PLUS is driven by the idea that the current challenges for sustainable development can only be solved through global cooperation and by the establishment of collaborative discourse cultures on a global scale. Therefore, PLUS contributes to building such a discourse and cooperation network between its participating partners. Southern Africa and Latin America are both exposed to drastic socio-ecological transformation consequences, that exacerbate existing social inequalities. The scarcity of resources such as water and food will also increase distributional struggles.

Our network is tracing such lines of contemporary conflict by the systematically integration of perspectives that are formulated in the participating regions, via a critique of epistemologies that unfold global hegemony, and by efforts for the development of alternative concepts for sustainable development.

Thus, southern Africa and Latin America do not only figure as exemplary settings for the consequences of global problems but also as correctors for dominant problem definitions and knowledge orders. In keeping with the 2030 Agenda, transformation processes of society and ecology are to be sustainably (co-)shaped in such a way that access to new practices of social cohesion is unlocked.