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Equity is core to sustainability, but current interventions to enhance sustainability often fall short in adequately addressing this linkage. Models are important tools for informing action, and their development and use present opportunities to center equity in process and outcomes. This Perspective highlights progress in integrating equity into systems modeling in sustainability science, as well as key challenges, tensions, and future directions. We present a conceptual framework for equity in systems modeling, focused on its distributional, procedural, and recognitional dimensions. We discuss examples of how modelers engage with these different dimensions throughout the modeling process and from across a range of modeling approaches and topics, including water resources, energy systems, air quality, and conservation. Synthesizing across these examples, we identify significant advances in enhancing procedural and recognitional equity by reframing models as tools to explore pluralism in worldviews and knowledge systems; enabling models to better represent distributional inequity through new computational techniques and data sources; investigating the dynamics that can drive inequities by linking different modeling approaches; and developing more nuanced metrics for assessing equity outcomes. We also identify important future directions, such as an increased focus on using models to identify pathways to transform underlying conditions that lead to inequities and move toward desired futures. By looking at examples across the diverse fields within sustainability science, we argue that there are valuable opportunities for mutual learning on how to use models more effectively as tools to support sustainable and equitable futures.
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This content will become publicly available on April 11, 2026
Placing knowledge equity at the heart of the UN Ocean Decade: an Early Career Researcher perspective
The UN Ocean Decade provides a framework for stakeholders and rights-holders to come together to develop transformative ocean solutions for sustainable development. We are a group of Early Career Researchers (ECR) from diverse backgrounds with a shared commitment to working toward the Ocean Decade outcomes. Our article offers an ECR perspective on the fundamental importance of knowledge equity for achieving the Ocean Decade's vision of “the science we need for the ocean we want.” Knowledge equity is imperative for confronting the “business as usual” approach to ocean sustainability as it requires us to confront and dismantle extractive practices of knowledge production. We reflect on how the dominance of western science in research and policy and the systematic marginalization of diverse knowledge systems has led to inequitable outcomes for ocean-dependent people. Using real-world examples, we demonstrate the progress we can make toward ocean sustainability when we place knowledge equity at the heart of our work. We conclude with a call to action to ensure that knowledge equity is embedded as both a principle and a practice within the Ocean Decade framework. We invite all ocean professionals to join us in: (1) adopting an intentional practice of reflexivity in our work; (2) confronting colonial ways of thinking, knowing, and doing; and (3) dismantling knowledge hierarchies that permeate ocean science and practice. By implementing these actions, we can create meaningful and inclusive spaces for collaboration and become a more respectful and effective global ocean community.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2054521
- PAR ID:
- 10646421
- Publisher / Repository:
- Frontiers
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Ocean Sustainability
- Volume:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2813-8287
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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