Tropentag, September 16 - 18, 2026, Göttingen "Towards multi-functional agro-ecosystems promoting climate-resilient futures"

Reframing sustainability in locked-in social-ecological systems: Transdisciplinary T-Labs and pathway co-creation in smallholder oil palm

¹University of Göttingen, Dept. of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Germany
²University of Göttingen, Dept. of Human Geography, Germany
³IPB University, Dept. of Forest Management, Indonesia

Abstract

Sustainability transformation in complex socio-ecological systems requires changes in how actors construct problem frames and deliberate shared values. However, little is still known about how transdisciplinary Transformation Labs (T-Labs) generate collective reframing, defined as a shared cognitive shift in problem perception and legitimate solutions, in structurally locked systems dominated by a single commodity. This study examines how collective reframing emerges through rural T-Labs and how this process enables the development of alternative sustainability pathways under structurally locked conditions. Using a transdisciplinary research approach grounded in co-creation and co-learning, we collaborated with 51 local actors, including smallholder farmers, women's groups, youth, and local leaders in Pematang Kabau Village, Jambi Province, Indonesia. Adopting a qualitative method that encompassed workshops, interviews, walkshops, and research journal notes, we collected data from March 2022 to October 2023. To map the established system, we use the Socio- ecological framework. Additionally, we use framing-reframing analysis to examine the shift in local actors' perspectives on sustainability. Eventually, as a post-lens analysis, we use the three-horizon method to design future transition pathways. Our results reveal that the participatory T-Lab process shifts the focus from single-loop learning, which focuses on adjusting practices within the existing palm oil-dominated system, to double-loop learning, which questions fundamental assumptions regarding daily cash- flow dependency, land-use choices, and normalized environmental degradation. The new framing emerging from the T-Labs process emphasizes autonomy, agricultural diversification (such as intercropping oil palm with home-garden crops), and local circular economies (such as organic compost), shifting away from the local actors' initial reliance on chemical fertilizers and fresh fruit bunch yields. To sustain these pathways, local actors formalized collective governance through village regulations and restrictions on elite dominance (multiple-position bans). This study shows how the transdisciplinary T-Lab process can serve as a socio-cognitive and institutional mechanism that links double-loop learning and collective reframing to the emergence and consolidation of alternative sustainability pathways. Breaking structural lock-in is not a top-down technocratic task, but an intentional process of nurturing local deliberative capacity and bottom-up institutional agency.

Keywords: Collective governance, collective reframing, double-loop learning, smallholder oil palm, social-ecological systems, transformation labs

Contact Address: Immanuel Manurung, University of Göttingen, Dept. of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Göttingen, Germany, e-mail: immanuel.alfonsusyahoo.co.id