Challenges to govern a global sustainability science problem: Lessons from a domestic climate change research project

In addition to 17 Sustainable Development Goals, one emerging global environmental issue in the 21 century is the gap between science and policy (UNEP, 2012) . While humans may comprehend some complicated sustainability problems at some degrees, we are far from properly addressing and governing these problems. This is specifically important for a global sustainability issue with a high scientific complexity, such as global climate change. Although the sustainability science research continues to grow, few studies contribute policy-relevant output for governing the problem and fewer studies focus on evaluating the operation of these researches. Hence, a sustainability research project that can link global to local, theory and practice, research and action, and science and policy can certainly share some experiences and insights. Therefore, this study aims to present a valuable case study that demonstrates how a domestic sustainability science research project transforms a highly scientifically-complicated global-scale problem to a more manageable local-scale problem and how multiple disciplines and agencies work accordantly toward a common research goal. Ultimately this paper hopes to contribute the field of sustainability science by providing valuable in-depth experiences in terms of the operation of a sustainability science research at domestic levels.

Automated summary

This study aims to present a valuable case study that demonstrates how a domestic sustainability science research project transforms a highly scientifically-complicated global-scale problem to a more manageable local-scale problem and how multiple disciplines and agencies work accordantly toward a common research goal.