Action Research – A New Approach for Environmental RD

Abstract

High efficiency research, development and innovation (RD&I) constitute an answer to the ever growing importance that EU states give to knowledge-based development (a central idea in the Europe 2020 Strategy), directed toward finding comprehensive solutions to concerns connected to the Europe’s resource depletion, energy future, climate changes, etc. The "Action Research" paradigm appeared in the late 1940s but its systematic application is the attribute of recent years. It keeps researchers in the real world, requires teamwork, collaboration with communities and other stakeholders. Action Research is especially suitable in projects for reducing anthropic footprint / environmental aggression and in waste management. In essence, Action Research (for the first time systematically applied in Romania) is the research approach that lets the problem studied to conduct the analysis and generate appropriate solutions; it constitutes a flexible, versatile technique to generate new knowledge through iterative interaction with the domain studied - namely the environment - researchers and communities.

Keywords

• Action Research
• industrial symbiosis
• waste management
• knowledge generation