fdb_team_projekte

Leitung von Projekten

• More than a techno-fix? Examining the role of innovation in sustainability discourses of international organisations
  Laufzeit

  01.01.2023 bis 31.12.2024

  Beschreibung

  Innovation has become a central theme in sustainability discourses. Sustainability research typically argues that technological and social innovation must combine to enable socio-ecological transformations. Scholarship in science and technology studies (STS), as well as work on socio-technical transitions, similarly shows that technological and social changes are deeply intertwined. Against this background, the project explores how leading international organisations (IOs) engage the critical question of innovation for sustainability. To this end, the project combines quantitative and qualitative methods of discourse analysis to publicly available reports from eight IOs with different specialisations: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Bank. The project considers reports published by these IOs between 2000 and 2022 and examines the role of technology and innovation in those documents. The goal is to identify discursive shifts concerning the role that different IOs assign to innovation and innovation policy in sustainability governance over time. Thereby, the project contributes much-needed comparative insights into how contemporary IOs envisage solutions for the entrenched and further intensifying sustainability crisis.

  Finanzierung

  Young Academy for Sustainability Research
• Power to the green city: transnational dimensions of Freiburg’s solar energy infrastructure
  Laufzeit

  01.01.2023 bis 31.12.2024

  Beschreibung

  Current policies and research on energy transitions and sustainability largely focus on specific countries or regions. Given the highly interdependent system of technological innovation, resource extraction, manufacturing, trade and governance, a perspective on transnational infrastructures and networks can help to identify and address the interdependency of sustainability challenges and the power structures and imbalances underlying global energy transitions. The project’s focus is the solar power industry. It takes the self-proclaimed “green city” of Freiburg as our starting point to explore transnational networks behind local manifestations of sustainability. The project combines expert interviews with local actors in Freiburg and content analysis of documents to embark on a journey along the solar panel value chain. How are the resources for solar panels governed by corporate and political actors along this chain? To what extent do these practices entrench existing or bring about new forms of unsustainability into the renewable energy sector?

  Finanzierung

  Young Academy for Sustainability Research