After an unfortunate delay (due to our desire to select the journal most appropriate for this work) we are pleased to announce that the special feature on “Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformations” has been accepted in the Journal Sustainability Science and we are now accepting extended abstracts for the feature.

This special issue is a result of the Leverage Points Conference 2019 in Lüneburg, Germany. It is inspired by the seminal essay by Donnella Meadows “Leverage Points Places to intervene in a system”. In this work, Meadows highlighted a series of leverage points—places in complex systems where a small shift may lead to fundamental changes in the system as a whole. In particular, she noted the tendency to focus on highly tangible, but essentially weak leverage points. Instead, she urged a focus on perhaps less obvious, but potentially far more powerful areas of intervention. Following Meadows’ work we seek to explore (in theory, empiricism and praxis) the metaphor of leverage points in order to foster sustainability transformations.

This special issue will ask: how do we transform ourselves, our science, our institutions, our interventions and our societies for a better future? We thus invite papers that were presented during Leverage Points 2019 on:

• Re-structuring institutions for transformative change
• Re-connecting people and nature as a deep leverage point
• Re-thinking how we know and act in relation to sustainability transformations
• Systems thinking and complexity as tools for transformation
• Transformative research practices in sustainability science

Extended abstracts of 700-800 words should be submitted to leventon@leuphana.de before 30thJune, 2019. To ensure quality editing this special issue will be restricted to 15 articles in total.

More details on the special feature can be found here

https://www.springer.com/environment/environmental+management/journal/11625/PSE?detailsPage=press (see “Call for Papers” at the bottom of the page).