New analysis exposes blind spots in global sustainability research

A new study published in Nature Sustainability, based on the analysis of 4 million academic documents, reveals major blind spots in global sustainability research. Conducted by an international research team, including Centre researcher Laura Pereira, the study shows that efforts to advance towards a more sustainable world focus heavily on a limited set of actions and actors while overlooking key strategies and sectors needed to address the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.

A rapid and profound shift towards a just and sustainable world, where humans and nature can thrive, is widely recognised as essential to confronting climate change and biodiversity loss. For this reason, academics are investigating urgent and concrete actions towards what has been called “transformative change for global sustainability,” meaning fundamental and systemic shifts in views, structures, and practices to address nature’s decline. In 2024, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment outlined five overarching strategies and 22 related actions to be undertaken by a diverse range of societal sectors and related actors.

However, it remains unclear which of these actions receive sustained attention in the academic literature, and how clearly responsibilities are assigned across sectors. The new study addresses this gap through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, examining how actions and accountable actors are represented across millions of academic publications.

The study shows that the scientific literature pays too much attention to certain types of actions, such as those related to technological change, and too little attention to others, such as those aiming at transforming the economic system.

Financial actors are under-represented

The researchers also found that while much of the focus has been on the private sector and sectors associated with communication and knowledge production, little attention has been given to the role of civil society and the public sector. Among actors, financial actors are under-represented, although their actions can have profound implications for the environmental crisis. The study also shows that actions and sectors are not consistently paired in the literature, leaving important gaps in terms of understanding who is accountable for what.

“The study shows where there is an important area for transformations research to focus on in terms of the economics of transformations,” says Laura Pereira. "Particularly, it highlights the role of financial actors and businesses shifting their practices to enable transformative futures.”

One notable finding is the strong emphasis of the academic literature on narratives that shift responsibility for the environmental crisis from systemic and institutional actors to individuals. For instance, studies on individual behavioral changes, such as recycling habits, outnumber those focused on actions related to economic or governance transformation. This is especially concerning because deflecting responsibility for the climate crisis and environmental degradation onto individual citizens has long been a strategy used by certain industries, particularly oil and gas corporations.

“Our findings highlight how, at the large scale, researchers can produce a biased account of the actions and actors that can drive change towards sustainability. Overall, we are neglecting potentially powerful actors in driving transformations, in particular, civil society,” says lead author Victoria Reyes-García, the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

The study concludes with a call-to-action for sustainability researchers: more pluralistic approaches to knowledge production and policy design are needed to achieve real transformative change.