Just Transitions for Sustainable Astronomy

To accelerate a just and inclusive transition towards a carbon neutral and green economy (European Green Deal) the EU is boosting its research area and heavily investing in the modernisation of its Research Infrastructures (RIs). To fill the gap on how scientific agencies are adopting transitions policies in their RIs, SKYJUST examines two intergovernmental astronomical agencies with strong European participation, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) with multiple large-scale RIs in the Global South. These are excellent cases to produce an overview of European sustainability policies for astronomical RIs, understand the agencies’ everyday narratives and practices of sustainability transitions, provide policy recommendations, and develop an original conceptual framework bridging coloniality studies and Multi-Level Perspective on transitions. Through a pool of interdisciplinary methods SKYJUST develops an empirical analysis of how the dimensions of environmental sustainability, coloniality and governance are embedded in ESO and SKAO RIs in Chile, South Africa and Australia. Training, mobility and collaboration with world-leading scholars in transitions, decoloniality, and sustainability governance will boost my career as a world-class researcher, through courses at UU, a secondment at UCL (UK) and short visits to research centres in the Global South. Through a sound dissemination and communication strategy, SKYJUST seeks to produce an impact in the research agenda on RI’s sustainability, and deliver evidence-based policy recommendations to include a non-colonial Just Transition approach into EU’s RIs roadmaps and astronomical agencies and industry, fostering long-term sustainability partnerships between the EU and its local counterparts. The researcher's experience in transition studies and niche experiments earned in Europe and the Global South will facilitate the success of the project.