Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace

This Handbook links together four social science research programmes—peace studies, security studies, development studies and environmental studies—which have had only limited exchanges on sustainable development, human security and sustainable peace. The Handbook connects these three concepts within the research paradigm of ‘sustainability transition’. This research paradigm focuses on a large-scale and long-term transformative change of the dominant carbon-intensive development path by addressing the causes of global environmental and climate change. There has been an exponential increase in GHG emissions since the 1950s and a rapid destruction of biodiversity and ecosystem services. These texts can be used in graduate seminars in different scientific disciplines and research programmes and in new transdisciplinary degree programmes. The texts foster longer-term proactive strategies and policies and specific measures to realize two policy goals, ‘sustainable development’ alongside and contributing to a ‘sustainable peace’, as the possible result of a large-scale transition of the systems of production, consumption, and governance. Among the key questions in this Handbook are a) whether business-as-usual policies and the growing number of climate-induced natural hazards that threaten the survival of millions of people pose threats to international peace and security; b) whether anticipative learning and a forward-looking discourse on long-term transformative changes may contribute to sustainable development and address new dangers to international peace and security in a preventive manner; and c) what lessons may be drawn from the violent consequences of the industrial revolution and used to promote a long-term transformative change towards sustainable development with sustainable peace. This chapter consists of eight parts. After a brief sketch of opposing scientific and political visions (1.1.), the purpose and objectives of the Handbook are highlighted (1.2.) and a survey (1.3) reviews the challenges posed by global environmental change: population growth, the impacts of climate change, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion and desertification, water scarcity and stress, food scarcity and hunger, and gender implications. It addresses the impacts of different economic development paths (1.4), through integrating the results of global research programmes, of their linkages and their assessment by the IPCC, and through the nexus debates between the fields of water, food and energy security (1.5). The three key concepts of sustainable development, sustainability transition and sustainable peace are introduced (1.6), the evolution of different approaches to sustainability transition is reviewed, the debates on ecosystem restoration, green growth and decarbonization are noted, and six dimensions of the research on ‘sustainability transition’ are outlined (1.7). The last section introduces the ten parts of this Handbook and offers an overview of its 40 peer-reviewed contributions (1.8).

Human activities have changed many of the key parameters of the Holocene geological epoch of the recent past so much that we now live in the Anthropocene. New perspectives in earth system science suggest that sustainable development and plans for transitions to a sustainable peace now have to consider the possibilities of rapid phase shifts in the biosphere. Constraining human activities to within a safe operating space defined by key ecological boundaries in the earth system is key to sustainability but planning has to recognize that rapid shifts may be coming. The implications of this suggest that sustainability planning has to think beyond notions of national security and recognize that human actions are shaping the future configuration of the planet and hence changing the geopolitical context. Adopting a perspective of geopolitical ecology with a focus on global economic production rather than only on traditional ideas of environmental protection is key to the future if planetary stewardship of the Anthropocene is to be successful.

The diffusion of both paradigms of sustainable environmental practice and sustainable peace practice has quickened in the last thirty to forty years, but has occurred unevenly across time and space, across regions, and even within individual countries and subregions of countries. Some disciplines have been more hospitable to one or the other. In large part, until recently, environmental studies has not found peace issues relevant, nor peace studies environmental issues. The beginning of the coming together of these paradigms and their practice is a significant change. This chapter examines the evolution of the separate paradigms of sustainable environment and sustainable peace, and their gradual but as yet incomplete engagement with each other. It also examines texts at the level of global governance, particularly at the United Nations, with respect to the same issues, asking how and why UN and other documents and conceptualizations in the 1970s have increasingly begun to reflect the linkages between these issues.

As a background to later contributions, this chapter provides a concise introduction to different approaches to (i) understanding and (ii) shaping transition dynamics: (1) A sociotechnical approach, with the multilevel perspective as its main concept, and strategic niche management as its governance concept; (2) A complex (adaptive) system-based approach, using the concept of transition patterns, with transition management as its governance concept; (3) A governance approach, where the politics of transition dynamics are examined, with reflexive design as the core of its approach to shaping transition. In addition, work based on the social theory of practice has helped to bring consumption practices into transition theory, and an approach focusing on innovation system has helped to explain how different arrangements may become interconnected so as to produce a transition.

Sustainability Transitions require a knowledge production that contributes actively to the Grand Challenges of twenty-first-century societies. Scientific institutions play a key role in this domain in the transformation towards sustainability and peace. Against this background a Transformative Science is needed: a mode of science that not only analyses processes of transformation, but also actively supports and accelerates them. This chapter will introduce the concept of Transformative Science and its implications for (1) the methodologies of transdisciplinary and transformative research, (2) institutional capacity-building for facilitating such a research approach, and (3) the national science systems and national science policies that enable this new mode of knowledge production. The case of the German science system is introduced to describe an ongoing science system transition with special regard to the role of civil society organizations.

The purpose of The Psychological Components of a Sustainable Peace, a book edited by Peter Coleman and Morton Deutsch (Coleman and Deutsch 2012), is to enhance understanding of sustainable peace by supplementing the standard approach of studying the prevention of destructive conflict, violence, war and injustice with the equally important investigation of the promotion of the basic conditions and processes conducive to lasting peace. For in addition to addressing the pervasive realities of oppression, violence and war, peace requires us to understand and envision what alternatives we wish to construct. Recognizing the ultimate need for multidisciplinary frameworks to best comprehend and foster sustainable peace, we hoped to elicit what contemporary psychology might have to contribute to such a framework. This chapter provides a brief historical and conceptual context for the many fine scholarly chapters that follow in The Psychological Components of a Sustainable Peace (Coleman and Deutsch 2012).

This concluding chapter has four sections. First, it highlights the basic commonalities in the discussion of the construct of a “harmonious sustainable peace”. Second, it offers a summary of the main components of sustainable peace. Third, it presents a sketch of a more parsimonious model of sustainable peace informed by dynamical systems theory and dynamic minimalism. Finally, it outlines an agenda for future study and education in this area.

This chapter examines the evolution of the peace concept from its understanding as a negative concept towards a positive, structural, sustainable, and engendered peace. The concept of a ‘sustainable-engendered peace’ refers to the structural factors related to long-term violence, deeply embedded in the patriarchal system and characterized by authoritarianism, exclusion, discrimination, exploitation and violence. This dominant social structure affects values such as equity, equality and justice, and often even threatens the survival of individuals and social groups. Further, this dominant system has also concentrated the wealth of earth within a small group of oligarchs who manage multinational enterprises. The sources of threats have been consolidated over thousands of years by patriarchal institutions, religious controls, self-identified beliefs and social representations, and totalitarian exercise of power, and have also affected natural resources. Faced with these global threats, the chapter explores the potential of the concept of a sustainable-engendered peace, and attempts to reach an understanding of the deeply anchored links to patriarchy and its war system that are related to the physical, social and cultural threats of the dominant values and behaviour in the Anthropocene. The text also explores the potential for a concept of holistic and cosmopolitan peace that can challenge the root causes of violence and destruction, and it discusses the goal of just and equal power structures for human beings and nature.

This chapter attempts to conceptualize possible and plausible linkages between the emerging ‘sustainability transition’ research paradigm and the conceptual debate on a rethinking of peace, security, development and the environment or ecology, within the context of four research programmes carried out since the end of the Cold War. Within the framework of a shift in earth history from the Holocene to the Anthropocene during the past sixty years, the threat to the survival of humankind has fundamentally changed. No longer are ‘others’ the threat, but ‘we’ are, due to the exponential increase in the burning of hydrocarbons and the resulting accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This new anthropogenic threat can no longer be countered with traditional military strategies and means. In the twenty-first century, there needs to be a long-term transformative change towards a low-carbon economy, in production and consumption, and in the energy, transportation, agricultural and housing sectors. Only thus can dangerous climate change and chaotic tipping points in the climate system be avoided. Such a low-carbon economy should be the result of a transition to sustainability, necessitating not just sociotechnical changes but changes in perception, values, behaviour and lifestyles. Such a longterm transformative change to sustainability may possibly prevent two types of conflicts: climate-induced violent conflicts, and those driven by resource scarcity. On the conceptual level, this chapter suggests possible linkages that may be developed in the Anthropocene between sustainable development, human security and sustainable peace in the context of both a political geoecology—between the natural and social sciences—and a peace ecology—between peace, security, development and environmental studies. Its key message is the need for more conceptual, theoretical and empirical research into possible linkages between peace studies and ecology that takes into account the changed human and environmental conditions in the framework of the Anthropocene. The added value is to sensitize research on ‘sustainability transition’ so that it reflects on the impact of its realization on sustainable peace and human security.

Current population dynamics vary markedly among countries. In 2010, 46 per cent of the world population lived in countries with below-replacement fertility, whose populations are experiencing rapid population ageing and will likely decrease in the future. In sharp contrast, 19 per cent of the world population lived in countries with such high fertility that their combined populations are likely to double by 2050 and to keep growing over the rest of the century. The remaining 35 per cent lived in countries where fertility levels had declined considerably since their peak but where the potential for continued population growth over the medium term remains high. Owing to both population momentum and the long-standing differences in population dynamics between those groups of countries, these diverse population trends are expected to continue over the medium term, thus maintaining today’s population imbalances and producing a high potential for marked population growth over the course of this century, especially in some of the world’s poorest countries. Reducing those population imbalances by the end of the century and achieving the stabilization of the world’s population requires that the high-fertility countries accelerate the reduction of fertility so that it reaches below-replacement level before 2100.

As evidenced by the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, our understanding of the Earth System and the climate change impacts expected in the coming decades is developing at a rapid pace. Contributing to this progress, the first ever Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison (ISI-MIP) has helped to paint a clearer picture of potential impacts at different levels of global mean warming. However, along with such advances the limitations of our understanding become more apparent. A number of processes are scarcely or not at all reflected in current assessments of the risks associated with significant levels of warming. These include critical thresholds in the Earth system which, once breached, can give rise to non-linear impacts. Recent insights from West Antarctica indicate that we have already ‘tipped’ several large glacier systems there, suggesting that the risk of crossing such thresholds might be much greater than previously thought. Also excluded from a sectoral perspective are the intricate interdependencies between systems and the potential for an initial impact to cascade into a chain of impacts, or for impacts to occur simultaneously and interact in complex ways. Finally, we need to take into account the different degrees of vulnerability not only across but also within nation states. The ramifications of non-linear impacts and their uneven distribution are likely to be deleterious to the stability and wellbeing of our societies and will, we hope, never be realized. However, if we wish to understand the challenges associated with a 4°C world2, such a world needs to be imagined.

The role of climate change as a potential cause of violent conflict has been debated in the scholarly and policy communities for several years. We review the most recent quantitative and qualitative literature and find that research on the issue has produced little consensual findings so far. Further, we discuss major theoretical, conceptual and empirical issues and describe possible pathways linking climate change to violent conflict. To illustrate these issues, we analyse the climate-conflict nexus in different world regions and present three qualitative case studies in north-western Kenya, the Nile Basin, and Israel/Palestine. We find that possible reasons for the lack of scientific consensus may be the difficulties of existing approaches to adequately capture the complex links between climate change, vulnerability, and violent conflict.

In an increasingly interconnected climate of complexity, the stabilization of human–environment interactions is a major challenge in international relations and demands the integration of complexity science with global governance. This chapter highlights several cases of complex crises where cascading events affect international stability. Climate change is considered as a risk multiplier which disturbs the balance between natural and social systems and amplifies the consequences through complex impact chains that affect the functioning of critical infrastructures and supply networks; intensify the nexus of water, energy and food; lead to production losses, price increases and financial crises in other regions through global markets; undermine human security, social living conditions and political stability; and trigger or aggravate migration movements and conflict situations. An integrative framework of human–environment interaction is used to analyse destabilizing developments, tipping elements and cascading risks, as well as concepts of resilience, viability and sustainable peace. Whether climate stress fuels a cycle of violence or climate policy drives a transition towards a cycle of cooperation and sustainable peace depends on the human and societal responses. Strategies for viability transformations and adaptive governance range from climate mitigation and adaptation and the building of social networks to new capabilities of disaster management, crisis prevention and conflict resolution. Several examples are presented showing how transition and transformation processes can be analysed with an agent-based model framework.

By the end of the 1980s, very different meanings of ‘global change’ existed, promoted by different constituencies in the social and natural sciences (Price 1989). One could be described as anthropocentric, emphasizing the interactions between people and their institutions, primarily at scales extending to decades. This chapter presents and discusses the emergence of initiatives for research on the human dimensions of global change until the 1996 launch of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). In 1987, the International Social Science Council (ISSC) joined with IFIAS and UNU to develop a Human Response to Global Change Programme. In 1990, ISSC launched the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme (HDP), based on the “Framework for Research on HDGEC” (Jacobson/Price 1990), identifying seven broad areas in which research should be done. The first half of the 1990s were also characterized by the emergence and development of various national and regional (e.g., European) initiatives for research on HDGEC. In the subsequent two decades, as described elsewhere in this book, substantial advances have been made; many of them emerged from the initiatives described in this chapter.

IHDP’s performance between 1996 and 2014 can be described as a process of maturation of social science research vis-a-vis the challenges of climate and global environmental change. It is characterized by a number of independent research projects and an increasing embeddedness into joint programme developments with the natural sciences. Incorporation of IHDP into the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) and its full integration into the Future Earth initiative bear witness to these facts. The emergence of the concept of the Anthropocene, the discussions around a ‘geology of mankind’, and the increasingly undisputed conclusions of IPCC reports about the role of human footprints in shaping our planet by stimulating global warming and exerting deep impacts on the atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere—all three observations, assumptions and related theories have greatly influenced the steadily increasing importance of the social sciences in research into global change. In 2014, IHDP joined IGBP and DIVERSITAS in merging under the umbrella of Future Earth.

This chapter summarizes the content of and the debate around The Limits to Growth and its updates, from 1972 until 2012. It presents the background and political context to the original 1972 study, and follows the debate in and around the four books on whether a ‘fair and free market’ can provide sufficient benefits for us all. The methodology of systems dynamics is briefly introduced. The analyses are presented in some detail, as are the reactions from both academia and political and economic interests following the books’ publication. The two main research questions are why the debate around Limits to Growth became so polarized, and what we have learned about the original scenarios over the last four decades. The chapter therefore includes a synthesis of research on how the original World3 Standard run has compared to subsequent reality. Randers’ forecast for the next forty years constitutes the fitting end point for this analysis.

The International Resource Panel (IRP) was established as an expert scientific panel by UNEP in 2007. By using a material flow analysis perspective, the primary focus of the IRP is on global resource use and potential alternatives. The notion of a ‘third great transformation’ was deployed to suggest that the work of the IRP is documenting the endgame of the industrial socio-metabolic regime. Three clusters of reports were addressed: (a) global resource perspectives, with special reference to decoupling rates of economic growth from rates of resource use by focusing on the importance of resource productivity; (b) nexus themes, including cities, food, trade, and GHG mitigation technologies; and (c) specific resource challenges with respect to two clusters of issues, namely metals and ecosystem services. The conclusion reached is that a resource-use perspective adds to our understanding of the unsustainability of the current global system, complementing the outputs of climate science on the effects of anthropogenic carbon emissions and ecosystem science on the implications of biodiversity degradation. To this extent, the work of the IRP anticipates the possibility of a more resource efficient socio-metabolic order. However, the IRP has to date not addressed specifically the dynamics and modalities of transition from an institutional and macro-economic perspective.

Sustainable development, sustainability and sustainability transition are associated with the growing complexity of sociopolitical systems and ecological systems, and of their interactions. These concepts are becoming even more intricate since in academic considerations and in policy-making the concept of complexity is not precisely defined. The term complexity usually relates to a special class of non-linear mathematical models which are relevant to phenomena described with characteristics measurable in the ratio scale which occur in nature and in social systems. It is also used as analogy and metaphor. The aim of this chapter is to identify and to assess the applications of the concepts deriving from complexity studies in the discourse on sustainability and sustainable development and on related terms—transition to sustainability and management of transition to sustainability. The main hypothesis of the chapter is that a sophisticated language dealing with complexity and applied in the narratives on sustainability and related ideas requires a profounder clarification so as to provide new insights concerning description, explanation of causal links, prediction, normative approach and influence upon societal phenomena.

Since its emergence as a theory of sustainability transformation, transitions theory has started to gain currency with both policymakers and researchers. As transitions approaches become established in research and policy, a process of institutionalization can be witnessed. Yet notwithstanding this mainstreaming, transitions theory continues to be controversial. Questions have been raised about its theorization of agency and transformation dynamics, and especially about the normative assumptions underlying its intervention strategies. Arguably, these recurring questions call for ‘critical approaches’ to transitions theory. This contribution explores these, guided by a constructive attitude. The argument starts from the consideration that transitions theory harboursdistinctly ‘critical’ elements, and that polemical juxtapositions between critical and uncritical transitions approaches are unnecessary: What are the critical contents of transitions theory? How can the critical contentsof transitions theory be retained and developed further? These questions are answered through a historical comparison with the critical-theoretical project as initiated by Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno, amongst others.As with transitions studies, this project was meant to diagnose the social problems of its time, and to articulate corresponding remedial strategies. It ran into various internal contradictions, however, and these provide useful insights for the further development of critical transitions. The main conclusion is that transitions theory is well equipped to deal with these critical-theoretical paradoxes, but also displays tendencies towards relapsing into the pitfalls.

This chapter aims to improve our analytical understanding of low carbon transitions at and in between multiple geographical scales, particularly ‘below’ a national level. Taking the Multilevel Perspective (MLP) as our starting point we show that it offers tools for thinking through the institutional and technological conditions and rules through which regimes reproduce or change over time. But it is not very well equipped to study transitional dynamics as they unfold in space. This chapter sets out a range of levels on a spatial scale and activities that are relevant to transition activity but with which the MLP so far engages only partially. The chapter explicitly identifies very different, yet coexisting, scales of transition activity which aim at low carbon transitions in the UK. It demonstrates the possibilities of attributing particular transition activities with different spaces and levels on a geographical scale and highlights the dynamics between these scaled activities. It does this to open up debate about the ‘appropriate’ mechanisms for dialogue ‘between’ governance levels and differently scaled transition activities.

Transition studies are undertaken in a variety of contexts and at various levels of society. Virtually all of them entertain the hope and in some cases the expectation of being used to address challenges to the sustainability transition. The relationship between research and effective action poses a challenge that transition studies must address. As part of an effort to study the different contexts in which sustainability transition studies have developed, the author will discuss a 1999 report by the US National Research Council (NRC) entitled Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability (NRC 1999). The study began in 1996 during the Clinton/Gore administration. Sustainable development and environment were high on the list of priorities again. The time seemed ripe for looking at ways in which science could better support US policy efforts to transition to sustainability. It was the best of times. Shortly after publication (December 1999) a contested election was held and the political climate changed radically. Then there were the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was the worst of times. The author will look at this study and related efforts to address the sustainability transition challenge in the fifteen years since publication.

The election of the Conservative Party to power in Canada in 2006 brought with it a vision of the world that was much more competitive than previous Liberal or much earlier conservative visions. Key to all this, and the focus of this chapter, is an attempt to reinvent Canada as a player in a world of competitive geopolitics rather than as a good citizen in a shared biosphere. Foreign and domestic policy have been shaped by this new view, leading to the abrogation of the Kyoto protocol and, given the identification of Canada as an energy superpower and oil exporter, substantial attacks by the government on environmental science and regulatory processes, apparently because these might obstruct resource company projects. What is being sustained in this process is a vision of Canada antithetical to what in most parts of the world would be considered sustainable. The lessons to be learnt for sustainable transitions are many, most notably the importance of thinking carefully about conventional politics and the dangers of narrowly-cast nationalist and populist attacks on environmental policies and sustainability initiatives.

This chapter analyses the creation of the Climate Change Law in Mexico as a governance regime where horizontal and vertical interplay became key elements. The legislative deliberations oriented towards creating the Climate Change Law, mainly between 2005 and 2012, are understood as a preliminary and as take-off phases of a pathway to a sustainable transition. The principal elements of Mexican climate policy are discussed. Three competing alternatives for climate legislation in 2012 are identified, as are the reasons for opting for a specific climate regime. The chapter argues that even though the Mexican climate regime represents a very ambitious model in its design, and although a preliminary and take-off phase can be identified, problems of fit with other policy objectives, especially the features of the energy sector, limit the possibilities for a sustainable transition in Mexico.

This chapter addresses the complex web of activities and actors necessary to achieve the much vaunted yet elusive transition to sustainability. The chapter reviews diverse contributions which have in common a concern for the role that language and institutional arrangements play in related developments. These, it is argued, have a capacity that has not been fully realized to improve our understanding of the problems involved, the issues at stake and implications for policy and practice. The chapter presents a framework which is employed to provide orientation for a discussion of these contributions which may otherwise be considered in an isolated manner or with limitations on cross-disciplinary conversation. At the heart of the discussion are sustainability transitions, neo-institutional theory, and critical discourse analysis. The chapter draws on neo-institutional theory and critical discourse analysis to highlight the role of different types of factors and actors implicated in (un)sustainable patterns of production and consumption and the (in)effective governance of environmental sustainabilityrelated science, technology and other phenomena. It considers the potential insights to be gained from application of a discourse-institutional perspective and progress that has been made with the development of such an approach.2

Different sources indicate signals that our current economic ideas no longer function. New ways of organizing are emerging in which sustainability is often central. This chapter presents the results of exploratory research initiated by Radboud University Nijmegen on new business models (NBMs). The research demonstrates that NBMs appear to be ‘hot’ and ‘happening’. But what is a business model and in what sense is it sustainable? This study focuses on business models that create so-called ‘multiple value(s)’, which refers to a way of organizing that not only focuses on the task of organization itself, but also on organization between organizations—or better: organizing entities. This approach to organizing generates social and ecological value, in addition to economic value. For the purpose of this research, a series of interviews were conducted in order to gain insight into the phenomenon of NBMs. The aim was to combine this fresh empirical evidence with theoretical underpinnings from previous scholarship in order to explore the field, discover the nature of NBMs, their features, and how they function in (micro-)practice. Ultimately, this examination revealed the phenomenon of an altered balance between the simultaneous organization of different values such as nature, care, attention, and money. While many roads lead to interesting discoveries with respect to these aspects, and the research is still at an early stage, the first results from the study indicate some initial clear common denominators emerging from this journey. These preliminary findings suggest that early NBMs can be generally categorized into different streams based on the practice of sharing, trading, and creating. Most significantly, the results indicate that the ability to connect holds increasing social and economic value, and that these connections create all sorts of new consortia and constituent configurations.

This chapter elaborates on sustainable consumption and provides key arguments from the sustainable consumption literature. It introduces ‘environmental space’ as one of the early concepts which embedded sustainable consumption within natural and social boundaries. It explains why a floor as well as a ceiling for the environmental space has to be considered and reflects on the space itself, its size and how to share it. Various possible paths of transition to reach the environmental space from a position of overconsumption as well as from underconsumption are described and linked to various schools of thought in sustainability research. Specific emphasis is given to a more detailed analysis of the two concepts of ‘green growth’ and ‘de-growth’. Relating these concepts to sustainable consumption research and politics, the chapter distinguishes between strong and weak sustainable consumption and outlines some enabling mechanisms for sustainable consumption.

The rising problem of severe resource scarcity, environmental pollution and ecological degradation has become a great constraint on economic development in China. Sustainable consumption and production (SCP), as a primary way to decouple economic development from environmental degradation, has been undertaken via various energy-saving and environmental protection policies in China. The main practices for SCP in China, including the adjustment of the industry structure, the promotion of a circular economy and cleaner production, the Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction Project, green procurement, and progress in waste management are discussed. Though China has made some achievements in SCP, it is still facing serious challenges. The extensive economic growth model, strengthened by local governments with the incentive of the expectation of promotion and financial reward, aggravates the problems of resources and the environment. The imbalanced development in China, including uneven development among regions, imbalanced expenditure structure between consumption and investment, and the rising inequality in income resulting in imbalanced consumption with insufficient consumption accompanied by overconsumption, is challenging the coordination of development and protection. The weak capacity for scientific and technological innovation and the underdevelopment of non-governmental organizations in China leave the government as the main player in SCP, and this is inefficient for the development of SCP. It is suggested that SCP should be put forward as a development strategy and be conducted more systematically using existing policies in China so as to promote SCP more efficiently. China’s further reform is expected to lift the institutional barriers to SCP and promote economic transformation, balanced development and social equity. In addition, the long-term capacity for SCP calls for the improvement of independent technical innovation in enterprises and extensive social participation.

The eco-restructuring of the Ruhr area presents a remarkable case of a managed transition, bringing out the importance of regional actors and factors, alongside external stimuli. The evidence in support of the authors’ hypothesis of a managed transition in the Ruhr district is: (i) the vision of blue skies above the Ruhr, (ii) the reconstruction of the Emscher river system, (iii) the emerging energy transition. The ongoing transition of the Ruhr district requires further analysis which the authors plan to undertake. The chapter provides a first attempt at offering an evidence-based narrative of a region as a real-world laboratory for ecological modernization.

Africa and Asia are two of the world’s least urbanized regions. But they are fast urbanizing; eighty per cent of the world’s projected urban growth to 2050 is expected to take place in Africa and Asia. Even though cities in Africa and Asia are increasingly recognized as engines of growth, they are sites of extremely high population densities, congestion, informal housing and concomitant expansion of slums and squatter settlements, infrastructure shortages and environmental degradation. As rapid urbanization continues, how Africa and Asia manage the urban transition will not just affect urban economic efficiency but will also define their greenhouse gas footprint. This chapter compares the urbanization of both regions and discusses the challenges and opportunities for transition towards sustainable urbanization (The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.).

University-driven partnerships and experiments for advancing urban sustainability are flourishing around the world. Responding to drivers such as calls for stakeholder engagement in research, tangible social and economic contributions, and government funding incentives, Asian research universities are also forming cross-sector partnerships and implementing various sociotechnical experiments. In this chapter we examine the role of university partnerships in knowledge co-production and implementation of urban sustainability experiments in industrialized Asian nations. By examining fifteen cases from Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, we highlight common attributes (focus areas, actors, motivations and mechanisms) and then investigate the functions, motivations, barriers and significance of roles assumed by differing societal sectors. A detailed case study of an ambitious project from the University of Tokyo then follows to further illustrate these attributes in context. Key findings are that, overall, university partnerships for urban sustainability in our Asian sample are dominated by technical approaches. Yet the most significant barriers are human aspects such as time restraints, lack of unity, and poor management and leadership, to name several. On key drivers, government funding is playing a major role in enticing partnership formation and influencing particular approaches to urban sustainability. Measures are required to encourage the participation of the social sciences and humanities, and non-technical sustainability experiments. Case study evidence suggests that the ability of partnerships to tackle complex social issues and trigger societal transitions towards sustainability is often constrained by existing research projects and the institutional capacities of universities and their partners.

If present trends continue, it is unlikely that increasingly overused ecosystems subject to deterioration and depletion will be able to meet global water, food and energy needs. Current academic thinking is that scarcity, pollution, mismanagement and misallocation of natural resources will impact every sector on which humankind depends for survival. In a globalized economy with increasingly free movement of commodities and financial and human capital, a poor understanding of the most pressing issues and their interconnectedness and interdependences will cause irreparable damage to the Earth and its billions of people: a clear case of fait accompli. This is a challenging context for global development, and to understand and manage the interdependencies between the various sectors and their global impact will require comprehensive planning and policy implementation, institutional resilience, partnerships across economic sectors, and innovation in development in order to sustainably manage resources in the wake of population growth and climate change.

This chapter examines a transition process in a river basin in the central part of Mexico that is highly affected by climate change, social deterioration and the drugs war. The Yautepec River Basin is particularly prone to climate impacts because of its abrupt slopes, numerous affluents, and high population density in its floodplain, which is frequently exposed to hurricane impacts. Taking into account laissez-faire policies, illegality, government corruption, and public insecurity in a region with high levels of dual vulnerability (environmental and social), as well as subject to hazard impacts, the chapter reviews the constraints of the process of transition towards sustainability, especially when the goals of the people and of the government are not identical. People organized themselves regionally in order to simultaneously increase public security and freedom from hazard impacts, which both directly affect life and livelihood. Using original survey data, the study examines the risks perceived by the people and the ways in which they reduce these risks of extreme events, as well as how they cooperate with the authorities to improve environmental conditions, to enhance disaster risk reduction activities and to reduce the impact of criminal acts. The transition process requires the integration of numerous social, economic, political, environmental, judicial, cultural and mental factors in order to develop processes and resilience from the bottom up to deal with this complex emergency, as well as to force the different levels of government to enhance all four aspects of the human security of the people: ‘freedom from fear’, ‘freedom from want’ ‘freedom from hazard impacts’, and ‘freedom to live in dignity’.

Identifying sustainability transition in the health sector involves analysis of the dynamic and the forces influencing political, sociotechnical and cultural features. The aim of this study is to identify transition in health in a Brazil facing globalization, demographic, migration, environmental and climate change effects and inequities. Brazil has improved its capacity to formulate, implement, monitor and evaluate multi-sectoral and universal public policies in the last twenty years, with the implementation of universal health care and conditional cash transfers. These policies have resulted in the improvement of the health indicators of extreme poverty and hunger, underfive mortality, maternal health, infectious diseases, and primary education coverage. Since the frequency of extreme weather events has been increasing globally and in Brazil, and cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death, the consequences for health systems must be considered. Mortality due to traffic accidents has also increased, despite policy efforts and restrictive laws, overwhelming health services and public financial resources.

A sustainability transition requires innovations, investment and learning to support transformation processes in different fields, including new technologies, products and infrastructures, as well as new social rules, norms and interactions. Greening the economy rests on the rapid and effective dissemination of climate-friendly technologies, and in particular of renewable and efficient energy systems. Substantial financial support and smart governance are required in this process in order to develop the economic, sociopolitical and technological capacities of all countries. Within this progression, the international diffusion of know-how, technologies and investments requires enabling environments to build up local production capacities and demand for low-carbon goods. Further, business, governmental and non-governmental actors rely on social learning to establish cooperation at multiple levels in order to adapt technologies to local contexts within national and global frameworks and to support the transformation towards low-carbon societies. Various mechanisms are analysed and discussed.

As the world comes to grips with the need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a range of questions are being asked about how to effectively transition economies to low carbon operation over the coming decades. A growing number of pressures are now being felt across a range of sectors to reduce emissions, in particular carbon-related fuel consumption, which is leading to autonomous emissions reduction efforts—typically ad hoc and business-led. However, in order to meet ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions now set by the world’s largest economies a structural adjustment approach may be needed that is effectively underpinned and appropriately expedited at an economy-wide level. This chapter presents an introduction to key lessons from structural adjustment programmes to inform the low carbon transition, and in the absence of conditional lending requirements that have driven structural adjustment programmes the chapter considers how the willingness to adjust structures of the economy to deliver low carbon outcomes can be increased.

This chapter examines the drivers and barriers to innovation in the wind energy sectors in Brazil, India and South Africa. We analyse actors and institutions that have played a role in the development and diffusion of wind energy technologies in these countries from a technological innovation systems (TIS) perspective. We introduce innovation capabilities, the enabling environment and policy-independent strategies as the main drivers for the development of the TIS. This analysis will contribute to improving our understanding of drivers of and barriers to innovation relevant to successful transitions towards cleaner technologies and less carbon-intensive economies. We found that some countries are more successful in developing wind energy technologies because of three factors: stronger technological capability, prime movers, and big market size, and this relates to the enabling environment and policy incentives. We found that in India and Brazil, entrepreneurial activities independent of public policy were critical for the development of the local wind energy industry. In South Africa, policy-independent entrepreneurial activity was scarce and operated in an unfavourable environment which hampered the development of a local wind energy industry.

After decades of cheap, abundant coal-fired electricity, from which large international mining and energy conglomerates and wealthy households have benefitted disproportionately, South Africa is experiencing a supplyside crisis. In 2011, the country’s first integrated resource plan for electricity (IRP) was promulgated following a prolonged and contested consultation process throughout 2010. This plan anticipates that renewable energy will constitute twenty per cent of installed generation capacity by 2030, which will deliver approximately nine per cent of supply. Coal will retain the greatest share alongside a potential yet currently uncertain nuclear fleet. The objectives of this chapter are twofold: to examine electricity governance in South Africa and the highly politicized policy-making process in relation to IRP in which vested interests have played a major role; and to consider the extent to which the IRP has facilitated a low carbon transition. The chapter finds that despite the creation of a successful renewable energy ‘niche’, the coal-fired ‘regime’ is also being reinforced and the electricity mix under analysis is fuelling an unsustainable trajectory of production and consumption. The chapter also considers definitions of sustainability and concepts of a ‘just’ transition.

Achieving sustainability is a complex issue because of the lack of a precise definition of the term. Very recently, science has acknowledged that the human species has become the main driver of transformations in bio-geophysical systems, and has identified boundaries to be respected if a systemic planetary disruption is to be avoided. A low carbon green economy—a development model in which environmental concerns are at the same level as economic and social concerns—is a good paradigm for guiding policy-making that aims at respecting these boundaries; and it includes the objective of the decarbonization of energy systems in order to mitigate climate change, the most studied and best understood of the boundaries. Having these parameters in mind, this chapter shows how Brazilian policies and politics of energy evolved in the period between 2003 and 2014. It identifies an upward and later downward trend in the production of energy from low carbon sources, and a stable trend in energy efficiency. It concludes that, despite the higher proportion of low carbon energy sources in the Brazilian energy matrix compared with other countries, Brazil has not yet embraced the low carbon green economy or the decarbonization paradigms: in spite of significant forces promoting both these, important political and cultural features are preventing them from being adopted.

The chapter explains the creation and resistance to change of Thailand’s centralized and fossil-fuel intensive electricity regime through a Sustainability Transition and Multilevel Perspective lens, with an emphasis on the sector’s political economy. The incumbent electricity industry has evolved from a state-owned monopoly to a partially-privatized industry structure dominated by the state utility and several large independent power producers. The analysis demonstrates how important global landscape shifts articulate with the sector’s domestic political economy, including a shifting global development paradigm from developmentalist state to liberal market principles, as well as the impact of waves of global economic crisis. The chapter highlights the role played by civil society coalitions in unsettling the incumbent electricity regime since the late 1970s, despite significant power asymmetries, through opposing problematic projects, advocating for progressive policy, and proposing alternative plans, values and visions for Thailand’s electricity sector. Important but small steps towards sustainability transition are identified, including greater energy conservation and distributed renewable energy generation, the creation of an independent regulator, and a small increase in public participation and accountability in the power planning process. The chapter argues that civil society has been—and will continue to be—important in shaping the incumbent electricity regime and often acts as a catalyst for transition towards sustainability.

Governance is the way in which a society organizes decision-making. Advanced societies turn into knowledge democracies where the relationships between politics, media and science intensify and change continuously. The concept of knowledge democracy embraces participatory democracy besides representative democracy, the rise of social media besides corporate media, the emergence of transdisciplinary trajectories besides classical disciplinary science with complex interactions that also change. The quest for sustainable development takes place within knowledge democracies, where sustainability covers economic, social and ecological issues, whose governance is complex. The future direction and content of sustainable development depend on uncertain future determinants such as technological innovation and the evolution of social values. The precautionary principle as a powerful moral imperative has its limitations. The multidimensional nature of sustainability requires integration and a recognition of a multilevel, multiscale, multidisciplinary character. Development refers to change, transitions and transformations. Governance of sustainable development has to cope with complex dynamics. Governance that furthers transitions focuses on the interaction between representative and participatory democracy, and the optimalization of the contribution of science. This chapter addresses the specific consequences for science, in particular the organization of science, relating both to disciplinary research and transdisciplinarity.

For a number of years now, ‘transitions’ has been the new buzzword in international policy-making. The emergence of an international transitions discourse is linked to debates on the green economy and a low carbon society, and is manifested within the UN system as well as in EU discussions. Does the apparent political appeal of a concept that introduces fundamental changes mean more than the superficial use of the word ‘transition’? And how far is it also translated into policy? This chapter analyses international policy initiatives from the perspective of sustainability transitions, with the aim of moving towards a better understanding of the potential role of international policy-making in current and future transitions. A case study of the European Commission’s policy initiatives on resource efficiency demonstrates a remarkably strong awareness of transitions thinking, consistently integrated into the discourse with the intention of creating a sense of urgency and convincing other actors of the need for fundamental change. Furthermore, transitions thinking has served as the inspiration for a number of principles, goals and instruments, such as the European Resource Efficiency Platform.

This chapter presents the key messages of this Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace found in the previous texts by the sixty authors, arranged into ten parts. They focus on I) moving towards sustainability transition; II) aiming for sustainable peace; III) meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century: demographic imbalances, temperature rise and the climate–conflict nexus; IV) initiating research on global environmental change, the limits to growth, and the decoupling of growth and resource needs; V) developing theoretical approaches to sustainability and transitions; VI) analysing national debates about sustainability in North America; VII) preparing transitions towards a sustainable economy and society, production and consumption and urbanization; VIII) examining sustainability transitions in the water, food and health sectors from Latin American and European perspectives; IX) preparing sustainability transitions in the energy sector; and X) relying on international, regional and national governance for strategies and policies leading towards sustainability transition. This chapter proposes moving from disciplinary perspectives towards a transdisciplinary and anticipatory transformative approach. It points to research deficits and maps future research needs on ‘sustainability transition’, on ‘sustainable peace’, and on the linkages between both discourses, so that we can move from knowledge to action, and towards governance strategies, policies and measures aiming at Sustainability Transition with Sustainable Peace. Four examples are used to briefly illustrate this transformative scientific approach towards proactive policies. The first examines the sustainable energy transition achievable by moving from fossil fuels to enhancing energy efficiency and to renewables; this would grant access to energy for up to twelve billion people by 2100, while GHG emissions would be reduced. The second proposes a shift from resource- and carbon-intensive agriculture and a high degree of waste in the food sector to climate-smart agriculture with less waste. The third and fourth examples address proposed changes to different lifestyles in industrialized countries, and a shift in values as suggested, for example, by the Kingdom of Bhutan (Gross Happiness Index) and by indigenous people in Bolivia (Pachamama) and Chiapas. These alternatives may not be globally acceptable but they indicate that new viable pathways are needed that will lead towards a sustainable and peaceful world, and enable us to move beyond a continuation of the unsustainable Western way of life based on abundance and waste in consumption and production.