Feedbacks as a bridging concept for advancing transdisciplinary sustainability research

摘要

Highlights•New emphasis on transdisciplinarity in sustainability science opens exciting spaces for collaboration.•Yet, collaboration can be derailed by tensions between various perspectives.•Epistemological transparency can enable interchange and understanding.•Feedbacks can provide a shared language that facilitates dialogue.•Plurality can highlight hidden interactions, which are overlooked with a single perspective.The emergence of transformation as a core component in sustainability science and practice has opened an exciting space for transdisciplinary research. Yet, the mainstreaming of transformation has also exposed epistemological rifts between diverse research perspectives, presenting significant challenges for transdisciplinary teams. Using coral reef social–ecological systems as an example, we explore how these points of tension may be addressed using a three stage process: Firstly, promoting epistemological transparency, where different kinds of knowledge framings are made explicit; secondly, employing feedbacks as a bridging concept to effectively engage with complex system dynamics from multiple perspectives; and finally, encouraging plurality, rather than the unification of epistemologies, to foster innovative, diverse, and sustainable pathways during this formative moment for global environmental sustainability.