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Here is a recording of our latest webinar for the SocSES webinar series.

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Title: 

Transformative pathways towards sustainable and just futures: Insights from the Seeds of Good Anthropocene and the 3 Horizons Approach

Abstract:

Contemporary ecological, social, and economic crises highlight how deeply global societies remain locked into unsustainable pathways. Shifting these pathways requires fundamental transformative changes, guided by new ways of relating to nature and addressing inequalities based on compelling and actionable visions of just and sustainable futures. Sustainability scholars have emphasized the need to identify opportunities for transformative change and to understand the agency of different actors and their collaborations in pursuing such transformations. In this seminar, I approach transformation theory from a social-innovation lens, drawing on insights from the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project to explore how alternative, non-mainstream initiatives can build (or erode) resilience and open space for systemic change. I illustrate these dynamics with examples from the Resilience Must-Knows report, showing how coping, adaptation, and transformation unfold in practice. I then share findings from a case study in southeast Spain, where the Three Horizons methodology was used as a participatory scenario-building process to create desirable future visions, identify current system traps, and develop actionable strategies for regional change. Finally, I discuss emerging research on the role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities-led initiatives as catalysts for social-ecological transformations. Together, these insights show how local “seeds” and participatory foresight can help guide pathways toward more sustainable and just futures. 

Bio: 

Amanda Jiménez Aceituno is a sustainability researcher and theme leader at the Stockholm Resilience Centre with a background in Environmental Sciences and a PhD in Environmental Education. Jiménez´s work focuses on sustainability transformations, contributing to its conceptual and methodological development, such as the use of the values-rules-knowledge framework or the leverage points approach to reveal the transformative potential of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC)- led initiatives (e.g., Jiménez-Aceituno et al. 2025). The Seeds of the Good Anthropocenes approach has been a key platform in her study of transformations. Jiménez also works on developing and implementing transdisciplinary research methods that can enhance our understanding of collective processes and foster sustainability in social-ecological systems.

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This is the latest in a series of webinars. Past recordings can be found here.

Here is a recording of our latest webinar for the PECS webinar series.

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Title: 

Collective Decision Making & Local Public Goods – Experimental Evidence from Kenyas

Abstract:

One of Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for effective commons governance emphasizes the role of direct participation in decision making. Inclusion in collective decisions has been linked experimentally to greater self-stated willingness to invest in local public goods, increased public good contributions, and greater feelings of ownership over development projects, as compared with exclusion from or delegation of decisions. Yet there are a wide variety of methods that can be used to engage individuals directly in group decision making, and there is limited guidance on the design of collective choice institutions for achieving more socially optimal long-run outcomes. In this presentation, I will discuss evidence from two closely related experiments, one in the lab and one in the field (with co-author Michael Touchton), in which we randomly vary different participatory decision processes, ranging from purely aggregative to more deliberative approaches to group decision making. Both take place in the context of local public good provision in Kenya, where the constitution requires some form of citizen participation in government spending decisions and where the creation of local public goods is still quite salient due to a lack of basic infrastructure such as potable water systems. I will present data on the achievement of more socially optimal outcomes from the laboratory setting and on behavioral measures of long-run collective action from the field setting. We find that more deliberative procedures may lead to better decisions, but that these benefits do not necessarily translate into higher satisfaction among participants nor into greater long-run collective action. Our findings highlight tradeoffs in institutional design and suggest that practitioners and policy-makers should employ more demanding procedures only when they stand to be particularly impactful.  

Bio: 

Tara Grillos is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University and co-director of the JMK Experimental Social Science Research Lab. She received her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado’s Institute of Behavioral Science. Grillos teaches courses on environmental policy, causal inference, and experimental methods. Her research focuses on the human dimensions of sustainable development policy. She is interested in questions of participation, deliberation, collective action, and public goods provision, particularly with respect to natural resource dilemmas in developing countries. 

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This is the latest in a series of webinars. Past recordings can be found here.