CSIRO’s Sustainability Science Symposium

Inaugural symposium highlights how sustainability science can help advance multiple sustainability goals in parallel.

CSIRO’s Sustainability Science Symposium, held at the QT Hotel Canberra on 12-13 March 2024, was more than a showcase. It engaged a group of CSIRO scientists with practitioners, policy makers and academics in a discussion about the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of sustainability science for Australia in the 21^st Century.

In Australia and across the world, models of innovation solely for economic outcomes are being challenged. When it comes to sustainability, it is no longer enough for science to deliver credible information to decision-makers, or provide foundations for undirected technological change. There is growing recognition that research and development (R&D) can create economic opportunity at the expense of other social and environmental goals, and there is now substantial global effort focused on re-gearing the operation of research and innovation to ensure it can and does target multiple societal goals. These goals are increasingly oriented by various perspectives on sustainability, from global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to local priorities within a specific community.

CSIRO is committed to helping address the challenges of the 21^st century, as reflected in our organisation setting goals around a set of key Challenges for Australia and the region. The CSIRO Sustainability Science Symposium sought to unpack and explore how sustainability science can help work across CSIRO, government, industry and community to value and drive sustainability outcomes.

Towards Science for Sustainability

The symposium built from the work of seven interconnected projects that make up CSIRO’s five-year investment in sustainability science, the Valuing Sustainability Future Science Platform (VS FSP). As the VS FSP passes its halfway mark, it was an opportune moment to extend discussions about our research to a broader audience.

Sustainability science is research that can catalyse multiple sustainability outcomes simultaneously, so it needs to work across and beyond disciplines. This focus on transdisciplinary science was highlighted by various speakers on day 1.

First, Ngunnawal Elder Wally Bell highlighted how looking after land is also about ensuring people are safe on Country and looked after by the spirits. Wally highlighted that we are not just on Aboriginal land but that the knowledge and cultural traditions of the place are very different from western scientific ones. This creates a need for openness that goes beyond the rational. This key theme of working with and across many forms of knowledge, as well as social and cultural values came through in many of talks.

The welcoming and scene-setting talks by CSIRO’s Chief Scientist, Bronwyn Fox, and the Chief Executive of Australia’s Academy of Sciences, Anna-Maria Arabia, emphasised that inclusivity and engagement between science and society are becoming increasingly critical to catalysing sustainability outcomes in ways that are trusted and embedded in society at large.

Reconfiguring the future

Throughout the symposium, the challenges of linking science and societal decision-making to drive sustainability were unpacked in diverse and interesting ways. Clark Miller, from Arizona State University, provided a keynote address, followed by a rich discussion with a diverse and distinguished panel.

Clark argued that advancing environmental and social goals requires re-imagining, re-designing and re-building the amalgam of human, technological and institutional arrangements which drive so much societal change.

Decarbonising the economy is Clark’s central interest, but not as a singular goal. He does not see decarbonisation as a challenge where we simply replace one set of technologies with another set, and maintain the status quo and social order. Rather, Clark argued, we are in a singular moment in human history where we have the opportunity to reconfigure our energy system, and through it many other aspects of our societies. There are multiple pathways to decarbonisation and they will all have consequences for the future of society. The degree to which we consider contemporary issues within energy transitions (e.g. social justice issues, biodiversity loss, the way AI is used) will have consequences for decades and centuries to come.

This keynote presentation and input from established panellists also gave an important international perspective on sustainability, while prompting discussion throughout the symposium.

Sustainability science for and with Australia’s regions

Building Australia’s capacity to advance multiple goals at once is a growing imperative for First Nations, farming, mining and other regional communities. It’s not just about reversing climate change and biodiversity loss; it’s about achieving that while also catalysing other outcomes these communities value. That might include the creation of high quality jobs, improved profitability in farming and other enterprises, and cultural development.

The symposium provided an important opportunity for the VS FSP’s 16 early career researchers to showcase some of the novel ideas and research they are working on, and for attendees to explore issues through some of the different lenses that are being developed and tested across the FSP’s projects.

As the FSP progresses, we aim to extend those tools, methods and approaches to CSIRO more widely, with the ultimate goal of ensuring our science can deliver diverse outcomes for the Australian community. These lenses can be briefly summarised as a set of questions explored in the various sessions and are linked below:

• Land and sea stewardship: How does our science support people to look after country and community in ways that align with and build from their values, culture and knowledge?
• Innovation for sustainability: How do we ensure that innovation processes and practices not only serve economic goals, but drive diverse social and environmental outcomes for the wider community?
• Ecosystem function: How do we build indicators and measures of ecosystem function and change that can inform decision-making in ways that people care about? How do we ensure such measures can be appropriately embedded in the systems of governance such that they can driver change for the better?
• Knowledge governance: How do we ensure that different knowledge is respected and drawn together in the most appropriate ways? How do we build data sovereignty for diverse communities, while being able to use and share the best knowledge at different scales?
• Just transitions: How do we apply approaches and methods to ensure the way we transition energy, mining and food systems leads to just outcomes, especially for historically disadvantaged groups?
• Options and trajectories: How do we best work with diverse groups to effectively re-imagine, re-design and build future pathways, especially where these disrupt existing unsustainable ones?

It’s not easy to capture a rich and varied two-day symposium within the confines of a short blog post – especially when the symposium provided a window into a diverse research program, and created platform for wide-ranging discussion.  

What can be distilled is that this exciting and challenging area of research is building capacity for CSIRO to work more effectively with the Australian community, industry and governments to do science that catalyses multiple significant outcomes at once. A group of inspiring scientists are rising to a very big challenge. This is the core challenge for sustainability science in the 21^st century and one that CSIRO is taking seriously.

Author – Peat Leith, Director of CSIRO’s Valuing Sustainability Future Science Platform