Towards Resilient Communities: Action Learning with SDGs as Compass

The postdoc research used the SDGs as compass to assess the performance of Living Labs at HVHL, which resulted in four key observations :
1. Most Living Labs focus on the dissemination of technological innovations to users; addressing power inequalities (SDG 5 &10), social justice and institutional transformation (SDG 16 & 17) remain a blind spot.
2. Discussions are about contribution to sustainability but seldom about sustainable transitions or how to affect change; action-reflection-learning as a change component of applied research is still rare.
3. Using SDGs as compass and dialogue-tool can mobilize cross-sectoral collaboration among study-programs and stake¬holders with the aim to jointly design transition pathways bridging perspectives from ‘below’ (local people, users) and ‘above’ (planners, policy-makers, experts).
4. Living labs are conducive learning environments to develop sustainability-oriented competences but institutional barriers should be addressed to strengthen the link between research with education.

Based on these insights, the SDG as compass approach was designed: a methodology consisting of 6 steps which help research-partners to analyze the complexity of the issues at stake, to find the appropriate partner configuration, to integrate the SDGs in the research, and shape the action research and partnership learning strategy.

Further a Roadmap was developed to design and implement sustainability-oriented education at VHL – highlighting the role of Living Labs as conducive learning environments - and to address the institutional barriers to strengthen the link between research and education. This Roadmap consists of 5 steps across 3 ambition levels.

It is VHL’s mission to train high-quality, committed and innovative professionals who con-tribute to a more sustainable world , and who are able to organize and manage multi-stakeholder processes for sustainable change: graduates with transdisciplinary competences. Secondly, VHL aims to contribute to the SDG-agenda by linking its education and applied research to eight particular SDGs of which Resilient Communities is one. However, to operationalize SDGs in practice, and aligning targets and strategies of different stakeholders is difficult: ‘resilience’ and ‘sustainability’ refer to ‘wicked problems’ for which no definitive problem formulation, nor clear-cut solutions exist. Addressing wicked problems like ‘resilience’ and ‘sustainability’ requires transdisciplinary collaboration to manage and transform divergent values and conflicting interests, and to co-create sustainable innovations.

This HBO postdoc views the 17 SDGs as a compass to align targets and strategies of citizens, government, civil society organizations, private sector and knowledge institutes who collaborate in Living Labs of VHL focusing on resilient communities/regions. Through spiraling action-reflection cycles, stakeholders will use the SDG compass to make success mechanisms, obstacles and trade-offs visible, assuming they stay engaged to overcome difficulties to improve interventions and innovations; this is expected to result in adapted sustainability practices and lessons learned on reaching community resilience.

The postdoc’s aim is two-fold highlighting the link between research and education:
(1) Design a methodology to integrate SDGs effectively in VHL’s applied research: using the SDGs as compass to improve performance and outcomes of transdisciplinary collaborations.
(2) Develop a Roadmap for transdisciplinary education at course, curriculum, and institutional level with SDGs as compass. Future graduates require the competence to work together with others outside one own’s discipline, institute, culture or context. Living Labs offer a suitable learning environment to develop this competence