Markets for Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs): The Role of Community-Based Tourism (CBT) in Enhancing Brazil's Sociobiodiversity

Under detailed settings, tourism can add to the material and immaterial values of the use of biodiversity, such as non-timber forest products (NTFPs) collected by traditional communities, towards sustainability in rural landscapes. A critical aspect is to effectively assess where to implement tourism modalities that enhance NTFP extractivism and reduce the emphasis on the quantities extracted (yields). Here, we map NTFP extractivism and community-based tourism initiatives in Brazil to explore local markets, use a spatially explicit modeling approach and map landscape-scale governance mechanisms to upscale where sociobiodiversity can be successfully cherished through a community-led visitation and management model. Our results show suitable large areas to upscale community-based tourism (CBT) markets for NTFP extractivism in the Amazon and Cerrado, which can be supported by available social capital and partnerships. However, there is a lack of infrastructure and institutions to support their implementation. We evidence innovative ways for enhancing the role of tourism for Brazil's sociobiodiversity and fostering transitions towards multifunctional sustainable land uses.

Narrative explorations of the role of the informal food sector in food flows and sustainable transitions during the COVID-19 lockdown

Globally, the informal food sector has been the recipient of exclusionary urban policies, despite its dominant role in urban life. This study examined the contributions of the informal food sector to food flows during the COVID-19 lockdown in Cape Town, South Africa. An ethnographic research method consisting of in-depth interviews and participant observations was used to gather data between April and November 2020. The data were thematically analysed. Corporate retailers and informal vendors managed food flows through the city prior to COVID-19. Due to the lockdown regulations, food flows through the informal sector ceased. The situation resulted in job loss and increased food insecurity. During this challenging period, the informal sector transformed food flows by facilitating sustainable urban agriculture, food aid programmes, and community change. Although the sector can hinder urban modernisation, the current study findings showed that the informal food sector is a buffer for meeting urban sustainability needs. Regulatory frameworks that embrace inclusive governance approaches are highly recommended.

Advocacy for Sustainability Communication: Unseen Potential of Queer Communicators in Environmental, Climate Change and Sustainability Science

The story of climate change, of destruction and loss, is well represented in mass media around natural hazards and new scientific data (i.e., the newest IPCC report);in contrast, new concepts of restoration, eco-cultural identities, social change and sustainable development are not picked up in public discourses—similarly to how the voices of NGO communicators, activists or queer communicators are not heard in the media. Additionally, the growth of digital publishing technologies and related audience behavior not only influence public communication processes, but also challenge professional communicators, including journalists and PR professionals to scientists, artists and activists. With a series of explorative interviews in different cultural settings (Central Europe, Australia, New Zealand), we can show that queer communicators have the potential to cultivate a new understanding of sustainability communication as social conversation about sustainability, and thus, overcome the very visible old story about climate change and rather propagate the new story of sustainability and transformation. The interviews show that queer communicator advocacy focuses on mobilizing and initiating dialectic conversations, which includes community building and queering existing norms, thus choosing new pathways for communication for sustainability. The findings and the developed concept of advocacy for sustainability communication are discussed at the end of the paper, including a reflection on the limitations of the explorative character of the analysis and future research potential.

Pattern languages as a design tool to tackle "wicked problems" in sustainability science

Humanity is facing global and local sustainability challenges that call for the involvement of a wide range of expertise drawn from academia, civil society, the private sector, as well as funding and development agencies. The challenge will be to leverage this diversity to nurture decision making. To make such discussions successful we propose a pattern language approach. It can be used as a practical step-by-step process to guide interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers and to facilitate transdisciplinary interactions between the academic and nonacademic worlds. The patterns are documented and freely accessible online in the Sustainable Science Pattern database.

How the COVID-19 pandemic impacts social scientific research on sustainability: questions of methodology, ethics and justice: comment on Santana et al. 2021.

In a highly relevant contribution, Santana et al. (2021) outlined the challenges for qualitative enquiries during the pandemic. We agree that overcoming these challenges is very important since qualitative research is vital for understanding both the impacts of COVID-19 on human communities around the globe and its significance for sustainable futures. However, we argue that a more fundamental approach is needed to address problems within scientific organisations, thinking and practices that directly affect qualitative research capabilities. In this comment, we focus on justice, research organisation, the ways social scientists position themselves and changed understandings of social worlds.

Storying COVID-19: fear, digitalisation, and the transformational potential of storytelling.

Stories are being increasingly recognised for their potential as creators, not only depicters, of change. As such, they are receiving greater interest within sustainability science, not least in the approaches specifically focused on transformative processes of co-creation. But while highly powerful, stories are confined by both inherent and external frameworks that, if not acknowledged, limit their transformative potential. This paper addresses two such critical issues-fear and digitalisation-and discusses the ways in which they influence how and with what effects stories can be told. It uses the COVID-19 pandemic as illustration of storytelling processes and outlines some of the ways in which we can, and cannot, draw parallels between pandemic and climate change storytelling.

Linking knowledge with action when engagement is out of reach: three contextual features of effective public health communication.

Scholars and practitioners often promote direct engagement between policymakers, health workers and researchers as a strategy for overcoming barriers to utilizing scientific knowledge in health policy. However, in many settings public health officials rarely have opportunities to interact with researchers, which is a problem further exacerbated by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. One prominent theory argues that policy actors will trust and utilize research findings when they perceive them to be salient, credible and legitimate. We draw on this theory to examine the conditions facilitating greater uptake of new knowledge among health officials when engagement is out of reach and they are instead exposed to new ideas through written mass communication. Using data from a survey experiment with about 260 health workers and administrators in Honduras, we find that messages from a technocratic sender based on statistical evidence improved perceptions of salience, credibility and legitimacy (SCL). Additionally, perceptions of SCL are three contextual features that operate as joint mediators between knowledge and action, and several individual characteristics also influence whether officials trust research findings enough to apply them when formulating and implementing health policies. This research can help inform the design of context-sensitive knowledge translation and exchange strategies to advance the goals of evidence-based public health, particularly in settings where direct engagement is difficult to achieve.

A path forward for qualitative research on sustainability in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The unique strengths of qualitative research, through in-depth inquiry and identification of unexpected themes and linkages, is essential to our growing understanding of COVID-19's impacts on the social world and its intersection with sustainability science. However, many challenges-physical, psychological, and ethical in nature-face qualitative researchers during the pandemic, as social distancing and travel restrictions prevent in-person field work. In this paper, we outline the essential contributions of qualitative study to sustainability science, discuss current challenges, and in turn, provide recommendations for researchers.