners: None formally involved.Knowledge users/stakeholders involved: Pastoralists, farmers, hunter-gatherers, wildlife managers, CBOs, NGOs, local government officers, tourism operators, heritage professionals, faith-based leaders, land use planners, socio-economic researchers, environmentalists.