René Kemp

Regime shifts to sustainability through processes of niche formation: The approach of strategic niche management

The unsustainability of the present trajctories of technical change in sectors such as transport and agriculture is widely recognized. It is far from clear, however, how a transition to more sustainable modes of development may be achieved. Sustainable technologies that fulful important user requirements in terms of performance and price are most often not available on the market. Ideas of what might be more sustainable technologies exist, but the long development times, uncertainty about market demand and social gains, and the need for change at different levels in organization, technology, infastructure and the wider social and institutional context-provide a great barrier. This raises the question of how the potential of more sustainable technologies and modes of development may be exploited. In this article we describe how technical change is locked into dominant technological regimes, and present a perspective, called strategic niche management, on how to expedite a transition into a new regime. The perspective consists of the creation and/or management of nichesfor promising technologies.

More evolution than revolution: transition management in public policy

Transitions are transformation processes in which society changes in a fundamental way over a generation or more. Although the goals of a transition are ultimately chosen by society, governments can play a role in bringing about structural change in a stepwise manner. Their management involves sensitivity to existing dynamics and regular adjustment of goals to overcome the conflict between long‐term ambition and short‐term concerns. This article uses the example of a transition to a low emission energy supply in the Netherlands to argue that transition management provides a basis for coherence and consistency in public policy and can be the spur to sustainable development.

Reflexive Governance for Sustainable Development

This book deals with the issue of sustainable development in a novel and innovative way. It examines the governance implications of reflexive modernisation – the condition that societal development is endangered by its own side-effects. With conceptualising reflexive governance the book leads a way out of endless quarrels about the definition of sustainability and into a new mode of collective action.

EXPERIMENTING FOR SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT: THE APPROACH OF STRATEGIC NICHE MANAGEMENT.

Technological change is a central feature of modern societies and a powerful source for social change. There is an urgent task to direct these new technologies towards sustainability, but society lacks perspectives, instruments and policies to accomplish this. There is no blueprint for a sustainable future, and it is necessary to experiment with alternative paths that seem promising. Various new transport technologies promise to bring sustainability benefits. But as this book shows, important lessons are often overlooked because the experiments are not designed to challenge the basic assumptions about established patterns of transport choices. Learning how to organise the process of innovation implementation is essential if the maximum impact is to be achieved - it is here that strategic niche management offers new perspectives. The book uses a series of eight recent experiments with electric vehicles, carsharing schemes, bicycle pools and fleet management to illustrate the means by which technological change must be closely linked to social change if successful implementation is to take place. The basic divide between proponents of technological fixes and those in favour of behavioural change needs to be bridged, perhaps indicating a third way.

Technology and the transition to environmental sustainability: The problem of technological regime shifts

Abstract The present environmental problems call for more environmentally benign technology. This article examines the possibilities of achieving radical change in technology like a shift away from hydrocarbon-based energy technologies. We provide an explanation as to why such a change is likely to be a gradual and slow process. Radical technologies often have long development times and require for their operation special skills, infrastructure and all kinds of institutional changes (organizational changes, regulation, new ideas and values etc). Furthermore, the short-term costs are likely to be high as the new technologies have not yet benefited from dynamic scale and learning effects (that result in cost reductions per unit of output and evolutionary improvements in the technology). The article also provides some answers as to how it is possible for firms with restricted technological capabilities to bring about a shift into a new technological regime—emphasizing the importance of early market niches, available knowledge that may be used, institutional support, and the role of expectations. Finally, niche management is examined as a way of managing the transition towards a more environmentally sustainable energy system.

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).

Governance for sustainable development: moving from theory to practice

In this paper we examine and elaborate on the central elements of sustainable development and governance, considering their interrelations as they have emerged from the core themes in sustainable development discourses over the past decade and a half. We argue that sustainability is best viewed as a socially instituted process of adaptive change in which innovation is a necessary element. We discuss four key elements of governance for sustainability, which are integrated into the concept of transition management. The result is a conceptual framework for policy-making and action-taking aimed at progress towards sustainability.

Sustainable development: how to manage something that is subjective and never can be achieved?

Abstract This article examines the notion of sustainable development that has emerged as a new normative orientation of Western society. We argue that sustainable development is an inherently subjective concept and for this reason requires deliberative forms of governance and assessment. We outline the contours of sustainability science as a new form of science, complementing traditional science. Such science is to be used in service to reflexive modes of governance, for which we outline the general principles and offer a practical illustration, the transition-management model. The example shows that it is possible to work toward sustainable development as an elusive goal through provisional knowledge about our needs and systems to satisfy these needs. Heterogeneous local understandings and appreciations are not suppressed but drawn into the transition process in various ways such as participatory integrated assessment and social deliberation. The social interest in sustainable development is exploited without falling into the modernistic trap of rational decision making that disregards local cultures.

The greening of technological progress: An evolutionary perspective☆

Abstract This article provides insight into technology-economy-ecology linkages which may help to define and accomplish environmentally sustainable development. An evolutionary perspective is adopted in which economic growth and technological change are viewed as a complex, non-linear, path-dependent process, driven by short-term benefits instead of longer- term optimality. The article discusses the externality issues of technological change and the need for institutional adaptation, and talks about the relationship between economic growth and particular trajectories of technological change. It is stated that some of the present technological trajectories have reached their environmental limits and need to be replaced by environment-friendlier trajectories. However, such transitions are hindered by technical, economic and institutional barriers since the new trajectories have not yet benefited from ‘dynamic scale and learning effects’ and because the ‘selection environment’ is adapted to the old regime. The determinants of the decision processes to generate and adopt cleaner technologies are identified and analysed, and some policy issues of stimulating environment-friendlier technologies are discussed.

Technological transformations in history: how the computer regime grew out of existing computing regimes

Abstract In the article we describe how the digital computer regime grew out of existing computing regimes through a process of transformation. This transformation is conceptualised as a regime shift: a change in the rule set that underpins technical change, guiding innovative activity and output into particular directions. Examples of such rules are technical standards, product standards, user requirements, design rules and organisational rules of how to produce, what to produce. The paper describes how the new digital computer regime had to start from structures of the old regimes, and only later on developed its own distinctive elements. It describes how specific changes in the existing computing regimes, particularly the increasing division of labour, the growing schematisation of computing activities and the development of more sophisticated punch card machinery, contributed to the design and programming methods of the digital computer. How the old programming methods constrained the development of the new regime is also discussed. The article does not go into the actual processes of diffusion of digital computers into specific domains. It does however discuss the role of market demand dynamics for the evolution of digital technology, which too often is portrayed as a technology/science push phenomenon.