Increasing stakeholder involvement in modeling for sustainable development by engaging stakeholders in the process of building and analyzing models can help people to change their behavior towards more sustainable solutions. That is one of the key messages of prof.dr. A.A. (Alexey) Voinov during his inaugural lecture, last Thursday. Voinov is Professor of Spatio-Temporal Systems Modeling for Sustainability Science at the ITC Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente.
Bring about change
The effect of large scale transitions caused by climate change or depletion of natural resources on the wellbeing of people so far is only marginally noticeable: not enough to bring about serious changes in human behavior to turn the tide. However science is quite clear that the consequences can be dire and action is needed now.
“We need to focus more on the communication side of our work”, Voinov states. “With our models we are getting an understanding of the system, we make forecasts and analyze scenarios of what we may be hitting in the future. But we do need to put more effort into the communicative aspects. To create more awareness and show people what is going on. We can achieve that by more participatory modelling, which is a collaborative approach to building models, with larger stakeholder involvement.”
A higher degree of felt ownership and motivation will contribute greatly to achieving trust in science and inducing change, something that is very much needed. Voinov: “We are all humans, we are driven by our values, biases, preferences and believes, and these are hard to change. However we see that they are quite successfully modified by mass media, commercials, or peer pressure. We need to learn to use similar approaches to deliver the scientific view. Humans have become a geological factor, vastly modifying the planet they live on. Quite a lot of processes are going on that come with delayed effects, both in space and time. We need to make that visible. Awareness can be raised by more collaboration with stakeholders.”
Technological development
Voinov is hopeful for the contribution of technological solutions towards solving some problems, such as in the domain of green energy for example. Voinov: “They offer great opportunities however, until we are sure they work, a more precautionary approach is essential. In many cases it could be much cheaper to simply change our preferences and behavior, e.g. switch off the unused lights or take stair instead of an elevator. Unfortunately we often do not know how to make that happen.”
Technological innovations can also play a key role in improving the interaction with stakeholders in participatory modeling. “Web technology enables a stakeholder community to be much more involved via mobile devices, leading to better information about the processes and about how systems work. Social media can also inform us about people's preferences and priorities. All that is essential to jointly choose our most preferred future and the best way to get there.”
Career
Prof.dr. Voinov obtained his PhD in Biophysics at the Moscow State University in 1982. After a scientific career in his home country, Voinov continued his research in the United States, where he spent considerable time at the University of Maryland (Institute for Ecological Economics) and the University of Vermont (School of Natural Resources), as a research scientist and associate professor respectively. He also worked at the US Army Corps of Engineers as a AAAS Science and Policy Fellow, and spent 2 years working at the interface of science and policy in Washington DC. He was appointed Associate Professor at ITC in 2009 and started the tenure track with the Department of Geo Information Processing (GIP) at ITC in 2012.
The brochure of the inaugural lecture of prof.dr. A.A. (Alexey) Voinov can be downloaded here (in pdf). Following the Inaugural Lecture, regional newspaper Tubantia published on Voinov's research results on scooter emission in the city of Enschede: 'Verban de scooter uit Enschede' in Dutch).
