Ruben Zondervan

Notes #1/2025: Science Missions for Sustainability: A want-it-all keyword-sprinkled rabbit hole

Science Missions for Sustainability: A want-it-all keyword-sprinkled rabbit hole

A few years have passed since I left academia in early 2020. I miss many aspects of that world: the colleagues, the intellectual conversations about earth system governance, the international "conference circus," and the experience of managing and facilitating academics (a.k.a. herding cats). I even miss the spirited debates with natural scientists and the uphill struggle to create policy impact with social sciences. Sometimes, I find myself questioning whether it was the right decision to move on, despite the dismal career prospects for “international research managers” and “science-policy mercenaries."

There may be more that I miss. However, what I certainly do not miss is the strange obsession within the global change research community—and even more so in the sustainability science realm—with trying to be everything at once. Research projects, programs, and policies are expected to be (an incomplete list): interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, solution-oriented or even action-driven, diverse and pluralistic, policy-relevant, participatory, and co-designed—or better yet, co-produced.

Interestingly, terms like academic quality, scientific rigor, and intellectual curiosity are usually absent from these lists.

Don’t get me wrong—each of these concepts has its merits. But you cannot have them all, all the time. Nor does it make sense to always strive for all of them. Some research is simply mono-disciplinary, some is not immediately policy-relevant, and co-production is not always feasible or necessary.

Moreover, most of these desirable concepts require far more than just slapping labels onto research projects. They demand fundamental changes to the research system—ranging from funding mechanisms to performance standards, organizational structures, and the roles and mandates of research teams. Unfortunately, the proponents of the "want-it-all" movement either fail to realize or understand this, and those in managerial roles have made little effort to implement the necessary structural, organizational, and procedural changes to make it happen.

At some point, I’d still like to write an essay critiquing the naïve understanding of policy relevance—my own area of expertise as a former mercenary for science-policy. For instance, presenting a scientific paper at a side event of a policy meeting does not make the findings policy-relevant. Similarly, drafting a study in co-design with policymakers makes the study policy-informed, but not necessarily policy-relevant. These are just a few of the issues worth addressing.

So imagine my surprise and joy when I saw the announcement from the International Science Council about “Science Missions for Sustainability”:

We are at a critical turning point. The slow progress on sustainability challenges reminds us of the urgency to think big and act boldly.

If there is one concept in research and policy that is the opposite of trying to "be everything," it is a science mission. If there is one concept that focuses not on the how but the what, where the goals determine the means, it is a science mission.

A science mission refers to a specific, goal-oriented initiative or program aimed at advancing scientific understanding, generating new knowledge, or addressing key scientific challenges. Science missions are:

Well-known examples of science missions include the Apollo program, which successfully landed humans on the Moon, and the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb. Other examples could be NASA's Mars Missions or the Human Genome Project—a mission to map all human genes, revolutionizing genetics and medicine—or CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

So, it was with much anticipation that I followed the link and began reading about this new initiative. At the heart of the initiative is the report Flipping the Science Model: A Roadmap to Science Missions for Sustainability. However, already the blurb of the report was disappointing:

(…) calling for science in support of progress towards the SDGs to be undertaken and supported differently. We firmly believe that by better integrating science with other perspectives, we can achieve what the 2030 Agenda set out to do: creating the conditions for a fairer and more sustainable world while living within planetary boundaries.

This has nothing to do with science missions but instead reads like boilerplate language from the sustainability science community. There is nothing inherently wrong with that call, of course. I’ve advocated for new ways of conducting research using similar wording myself. But where is the boldness? Where is the big, audacious goal?

It continues with the same self-deprecating, all-encompassing tone:

This will require us to supplement and rebalance our current scientific model by incentivizing collaboration and outcomes between scientists and between scientists and other stakeholders, especially civil society, on large-scale sustainability challenges.

Moving on from the announcements, I examined the list of so-called pilots:

Selected from over 250 global submissions through a rigorous review process by leading transdisciplinary and sustainability scientists, 12 pilots are set to launch in various locations worldwide while others are global in scope and will be implemented across scales. Each project will bring together diverse expertise, resources, and perspectives to co-design and co-deliver solutions to complex sustainability challenges.

Do I even need to comment on the "wanting it all" vibe here? Where are the science missions? Two pilots have received initial funding to begin:

  1. Transformative science for biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods in Amazonia

  2. Meta-network hub for sustainability in Asia (Meta Hub Asia)

The synopses of these pilots read like interesting research projects. However, I have seen, worked on, managed, and written grants for dozens of similar efforts between 2006 and 2019. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—new, bold, or transformative about these. They are off-the-shelf research proposals dressed up with all the right keywords. Looking at the other selected (but not yet funded) pilots, it’s the same story. These are all perfectly fine global change research projects, but they are not missions. One has a somewhat catchy title: Beyond the Coffee Cup: Empowering coffee-production communities. As a coffee junkie, I had to read more:

The proposed pilot mission addresses the urgent challenges of smallholder coffee producers in Chiapas, Mexico, focusing on economic empowerment, environmental sustainability, and social resilience.

What are these urgent challenges? Well, let’s read on:

Collaborating with local communities, the consortium bridges traditional farming knowledge with cutting-edge scientific tools, such as AI-driven soil monitoring and circular economy models that turn coffee waste into valuable by-products. Through innovative educational programs, the mission equips producers with essential skills, empowering them to adopt sustainable agricultural practices, improve soil health, and enhance climate resilience.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but this hardly qualifies as a scientific effort, let alone a science mission. Educational programs? Seriously? It reads more like the work of a circular economy advocacy group. The entire list of pilots resembles any collection of project proposals in response to a standard funding call from a national research agency.

I began this rant by reflecting on how much I miss my previous life as an international research manager and "mercenary for science-policy”. Paradoxically, diving into the “Science Missions for Sustainability” initiative has made me miss that line of work even more. While I believe this initiative is deeply flawed—an absolute failure and little more than a Potemkin village—it has reinforced the importance of the unique role I once had. It also highlights that my ideas on research management and science-policy operations are still relevant—perhaps now more than ever.

There is so much intellectual potential within the global change research and sustainability science community. So many talented individual scholars. We need to harness this potential effectively, not suffocate it in a want-it-all keyword-sprinkled rabbit hole.

#Notes