Derk Loorbach

Transition management as a model for managing processes of co-evolution towards sustainable development

Sustainable development requires changes in socio-technical systems and wider societal change – in beliefs, values and governance that co-evolve with technology changes. In this article we present a practical model for managing processes of co-evolution: transition management. Transition management is a multilevel model of governance which shapes processes of co-evolution using visions, transition experiments and cycles of learning and adaptation. Transition management helps societies to transform themselves in a gradual, reflexive way through guided processes of variation and selection, the outcomes of which are stepping stones for further change. It shows that societies can break free from existing practices and technologies, by engaging in co-evolutionary steering. This is illustrated by the Dutch waste management transition. Perhaps transition management constitutes the third way that policy scientists have been looking for all the time, combining the advantages of incrementalism (based on mutual adaptation) with the advantages of planning (based on long-term objectives).

Tipping Toward Sustainability: Emerging Pathways of Transformation

This article explores the links between agency, institutions, and innovation in navigating shifts and large-scale transformations toward global sustainability. Our central question is whether social and technical innovations can reverse the trends that are challenging critical thresholds and creating tipping points in the earth system, and if not, what conditions are necessary to escape the current lock-in. Large-scale transformations in information technology, nano- and biotechnology, and new energy systems have the potential to significantly improve our lives; but if, in framing them, our globalized society fails to consider the capacity of the biosphere, there is a risk that unsustainable development pathways may be reinforced. Current institutional arrangements, including the lack of incentives for the private sector to innovate for sustainability, and the lags inherent in the path dependent nature of innovation, contribute to lock-in, as does our incapacity to easily grasp the interactions implicit in complex problems, referred to here as the ingenuity gap. Nonetheless, promising social and technical innovations with potential to change unsustainable trajectories need to be nurtured and connected to broad institutional resources and responses. In parallel, institutional entrepreneurs can work to reduce the resilience of dominant institutional systems and position viable shadow alternatives and niche regimes.

Managing Transitions for Sustainable Development

textabstractThe challenge of sustainable development presents our society with the need for longterm, structural changes or transitions in sectors such as energy-supply, mobility, agriculture and health-care. Based on a multi-phase and multi-level framework for transitions, we ask whether managing transitions is possible and then outline an operational method for transition management.

The future of sustainability science: a solutions-oriented research agenda

Over the last decade, sustainability science has been at the leading edge of widespread efforts from the social and natural sciences to produce use-inspired research. Yet, how knowledge generated by sustainability science and allied fields will contribute to transitions toward sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. This article explores the limitations of sustainability science research to move the field beyond the analysis of problems in coupled systems to interrogate the social, political and technological dimensions of linking knowledge and action. Over the next decade, sustainability science can strengthen its empirical, theoretical and practical contributions by developing along four research pathways focused on the role of values in science and decision-making for sustainability: how communities at various scales envision and pursue sustainable futures; how socio-technical change can be fostered at multiple scales; the promotion of social and institutional learning for sustainable development.

Assessing the Dutch Energy Transition Policy: How Does it Deal with Dilemmas of Managing Transitions?

In the Netherlands, the national government is committed towards altering the systems of energy, transport and agriculture in the name of sustainable development. A process of deliberation and change was started—aimed at achieving ‘transitions’—using a model of transition management. This paper examines how the new arrangements of governance for energy transition deal with six problems of steering: ambivalence about goals, uncertainty about cause–effect relations, distributed power of control, political myopia, determination of short-term steps for long-term change and the danger of lock-in to new systems. The Dutch experience shows that transition management is applied in ways different from the original model (established players play a too great role) but it appears a useful model of reflexive governance, combining advantages of incremental politics with those of planning. It helps to orientate innovation policy and sectoral policies to sustainable development goals and to exploit business interests in system innovations in a prudent manner.

Governing societal transitions to sustainability

Our paper addresses the inherent tension between the open-ended and uncertain process of sustainability transitions and the ambition for governing such a process. We explore this tension from two theoretical angles: the sustainability and the governance angles; by showing the implications of sustainability targets in governance processes and governance attempts. We propose transition management as a governance approach that has the potential to overcome this tension through selective participatory processes of envisioning, negotiating, learning and experimenting. Transition management includes a portfolio of tools that have a common objective to enable change in practices and structures directed towards sustainable development targets. We present the transition arena and the transition experiments as two transition management tools elaborating on their process design, expected outcomes and illustrating their application in the Dutch construction transition.

Policy innovation in isolation

Abstract Innovations in public policy are difficult to realize if decision-making arrangements are not scrutinized at the same time. Rigid institutional arrangements often hinder the realization of policy breakthroughs. Consequently, in the day-to-day practice of public administration, more and more experiments with innovative arrangements towards realizing groundbreaking policy decisions are being seen. Two rather different examples of such arrangements in the Dutch context are transition arenas and pilot projects (proeftuinen). In this article we describe these arrangements from an innovation management perspective and evaluate their functioning by focusing on their approaches to two dilemmas: the dilemma between diversity and closedness within the innovation plans and the dilemma between openness and closedness of the plan in relation to its context, the outside world. From their comparison we can learn about the context-specific application of different innovation plans and the results of different ways of handling these innovation dilemmas.

A Transition Research Perspective on Governance for Sustainability

In this chapter we present the transitions approach as an integrated perspective to understand and possibly orient our society towards sustainable development. Since the concept of sustainability is inherently normative, subjective and ambiguous, we argue that (unlike some more traditional approaches to sustainable development) we should focus on an open facilitation and stimulation of social processes towards sustainability. The transitions approach and transition management specifically, seek to deal with ongoing changes in society in an evolutionary manner so as to influence these ongoing changes in terms of speed and direction: towards sustainability. A transitions approach to explore sustainability transitions poses novel challenges for research: there are no unequivocal answers, nor it is clear how these processes should be governed. We conclude our analysis by formulating the basic research questions central to the search for governance for sustainability, and by reflecting on the role of science in sustainability transitions.

Governance for sustainability

textabstractSustainable development is rapidly moving from the periphery to the mainstream of politics, business, and science. Over the past several years, a strong consensus has started to emerge that some of the major global problems can only be overcome through large-scale concerted action. Recent additions to the debate include the reports by the International Panel on Climate Change, the Stern Report on the economics of climate change, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and, perhaps less known, the Potsdam Memorandum1. The latter communication was recently presented by a broad group of Nobel laureates and is titled “The Great Transformation.” The statement pleads for fundamental changes in our economies and societies and asks,

The Challenge of Sustainable Urban Development and Transforming Cities

Our quickly changing world faces great challenges when it comes to the sustainable provision of energy, food, shelter, water and welfare to a growing urban population. These grand challenges are increasingly taken up by cities that become the places where sustainable futures are emerging. This chapter introduces the theoretical and practical transition perspective taken in this book and describes its structure and outline. It frames the dynamics in urban development from the perspective of sustainability transitions: deep systemic transformations that are the result of destabilising unsustainable ‘regimes’ and emerging sustainable ‘niches,’ driven by transformative agencies and networks. This perspective highlights on the one hand the complexities, uncertainties, and resistance that come along with urban transitions as well as the mechanisms and patterns that enable and accelerate them, and provides the basis for new types of governance. We then describe the structure of the book. It first elaborates upon the theoretical ideas and governance approaches related to sustainability transitions. It then draws upon empirical evidence from applied transition management in European and Japanese cities. In the final part of the book, the authors reflect upon these experiences, to what extent they are comparative, and what can be learnt in general with regard to implementing urban transition strategies.