The case for transdisciplinarity

This article is written by Naouma Kourti, European Commission.

• The problem: Interconnections and interdependencies are ubiquitous and essential for life on Earth, yet they are a problem when designing systems – whether political, financial or technological.
• Why it matters: Failure to understand interconnections and interdependencies leads to problems – often at global scales – with sometimes severe consequences. Climate change is only one example.
• The solution: Transdisciplinarity in education and in decision-making will help not only understand interconnections and interdependencies, but also build better future systems based on them.

From 16 to 18 May 2023, a huge conference was organised on the European Parliament premises in Brussels with the ambitious title ‘Beyond Growth’. This conference concluded that political action is urgently needed to remove the GDP indicator as a growth measure and replace it with composite indicators related to sustainability and wellbeing. The many scholars, politicians and activists gathered have reiterated the longstanding request to abandon the industrial growth model altogether and use new models of economic and societal wellbeing that take into account the complexities of modern societies and employ systems thinking, since this seems to be the only way to save the planet.

It seems that we are trapped in a vicious circle of technologies that are by far not as advanced as they should be to tackle the climate emergency.

At the same time, the annual statement of the World Meteorological Organisation warned that there's now a 66% chance we will pass the 1.5C global warming threshold between now and 2027.

The turn to climate-friendly technologies and the surge of digital technologies however imply unsustainable extraction of raw materials, loss of biodiversity and pollution at a similar level to fossil fuel practices. This happens because the green and digital transition is governed by the same growth considerations as before, and therefore they don’t seem to bring the desired relief.

It seems that we are trapped in a vicious circle of technologies that are by far not as advanced as they should be to tackle the climate emergency and of debilitating policies based on anachronistic industrial growth considerations. So how should we escape?

Learning from nature’s interdependencies

We have been educated to consider ourselves observers of nature and our systems and technologies decoupled from nature’s ways. But climate change has taught us a different lesson.

Nature is a web of fully interconnected and interdependent systems. The interconnections of the systems and the interdependencies that they develop among them are often more important than the systems themselves. They are multiple and multi-directional feedback loops, at times not visible until a crisis strikes that triggers the hidden mechanisms of emergence. The sum of the systems alone does not make nature. It is from the interconnections that nature emerges and derives its complexity. Everything depends on everything else without hierarchy and without preference.

Where there is a relation, there is parasitism, tells us the French philosopher M. Serres. Human-made systems have been parasiting nature’s relations or interconnections in an unsustainable manner for decades. During the Anthropocene, we learned that the parasite is doomed if it eats up its host. The parasiting form of living with nature hinders us from developing our full potential. We have to take our position and role as one of the main nodes of Gaia's network and appreciate the wealth and strength of our interconnections and interdependencies with everything else on our planet and beyond.

Science and technology

Science has been compartmentalised in disciplines in its attempt to study the various systems of nature for their own sake, biology, physics, neurology etc. However little importance has been given to the interconnections and interdependences among these systems up to now. Laboratory work requires the isolation of a system from each surroundings and thus from the complexity in which it is embedded.

Climate change, loss of biodiversity and the many crises we face today suggest we need to understand how systems are interdependent along with how they operate in their isolated, stand-alone version. Understanding interconnections and interdependencies though means moving outside of the borders of the disciplines, as established today. More and more scientists find that disciplinary borders have to be often crossed in order to advance knowledge. In order to study interconnections and interdependencies a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge has to be adopted.

Transdisciplinarity in education means giving a place to those who do not want to choose a discipline and allowing problem-solving-oriented learning. More and more universities adopt transdisciplinary courses to attract highly intelligent students. Even in secondary education, which remains highly disciplinary, transdisciplinary good practice becomes available in particular concerning sustainability. Transdisciplinary research, such as that carried out during PhDs, requires the development of standards for publishing and reviewing transdisciplinary papers.

Innovation is considered the panacea for all crises. It creates the illusion that we can continue on our destructive parasitic path forever. It is time to liberate innovation from the shortsighted market-oriented, expert-driven context and make it a means of social emancipation, collaborative value creation and collective participation. Therefore innovation should not only be assessed for its market potential and competitive advantage but also permeated by social and environmental considerations.

Transdisciplinarity is the means to do so. Companies should strive for mixed working groups to ensure diversity of gender, races, vulnerable groups and disciplines. They should nurture interconnections with society and nature and be conscious of the interdependencies that the new technology will foster.

Transdisciplinarity in policymaking

In EU policy decision-making we see increasingly more interdisciplinary groups of experts being engaged along with specialists. Communication is often cumbersome due to highly specialised education and the lack of a common language. The EU has adopted the GreenComp Framework, a new way of learning for sustainability which aims to close the gap between experts and other stakeholders.

Policy and economic changes can only go hand in hand. An economy based on wellbeing and sustainability indicators is inherently multidisciplinary. Therefore, future policies will increasingly transcend ministerial portfolios. In order to feed the plethora of new economic indicators, they will have to open up and listen to more stakeholders and actors. This means more deliberative practices along with active citizen engagement. It also implies a greater need for evaluation practices based on transdisciplinary approaches.

Individual transdisciplinarity

Each of us individually has to appreciate our inherent transdisciplinary nature. We are not only scientists or only artists, economists or medicine doctors, etc. Despite our education forming our thinking, we are beings of nature ourselves interconnected and interdependent with other beings and the matter that surrounds us. Our decisions as policymakers may have far-reaching consequences. We ought to be conscious of this, open and respectful to other forms of life and expression and most of all to our planet.

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