Posted in Publications on Sep 16, 2026.
We share a policy paper written by Climate Change and History Research Initiative (CCHRI) postdoc, Kate Snow, April 2026 – UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES COALITION support for increased interdisciplinarity in sustainability science: recommendations at the five-year mark from a policy relevance perspective
Summary
The author notes that five years after its 2021 launch by UNESCO’s MOST programme, the BRIDGES Coalition has successfully expanded sustainability science (SS) by incorporating the humanities and social sciences. However, translating this research into concrete government policy remains difficult due to information overload and the persistent dominance of Business As Usual (BAU) economic practices.
Key Points
The Implementation Gap: Global frameworks - such as the Paris Agreement, SDGs, and the Convention on Biological Diversity - suffer from severe implementation gaps, with real-world progress falling well behind official targets.
Competing Pressures: Policymakers are frequently distracted from sustainability by military conflicts, political polarisation, and economic competition, failing to integrate environmental protection with security issues.
The "Performative" Policy Trap: Academic sustainability science often assumes policy should naturally mirror research, creating an idealised, performative realm that inadvertently relieves pressure on decision-makers to abandon BAU.
Environmental History's Role: While environmental history offers valuable long-term perspectives for climate and biodiversity policies, its impact is limited by practical implementation barriers and twenty-first-century global novelties.
Security Integration: Rebranding environmental protection as a national security issue could offer a more effective entry point into mainstream geopolitical strategies, as security postures are less wedded to maximising energy throughput than traditional market economies.
Core Recommendations: The paper recommends the convening of a high-level policymaker-academic colloquium, studying the modern policy landscape (including treating BAU as negative policy), and examining academic assumptions regarding policy mirroring.
