Sustainability: a long-term journey

1. Sustainability: a long-term journey René Kemp MERIT & DRIFT

2. On sustainability • Sustainability is about protection and creation • Requirements of sustainability are multiple and interconnected • Pursuit of sustainability hinges on integration • Core requirements and general rules must be accompanied by context-specific elaborations: • Diversity is necessary • Surprise is inevitable • Transparency and public engagement are key characteristics of decision making for sustainability • Explicit rules and processes are needed for decisions about trade-offs and compromises • The end is open

3. Key elements of SD strategy • policy integration • common objectives, criteria, trade-off rules and indicators • information and incentives for practical implementation • programmes for system innovation (with transition policies) (Kemp, Gibson and Parto, 2004)

4. Innovation is part of SD-- this is accepted by the European Commission • The Commission emphasises the role of policy at the EU scale, to generate major public and private investments in crucial sustainability-related areas – including the development and application of new, “environmentally-friendly” technologies – and more broadly to be catalyst for “institutional reform”, changes in corporate and consumer behaviour, and “innovative solutions” that create new, high-quality jobs (EC 2001b:2-3).

5. But innovation is different things Policy innovation Technological innovation New sociotechnical systems that are interrelated

6. SD is a non-ending process of adaptive change involving multiple transitions Policy should be concerned with “managing” transitions

7. A transition is the result of many changes and not a deterministic process (source: Butter et al., 2002)

8. Magnitude of societal change Time Transitions are multi-level processes Stabilisation Breakthrough Take off Predevelopment

9. The Dutch model of Transition management …. is a deliberate effort to work towards a transition in a stepwise, adaptive manner, utilising dynamics and visions … in which different visions and routes are explored: system innovation and optimisation

10. Societal goals Political margins for change Existing policy process: short-term goals (myopic) State of development of solutions Sustainability visions Transition management: oriented towards long-term sustainability goals and visions, iterative and reflexive (bifocal) Transition Management: bifocal instead of myopic

11. Mathematically transition management = current policies + long-term vision + vertical and horizontal coordination of policies + portfolio-management + process management. ... is bottom-up and top-down, using strategic experiments and control policies

12. Biomass 20-40% of primary energy supply ‘Vision’ ‘Strategic goals’ 10-15% in power prod. 15-20% in traffic 2020 A. Gasification B. Pyrolysis ‘Transition Paths’ Expv 2 à 3 % C. Biofuels Exp 2003 EOS EOS : experiments : R&D Exp 2050

13. No definitive choice is made as to technological means • Different routes are investigated • Decisions are made in an interative way • Support is temporary • Each option has to proof its worth • Technology choices are made at the decentralized level

14. What’s new about transition management? • The orientation to transition goals (less short-termism) • The orientation to learning and innovation (helps to overcome the preference for quick results, and policy reliance on technical fixes) • Alignment of different policy domains (helps to deal with fragmented policies) • Programmes for system innovation based on visions of sustainability • Less domination by vested interests: opening up of policy process

15. Incrementalism Goal-oriented modulation —of which transition management is an example Planning Key actors Private and public actors Private and public actors Bureaucrats and experts Steering philosophy Partisan mutual adaptation Modulation of developments to collectively chosen goals, government is facilitator & mediator Hierarchy Structuring form Polyarchy Heterarchy Hierarchy Role for anticipation Limited (no long-term goals) Dynamic anticipation of desired futures as basis for interaction Future is anticipated and implemented Type of learning First-order: learning about quick fixes for remedying immediate ills Second-order and first-order (rethink following problem structuring) First-order (instrumental)

16. Mechanism for coordination Markets and emergent institutionalisation Markets, network management, institutionalisation (both designed and emergent) Hierarchy (top-down) Degree of adaptivity Adaptive Highly adaptive thanks to especially created adaptive capacity Hardly adaptive Role for strategy and plans Limited role Important role for goals and strategic experiments for exploring social trajectories, as apart of adaptive programmes for system innovation. Plans with steps Interest mediation/ conflict resolution Individual gains for everyone Rewards for innovators, phase out of non-sustainable practices through markets and politics Little mediation (implementation and enforcement) Type of change that is sought Incremental, non-disruptive change System innovation and system improvement Predetermined outcome