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Over recent decades, education policy has been preoccupied with economic growth while paying insufficient heed to global sustainability challenges. International initiatives to promote education for sustainable development (ESD) have been hampered by a lack of clarity on how to implement this form of education. To address this concern, a Rounder Sense of Purpose (RSP) began as a three-year EU-funded project that set out to develop a practical accreditation model for educators working on ESD. Expert and user opinion was sought through several rounds of structured consultation with over 500 people, chiefly using a Delphi approach, to develop and validate the model. The resulting framework comprises 12 competences, each with three learning outcomes and several underpinning components. This is supported by a range of activities largely reflecting a constructivist pedagogy. A range of assessment techniques have also been piloted within the project although this remains an area for further enquiry. Ultimately, it was decided not to design a single qualification template because defining the award to such a level of detail would make it more difficult to apply across multiple jurisdictions. Partners also felt that such an approach would atomize learning in a way that runs counter to the holistic principles of sustainability. RSP provided a rich learning experience for those involved and has already demonstrated its potential to extend its impact well beyond the original participants.

The current intensification of efforts to develop post-carbon solutions to the global food/energy security problems is developing a highly contested policy/technology/production/consumption arena. The paper examines how current attempts to resolve these new productivist priorities are embedded in combinations of sustainability, security, sovereignty and resource governance concerns. These concerns are coming together with the new contested framings of the bio-economy and the eco-economy. The framings hold different implications for social and spatial development. The paper argues that it is important to apply and connect a critical ‘post normal’ sustainability science approach to developing the place-making properties of the eco-economy model, as well as examining the implications of the wider and more dominant bio-economic framing. The analysis shows that to achieve synergies between sustainability, security, sovereignty and effective resource governance, a more place-based eco-economic model needs to be progressed.

Sustainability science still struggles with transitioning from problem-focused to solution-oriented endeavors that yield positive impacts on mitigating sustainability challenges. This article presents and compares three sustainability science studies on the reconstruction after the 2011 triple-disaster in Japan; limited energy and livelihood options in rural Africa; and toxic chemical dispersion in San Francisco. Research varied in design and conduct, with opportunities for improvement in transdisciplinary collaboration, institutional incentives and rewards, competency development in future researchers, articulation of relevant political economies, and orientation towards feasible solution options. Of particular interest are insights synthesized across the cases, mainly success factors and their transferability, sustainability science pedagogical opportunities, and potential future research areas. These insights emerged from presentations and breakout discussions of the three studies at the 2012 International Conference on Sustainability Science held at Arizona State University.

These challenges are nolonger ignorable, as they have triggered fierce debates andcontroversies across all sectors and classes of society,finally infiltrating the ivory towers of academia. Yet, publicattention is captivated by the entertaining media episodeson these catastrophes and hardly any attention is paid to thecatastrophes’ underlying structures and root causes. Recentexamples include Fukushima’s nuclear power plant fiascoand the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that divertattention from the key drivers, namely, the insatiableenergy consumption in industrialized nations; the eco-nomic ideologies of safety and security that justify militaryinterventions and arms trade, which continue to increaseand spread in spite of humanitarian rhetoric and globalrecession; the continuous urbanization, with the majority ofthe world’s population now living in urban areas, thereby,perpetuating the discredits and exploits of rural areas; thesilent discounting of our children’s future through indus-trial food, resulting in more than a quarter of all children inindustrialized nations being obese or overweight, with themajority staying obese as adults (Wiek et al. 2011b).While research and education slowly recognize theimportance of shifting their efforts to such challenges andtheir root causes (Jerneck et al. 2011; Spangenberg 2011;Wiek et al. 2011a), sustainability scientists lack experienceand expertiseincontributingtofeasibleandeffectivesolutionoptions. The concept of linking knowledge to action forsustainability was initiated a decade ago (Kates et al. 2001)and has been reiterated since then (Komiyama and Takeuchi2006; van Kerkhoff and Lebel 2006); yet, too many scholarsstillbelievethatthislinkwillmiraculouslyemerge.However,it is obvious that it requires a very different type of researchand education (Sarewitz et al. 2010;Wieketal.2011a):namely, research that generates knowledge that matters topeople’s decisions and engages in arenas where powerdominates knowledge; and education that enables students tobe visionary, creative, and rigorous in developing solutionsand that leaves the protected space of the classroom to con-front the dynamics and contradictions of the real world.Against this background, the community of sustain-ability scientists is confronted with two essential questions.First, what is a reasonable mission for sustainability sci-ence, considering that research and education are valuablebut not sufficient contributions to solving sustainability

Sustainability science is being developed in constructive tension between a descriptive–analytical and a transformational mode. The first is concerned with analyzing problems in coupled human–environment systems, whereas the second conducts research on practical solutions to those problems. Transformational sustainability research is confronted with the challenges of generating actionable knowledge, incorporating knowledge from outside academia, and dealing with different values and political interests. This study approaches the theory and promise of sustainability science through a comparative appraisal of five empirical sustainability science projects. We exemplarily appraise in how far sustainability science succeeds and fails in yielding solution options for sustainability problems based on an evaluative framework (that accounts for the particularities of sustainability science). The selected sustainability projects cover a range of topics (water, bioenergy, land use, solar energy, urban development), regions (from coastal to mountainous, from rural to urban areas, in several countries in Africa, Europe, and South and North America), spatial levels (from village to country levels), and research approaches. The comparative results indicate accomplishments regarding problem focus and basic transformational research methodology, but also highlight deficits regarding stakeholder participation, actionable results, and larger impacts. We conclude with suggestions on how to fully realize the potential of sustainability science as a solution-oriented endeavor, including advanced collaborative research settings, advances in transformational research methodologies, cross-case generalization, as well as reducing institutional barriers.