Science today offers us two radically different narratives about our future.

• The crisis narrative invokes an impending or already unfolding planetary upheaval and a future marked by massive social dislocation and environmental breakdown.
• The breakthrough narrative promises a future in which technological innovation will have averted planetary collapse and secured human dominion over nature.

This UNESCO Chair responds to the urgent need for meaningful dialogue on these imagined futures being communicated by science and the different visions of transformation they have sparked. Our program of research, training and knowledge exchange explores how knowledge (both formal and informal) about the state of the environment, social relations and techno-economic systems come together in these narratives.

The crisis narrative has stimulated much work on ways of transforming social and economic systems to accommodate planetary limits.

The breakthrough narrative by contrast signals hopes for transforming nature and restoring the planet without the need for major social or economic change.

But how do different people in the academy, civil society, government, business, the media, the professions or in everyday life make sense of these narratives, bring evidence to bear on their assessments and envision implications for the future?

We aim to work with culturally embedded concepts of public or common good to convene conversations on these issues in the face of diverse forms of knowledge, experience and values. 

Our / The Vision

UNESCO Chairs serve as prime vehicles for building higher institutions' capacity in specific areas of scholarship through exchange, collaboration, knowledge transfer and sharing in the spirit of international solidarity.

Working in the Asia-Pacific region and connecting with partners elsewhere in the world, this Chair contributes to UNESCO’s work in fostering inclusive ways of bringing science, engineering, technology and innovation (SETI) to bear on the Sustainable Development Goals.