SlovakGlobe

Failure of Kyoto protocol in the late 1990's enhanced interdisciplinary research of nature and society interconnections to improve understanding of competing behavioural patterns and trigger behavioural change for long-term sustainability. It has created impetus for expansion of research networks, such as Human Dimension of Global Environmental Change (IHDP) or International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE). By then, the Theory of Commons has celebrated 30th birthday of addressing social dilemma and collective action in the management of natural resources under the scarcity and complexity of emerging global economy and climate change.  

Today, SEA benefits from more than 10 already conducted EU projects concentrated on the institutional ecological and experimental research on novel approaches in studying environmental governance for sustainability transformation, in particular:  

Managing global change for societal transformation to sustainability 

Concerns governance, business, and digital innovations to adapt to societal and natural disturbances in particular governance of the commons in vulnerable areas, such as forests or urban heat promoting relationship between the concept of ecosystem services and the theory of common pool resources (completed EU FM projects ECOFINDERS, SIMRA and Cost Actions PESFOR W, CLIMO). Recently we authored typology of social innovations emergence and development in marginalized rural areas (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soru.12337) awarded as most cited article in the Sociologia Ruralis Journal over 2020-21 and hosted annual conference (www.earthsystemgovernance.org).

Our research on socio-ecological dimension of global change emerged as product of cooperation with Prof. Elinor Ostrom founder of the Theory of Commons and Nobel prize laureate(2009) around 2005, and particularly during her visit of Slovakia in 2007, when Lin participated in summer school 6FMP THEMES. Our team assisted with common pool resource experiment conducted with subjects from 40 countries and formed the CETIP Network. After Commons Nobel Prize award, it has evolved into a supra-regional collaborative research network of Central and Eastern Europe on the Earth System Governance project (ESG) and ISEE, and the Virtual laboratory of experimental social sciences(VEEL) established as part of virtual commons lead by Arizona State University. Formation of SEA under the Institute of Forest Ecology in 2012 enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration for nature-society interactions, to celebrate 50th birthday of the Commons (2018) by emergence of SlovakGlobe - join centre with Slovak University of Technology.

Behavioural change and knowledge co-production

is targeting at novel methodology to address societal challenges in democratic and free market societies. We created behavioural experiment to test analyse and predict key variables of sustainability change. Novel component is Transdisciplinary model of knowledge coproduction developed under the recently completed H2020 project SIMRA with further plan and potential to expand under the Horizon scheme (2 projects in review).