Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions最新文献

The deliberate destabilisation of regimes has gained attention in sustainability transitions scholarship regarding the urgency of transitions. However, there has been little focus on justice in deliberate destabilisation literature. Without attention to justice, destabilisation policies can cause unforeseen negative social, economic, or environmental impacts. Justice has mainly been explored in terms of compensating losses for regime actors, local communities, and industry workers, which may overlook broader justice concerns. We propose a framework for just destabilisation that acknowledges not only the distribution of gains and losses, but also the recognitional and procedural justice concerns inherent in destabilisation. Our analysis of the destabilisation of peat in the energy and agricultural sectors in Finland suggests four main implications for research, paying attention to the spatial nestedness of deliberate destabilisation; diversifying the understanding of incumbency; moving beyond compensations; and finally, attending to existing structural injustices to account for restorative justice in deliberate destabilisation.

Aviation and maritime shipping are hard-to-abate transport sectors that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. They jointly account for nearly 10 % of global greenhouse gas emissions, while infrastructure and investments are locked into high-carbon pathways for decades. Fuels and technologies to decarbonize include advanced biofuels, electrofuels, hydrogen and electric propulsion. This research aims to analyse the decarbonization strategies for maritime shipping and aviation from a comparative perspective, and analyzing the role of different actors for disruption to break through carbon lock-in and path dependency. The research uses Sweden as a case study and applies qualitative methods, including expert interviews, focus group discussions and site visits. Our research finds that aviation and maritime shipping are slowly changing, albeit with different dynamics. Both sectors show that incumbent regime actors play a major role in shaping transition pathways and disrupting the (quasi)equilibrium, while niche innovation is often developed together by incumbents and niche players.

Sustainability transitions inherently involve system change, which needs to be initiated and accepted by a wide variety of actors. How actors perceive the system or transition of interest can shape key decisions in a transition process. Still, little transition research has combined this system perspective with the actor's perspective. At this intersection lies the concept of mental models, which are actors' system perceptions, consisting of beliefs about the causal interrelations between system components. Mapping mental models of actors in sustainability transitions may (1) increase our understanding of the system that needs to transform, (2) reveal obstacles or opportunities for change, and (3) demonstrate similarities and differences in system perceptions between actors. We present three types of transition mental models and illustrate these with examples. We conclude with avenues for future mental model research and discuss how insights from mental models can inform strategies to develop or steer transitions.

Alternative Food Networks gain increasing importance in sustainability transitions of food production, retail, and consumption. This paper explores the role of AFN consumers as critical food sustainability change agents, with a special focus on low-income consumers. It challenges preconceived notions that associate sustainable living exclusively with affluent communities, highlighting the substantial influence of economically disadvantaged individuals in shaping sustainable food consumption patterns. Based on a survey of the Portuguese Fruta Feia cooperative, the paper examines how perceived income affects sustainable food values, decisions, and practices. Results highlight low-income consumers' significant, yet often overlooked, role in driving changes towards environmentally responsible food systems and practices. This research shifts the focus of sustainability change agency, underscoring the critical role of diverse, particularly financially disadvantaged, consumer groups in championing sustainability in the food sector. It also confirms the importance of AFNs and their members as critical transition stakeholders.

Intermediaries are recognized as influential actors in advancing local bottom-up experimentation and strengthening its impact on urban sustainability transitions. Recent studies have articulated intermediation by listing diverse roles and activities that intermediaries perform and by presenting theory-based typologies of different intermediaries. However, such listings and typologies fail to capture how intermediaries engage, often informally and multi-directionally, in local experimentation. To improve the conceptual clarity of intermediation in this context, we propose a framework of four intermediation modes: brokering, configuring, structural negotiating, and facilitating and capacitating. We employ these modes in two qualitative, ethnography and interview-based studies of intermediation in urban redevelopment and energy transition contexts. The studies demonstrate that intermediation requires simultaneous engagement in multiple modes owing to the intermediaries’ different competencies, remits, and resources. Therefore, the modes are highly relevant for understanding what it takes to effectively intermediate and for preparing support mechanisms for intermediation in different experimentation domains.

Few sectors in the global economy need deep decarbonization as much as heavy industry, which is currently the largest and fastest growing source of global carbon emissions. Based on an original dataset of 111 expert interviews and 52 site visits, this paper asks: what sociotechnical pathways, capabilities, and regional innovation systems are emerging to support industrial decarbonization? It combines and applies insights from evolutionary economic geography and transitions studies, such as sociotechnical capabilities and learning, as well as spatial frameworks such as challenge-oriented regional innovation systems (CoRIS) and green industrial restructuring. It utilizes these collective concepts of pathways, capabilities and CoRIS to explore the organizational and technological, individual, and systems level dimensions of industrial decarbonization efforts ongoing across Great Britain. We find that within industrial net-zero clusters, spatial and technological proximities are being effectively leveraged, especially through new forms of networking, collaboration, and partnerships. CoRIS provides the basis for greater reflection on perennial transitions issues, both within and across clusters, related to incumbency and innovation, in addition to spotlighting emergent issues such as light versus deep green restructuring and incremental versus transformative change. In simpler terms, industrial decarbonization unfolds as a multi-scalar process. Industrial decarbonization exhibits both incremental and transformative patterns of change. Industrial decarbonization lastly involves dynamic processes that coevolve across a spectrum of sociotechnical attributes.

Sustainability Transition Research (STR) has increasingly recognised the importance of capitalism and the capitalist state in constraining and accelerating the adoption of low-carbon innovations, but has engaged far less with the distinctive forms of national capitalisms. This article highlights the relevant insights of comparative political economy (CPE) that provide a fuller comprehension of the capitalist diversity shaping contemporary sustainability transitions. Specifically, it calls for greater attention to be awarded to the idiosyncratic supply and demand dynamics relating to national growth models, interest coalitions and institutional coordination, and historically-constituted political tendencies of governance. Through these insights, it is argued, the complexities of instigating industrial decarbonisation though the effective application of low-carbon technologies and the geographic asymmetries of transition can be better understood. The importance of these insights is outlined theoretically and demonstrated empirically through an examination of the varying strategic and institutional dynamics characterising sustainability transitions in the contemporary global economy.

Despite recent studies which emphasize the importance of human-nature connections (HNCs) in sustainability transitions, the literature on the geography of sustainability transitions focuses mainly on urban areas and transnational aspects, ignoring the role of HNCs. In this paper, we study HNCs in rural areas through a case study of the French mountains. Based on 31 interviews with local actors, the results show that individuals’ proximity to nature in the French mountains enables them to reconnect with nature and that this generates knowledge and leads to strong HNCs. The results also call for investigation of the roles that tourism and revised local governance could play in fostering sustainability transitions. Overall, this paper demonstrates the need for studies on the geography of sustainability transitions to consider HNCs and rural areas.

While recent research has advanced our conceptual understanding of social tipping points, empirical studies are called for to support and advance the theories. Here, we present a conceptual method to identify whether a tipping point exists and its possible location, in terms of peer effects on green technology adoption. This conceptualization is tested using Shanghai's adoption of electric vehicles. By analyzing self-reported individual levels of threshold in 1,111 valid completes through an online survey, we estimate that the perceived social tipping point in Shanghai falls between 31 and 40 % of peers adopting EVs. Beyond this level, a self-sustaining uptake can be anticipated. Mediation analysis reveals that peer learning and conformity to social norms underpin such peer effects. We discuss the relative importance of peer effects in triggering a broader transition, and find that other factors, such as technology, infrastructure, and policies, are critical for creating an enabling environment to induce positive cascades.

Multi-system interactions are receiving increasing attention within transition research. However, understanding the consequences of increasing couplings between adjacent systems for transitions requires further research. In response, this paper applies the concept of institutional work to understand the role of actors creating institutional couplings for the reconfiguration of multiple systems. We further elaborate on enabling conditions for institutional work from a sector-sensitive perspective. In-depth interviews with energy and automobile sector experts and participant observation at industry association events show that cross-sectoral networks and advocacy are important mechanisms for creating regulative couplings. However, particularly actors in the automotive industry are able to advance into the electricity market due to increasing access to political institutions and enhanced intellectual and physical-material resources. Thus, we show how within-system incumbents leverage their resources and engage in cross-sectoral institutional work in order to gain knowledge and integrate new technologies.