Dissertation Abstract

The many impacts of climate change are among the most pressing problems confronting the sustainability of societies today. Achieving sustainability is not a fixed ideal, but an evolutionary process requiring cross-disciplinary research collaboration, knowledge integration with community stakeholders, and social learning to promote civic engagement. In this doctoral study hermeneutic literature analysis, qualitative, and quantitative psychological research methods are utilized to construct an initial framework of a social science research protocol that can serve as assessment and development tool to help develop community leaders for sustainability and sustainable communities across global cultures. Termed the Sustainable Futures Protocol (SFP) the purpose of this framework is that it will serve as a collaborative social research-based process for global sustainability. Therefore, this study seeks to begin to profile the psychological and sociocultural characteristics of individuals and communities that are most equitable with generating a sustainable global future and utilize these data to help begin to construct the SFP. Research field sites for this doctoral research include communities and leaders engaged in initiatives for sustainability in the Canadian Arctic (Cambridge Bay, Nunavut), the Caribbean (Grenada, US Virgin Islands), and a social entrepreneur network spanning the continental USA. Results from this research reveal that, if it is to act as a valid and effective cross-cultural assessment/development vehicle for global sustainability, a key objective of the SFP must be that it assesses and develops individual leadership, resilience, and connectedness; both personal and social, as well as community capitals, namely: human, social, natural, psychological, and identity capital along sociocultural dimensions. The research results also suggest that to be most valid and effective the framework of the Sustainable Futures Protocol must include quantitative, qualitative research, and mixed methods research components, and that these are implemented within a sociocultural collaborative community-based social learning process. Based on these data, a 360-degree quantitative assessment instrument of these dimensions called the Global Sustainability Inventory (GSI) was developed to assess leaders and survey their community impact and to function as part of the SFP research-based process. Thus, the SFP promises to serve as an effective social research-based tool in the collaborative processes of socio-cultural and economic development of communities toward sustainability while, at the same time, helping develop community-based leadership. In the case of individual leaders, the SFP seeks to develop intrapersonal leadership, resilience and connectedness (“self-mastery”) as well as social leadership, resilience and connectedness. The initial data of this doctoral research serves as an initial framework from which further research can investigate, develop and implement the SFP as research-based knowledge integration process for social transformation toward sustainability worldwide. This research was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Research Completion Grant from the Department of Arctic Social Sciences, Office of Polar Projects, U.S. National Science Foundation (Award #1128004).