Måns Nilsson

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.

Reconnecting to the Biosphere

Humanity has emerged as a major force in the operation of the biosphere, with a significant imprint on the Earth System, challenging social–ecological resilience. This new situation calls for a fundamental shift in perspectives, world views, and institutions. Human development and progress must be reconnected to the capacity of the biosphere and essential ecosystem services to be sustained. Governance challenges include a highly interconnected and faster world, cascading social–ecological interactions and planetary boundaries that create vulnerabilities but also opportunities for social–ecological change and transformation. Tipping points and thresholds highlight the importance of understanding and managing resilience. New modes of flexible governance are emerging. A central challenge is to reconnect these efforts to the changing preconditions for societal development as active stewards of the Earth System. We suggest that the Millennium Development Goals need to be reframed in such a planetary stewardship context combined with a call for a new social contract on global sustainability. The ongoing mind shift in human relations with Earth and its boundaries provides exciting opportunities for societal development in collaboration with the biosphere—a global sustainability agenda for humanity.

DECISION MAKING AND STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Strategic Environmental Assessment aims to incorporate environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making processes, such as the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. In order to be effective, the assessment must take the real decision making process as the departure point. Existing SEA approaches are frequently tailored after an EIA model conceived from a rational perspective on decision making. However, there are good reasons to assume that most strategic decision making processes are characterised by a bounded rationality. Furthermore, the predictability of environmental consequences generally becomes weaker at strategic levels than at the project level and complexity increases in terms of the numbers of actors involved in the decision. This paper examines various theoretical perspectives to decision making and discusses the implications for decision support in general and SEA in particular. The authors argue that the design of the SEA must be more sensitive to the real characteristics of the decision making context.

Framework for analysing environmental policy integration

Environmental policy integration (EPI) has been broadly embraced as a principle in European policy making. Yet, what it means in practice is far from clear and its translation from rhetoric to action has been shown to be complex and politically difficult. This paper provides a conceptual clarification of EPI based on a review of current research. It then develops an analytical framework for analysing EPI from a policy networks perspective, with a set of variables based on existing theoretical and empirical research. In explaining EPI, the analytical framework focuses on policy-making rules and assessment processes as independent variables, but includes background factors such as problem characteristics and the international policy context. The framework is tested in a preliminary study of EPI in energy policy making in Sweden, and some elaborations to the framework are suggested based on the empirical findings.

Rationalising the Policy Mess? Ex Ante Policy Assessment and the Utilisation of Knowledge in the Policy Process

Procedures for the ex ante assessment of public policies are currently in vogue across the OECD. Their design is typically informed by a rational-instrumental model of problem solving, which assumes that knowledge is collected, evaluated, and then translated straightforwardly into ‘better policies’. But this model has been little affected by more than three decades of academic research which has demonstrated that the reality of everyday policy making is far messier. In this paper we analyse whether the uptake of ex ante assessment of policies is nonetheless capable of creating opportunities for policy deliberation and learning informed by new assessment knowledge. Drawing on an analysis of policy assessment procedures in three countries and the European Union, we find that there are several ways in which assessment knowledge is used in the policy process. Moreover, we argue that policy learning occurs despite, rather than because of, the instrumental design of new assessment procedures, which tends to act as a barrier to open deliberation and knowledge utilisation.

Learning, Frames, and Environmental Policy Integration: The Case of Swedish Energy Policy

Environmental policy integration (EPI) has been advanced as a guiding policy principle in Europe to ensure that environmental concerns are considered across all areas of policymaking. EPI can be treated analytically as a process of policy learning. The author analyses EPI and other types of learning in Swedish energy policy from the late 1980s up to today. A systematic tracing of agendas, arguments, and policy change indicates that learning processes and partial EPI have occurred. Changing actor configurations and increasing resource dependencies have facilitated learning and EPI, driven in turn by the European deregulation processes, global policy agendas, and the development of the Nordic electricity market. However, learning and EPI has been slow, indirect, and partial—constrained by how policymaking is organised in central government. Further measures are needed to advance EPI in national sector policy, including the development of policy-level strategic assessments and stronger sector accountabilities.

A FRAMEWORK FOR TOOL SELECTION AND USE IN INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Integrated assessment is rapidly developing in the scientific as well as policy community. Different methods, techniques and procedures (i.e., tools) are used in these assessments. Often, the choice for using certain tools in an assessment is not well founded. This paper presents a framework that scientifically underpins the role of, and thus choice for, tools within an integrated assessment. The framework identifies four phases in an integrated assessment, which are derived from the complementarities between various forms of integrated assessments. Tasks have to be done within each of the four phases. Seven types of tools with similar characteristics are matched to those tasks. The tool framework is a theoretical construct, developed whilst keeping in mind perceptions and suggestions from eventual users. It is a first step in the development of an overarching framework for finding appropriate tools for different tasks in an assessment, and justifying the use of those tools.

Why is integrating policy assessment so hard? A comparative analysis of the institutional capacities and constraints

Widely advocated as a means to make policy making more integrated, policy assessment remains weakly integrated in practice. But explanations for this shortfall, such as lack of staff training and resources, ignore more fundamental institutional factors. This paper identifies institutional capacities supporting and constraining attempts to make policy assessment more integrated. A comparative empirical analysis of functionally equivalent assessment systems in four European jurisdictions finds that there are wide-ranging institutional constraints upon integration. These include international policy commitments, the perception that assessment should support rather than determine policy, organisational traditions, and the sectorisation of policy making. This paper concludes by exploring the potential for altering these institutions to make policy assessment more integrated.

Fostering sustainable technologies: a framework for analysing the governance of innovation systems

The development and diffusion of technological innovations need governing in order to contribute to societal goals related to sustainability. Yet, there are few systematic studies mapping out what types of governance are deployed and how they influence the development and diffusion of sustainable technological innovations. This paper develops a framework for analysing the role of governance in innovation systems aimed towards sustainability. The framework is based on the literatures on governance, technological innovation systems and socio-technical transitions. We foresee empirical studies based on the framework that may serve as a needed input into governance processes. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

A Nexus Approach to the Post-2015 Agenda: Formulating Integrated Water, Energy, and Food SDGs

While the MDGs aimed to lift people out of poverty, the SDGs aim to keep them out of poverty by ensuring that development is both socially and environmentally sustainable. To achieve this, a “nexus” approach that integrates goals across sectors, makes the SDGs more cost-effective and efficient, reduces the risk that SDG actions will undermine one another, and ensures sustainable resource use is necessary. This paper aims to support the SDGs’ integration by showing how cross-sectoral interactions can be approached through examples from the water-energy-food nexus.