The paradoxes of sustainability: a systemic analysis of socio-biodiversity entrepreneurial initiatives

• Ano de defesa: 2023
• Autor(a) principal: Kaetsu, Patricia Taeko
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Entrepreneurial initiatives; Iniciativas empreendedoras; Paradoxos da sustentabilidade; Pensamento sistêmico; Socio-biodiversity; Sociobiodiversidade; Sustainability paradoxes; Systems thinking.
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/12/12139/tde-16062023-192836/

Sustainability management has interrelated and contradictory elements representing unavoidable tensions and paradoxes. Those elements exist in human, ecological, legal, and economic systems nested in multilevels of stakeholders. In order to cope with the perceived paradoxes, organisations polarise the elements into dualities or address parts of tensions. However, socio-biodiversity entrepreneurial initiatives represent a joint effort of organisations requiring shared management of sustainability paradoxes. Therefore, the governance overlaps governments, civil society, private companies, Indigenous peoples and local communities, and diverse types of formal, informal, and illicit organisations. In this context, this study questions how socio-biodiversity entrepreneurial initiatives cope with sustainability paradoxes. The qualitative data analysis comprises thirty-six interviews in six Amazonian countries and nine socio-biodiversity entrepreneurial initiatives. Sequentially, the study presents the causal structures and interaction of reinforcing and balancing loops to illustrate the tensions forming paradoxes. From a theoretical perspective, the main contribution explains the persistence of paradoxes due to a reductionist and dual focus. The multi-scale and spatial point of view clarifies the interconnected elements of sustainability paradoxes. It sheds light on the contractions of multi-stakeholders goals and the purpose of escalating solutions in a context where diversity prevents repetition and replication. The practical contributions relate to the use of systems analysis as a powerful tool to identify the underlying paradoxes of sustainability and to have a distinct approach to complex phenomena. Moreover, embracing the Pan-Amazonia provides empirical inputs to initiatives and policies management of paradoxes