Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions最新文献

Current food transition studies predominantly examine the role of food actors in challenging dominant food regimes. However, there is a notable gap in understanding changes within the spaces where individuals interact with the food system—the food environment. In this paper, we seek to support the development of a new research agenda that engages assemblage thinking with the practicalities of transformation processes. Based on a critical review of existing literature, our assemblage-based approach embraces the chaotic, non-linear nature of transitions, steering away from narrow, rigid theories of change. An emphasis on the under-utilised concept of "lines of flight" is particularly useful to unveil the diverse, relational and dynamic nature of food environments, identifying opportunities for challenging, reimagining and, ultimately, transforming them.

While literature on transition intermediation is burgeoning, the implications of a sensitivity to “place” in transition intermediation remain ill understood. In this paper, we empirically explore the dynamics of “place-based transition intermediation”, through a case study of the ‘Dune farmers’ in the Netherlands. The farmers initiated a collaboration that serves as a bottom-up, non-state intermediary organization. The case shows the opportunities and intricacies of transition governance through place-based intermediation. We articulate six functions of intermediaries used in such place-sensitive transition governance: (1) Empowerment through cultivating local identity; (2) Constructing place-based relational capital; (3) Developing regional innovative capacity in a place-based innovation system; (4) Stimulating place-based learning; (5) Concretizing transition governance; and (6) Representing place-based networks. We conclude that place-based intermediation deserves attention, both in research and policy, to improve transition governance and help accelerate place-sensitive transition processes towards sustainable futures.

This study focuses on citizen participation as a co-productive and knowledge-intensive process in innovation policies concerned with regionally anchoring grand challenges. We apply a process-tracing approach and analyse citizen participation in two regional challenge-based innovation policies in the Ruhr, Germany. Local sensemaking, problem ownership, iterations and knowledge co-production are discussed as key mechanisms in the anchoring process. The results reveal the importance of a collective dimension in interpreting the local problem setting of a challenge achieved by reaching out to numerous citizens and how local, corrective and actionable knowledge facilitate the regional challenge anchoring. The policy formulation phase required the highest level of knowledge co-produced with citizens, followed by the implementation phase.

Micro-missions represent small-scale, place-based strategies for societal innovation, distinct from grand missions that target national-level transformations. They offer potential for collaborative engagement among local stakeholders in the public sector, businesses, and civil society that aims to address local needs and promote wider innovation, particularly for social and ecological progress. Despite the potential for place-based micro-missions to provide a more focused approach to tackling societal challenges, the practicalities of delivering such a strategy remain uncertain. Through an exploration of a Welsh (UK) public food micro-mission, we identify the evolving tensions and conflicts and their impact on such micro-missions and their outcomes. Our findings underscore the potential significance of tensions throughout the micro-mission process. They highlight the crucial role of regional actors in generating creative responses to tensions through proactive governance, distributed leadership, and place-based experimentation.

Fixed-bottom offshore wind is exploited as a maturing technology in many European countries. Floating wind has impressive potential for deep waters but needs technological and market development. How these two partially related technologies interact remains unclear. We address the ambiguity of these interactions to investigate floating offshore wind's development. The interactions are divided into technological or market and can be negative (competition and resistance) or positive (collaboration and diversification). We analyze these interaction types through a case study of offshore wind in Norway. Many positive interactions were observed, including knowledge overlaps and infrastructure compatibilities. Negative interactions include competition about future space constraints at ports, labor availability, and resistance by incumbent wind turbine manufacturers. Further, market and technological interactions are mutually influential, creating important feedback loops. Technologies can no longer be simply categorized as ‘niche’ or ‘regime’, but rather ‘niche-like’ (emerging) and ‘regime-like’ (maturing); hence, both emerging-emerging and emerging-maturing interactions occur.

This paper links the literature on energy poverty and energy vulnerability with the experimental focus of current energy transition initiatives and argues for the need to expand household experimentation beyond technology adoption. Drawing on an analysis of low-income households’ energy using practices we develop a framework consisting of three key dynamics, 1) predictability – flexibility, 2) sufficiency – efficiency and 3) activation – exploitation. The dynamics prompt a discussion on how conventional demand-side tools, such as pricing schemes and technology implementation programs, can be adapted to better suit the needs of vulnerable households. Additionally, they showcase the possibility of experimenting with new and innovative ways to bring about more radical change, e.g. sufficiency experiments and revitalising “forgotten” practices. We argue that the framework can serve as an empirically grounded basis for designing deeper and more socially just and needs-oriented household energy experiments needed for sustainability transitions to become successful.

The objective of this paper is to build an integrative framework that aims to explain the specific functions of systemic intermediaries in connecting actors/ network of actors to institutions. Relying on both Sustainable Transitions Theory (STS) and New Institutional Economics (NIE), we argue that systemic intermediaries could govern this process by playing the role of meso-institutions. Empirically, we explore two illustrative experiences of sustainable transitions in Brazil, specifying the roles played by the systemic intermediaries in the process: mobility - the process of reducing emissions, and improvement of quality in raw cow milk production systems. These cases illustrate that socio-technical change would be fostered (or hindered) when three key-roles typically performed by meso-institutions are played - translation, monitoring, and enforcement. Our work has also practical implications to public policies - by considering intermediaries acting as meso-institutions as a fundamental part of the processes of change, regulations can reach the micro-institutional level of firm implementation.

Sustainability transitions and innovation policy research has studied barriers and drivers of structural change at different spatial scales, but lacks attention to how scale is discursively invoked by actors to (il)legitimate such change. We address this gap by studying how scale is framed by actors in the issue field of a Norwegian seafood mission. Based on an analysis of ‘scale frames’ in consultation submissions to the mission's proposed implementation, the case highlights that environmental problems do not fit the jurisdictional boundaries of policy and thus induce negotiation over the geography of missions. We show that scale constitutes a crucial discursive strategy used by actors to secure their interests in the mission discourse and that attempts to depoliticize this discussion through science-based policy remain contested due to the constructed nature of scale. Future research can benefit from constructivist conceptualizations of scale and enrich our understanding of geography with institutional and power perspectives.

We engage a community of ca. 200 voluntary Swiss households in using a smartphone app that provides energy consumption feedback and offers peer-to-peer interaction possibilities to share experiences on household routine change. Surveys prior to and three months after app use, in-app usage analytics, and analysis of in-app posts indicate that most households preferred individual-level consumption feedback: app-mediated peer interaction was only performed by a small household subsample, precluding community-level social learning. Most self-reported daily energy routines changed after app use, though effect size was generally small, apart from thermostat settings. Also, we found most app users were already well-informed on energy topics and engaged in energy savings at home. Future research could explore how to better reach alternative audiences for app-based interventions, and improve the effectiveness of social interactions to collectively experiment with new sustainable practices, therefore giving less prominence to individual-level app features.

Excessive animal protein consumption has led to calls for a plant-based protein transition. Plant-based diets can be fostered by design interventions, yet their effect on dietary choices depends on the framing that is chosen. The aim of this study was to understand which transition design frames (TD frames) are prevalent in existing consumer interventions in the Netherlands, to help transcend the dominant substitution pathway with alternative strategies for intervention. We explore framing through the lens of design, examining human-made interventions in a transition context, to complement the discursive lens that is common in transitions literature. Based on 62 existing consumer interventions and eight expert interviews, we identified eight TD frames. We find that market regulation and cultural interventions are strategic avenues to pursue. Reframing opportunities involve inclusivity, system breakdown and integrating multiple frames into single interventions. We observed that a design lens helped elucidate frame types that have not previously been identified in transitions literature.