Abstract
Deep transformations towards sustainable, healthy and just agri-food systems are needed in order to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. The field of transition studies offers tools and guidance for both understanding and governing long-term processes of structural systemic change. Yet achieving a fundamental transformation in complex agri-food systems is challenging and requires rethinking governance efforts in order to confront fundamental inequalities and re-direct vested power relations that stabilize status-quo configurations.
This paper contributes to the debate on how transition governance efforts could be democratized in order to facilitate just transitions in agri-food systems. Our main contributions are a further clarification of how democratization of transition governance might pave the way for enacting just transitions in agri-food systems, and an elaboration on several key challenges democratization brings along in institutionalizing transition governance efforts.
We first elaborate on a multidimensional understanding of justice. Just transitions comprise the four interrelated dimensions of (1) distributive justice; (2) procedural justice; (3) recognition justice; and (4) restorative justice. While democratization of transition governance is most strongly related to issues of procedural justice, we contend that democratizing the governance of agri-food transition is inherently grounded and related to other (outcome-oriented) justice dimensions. In our analysis we explicate this take, by arguing that democratizing the governance of agri-food transitions requires three paradigm shifts. These entail the move (1) from expert toward pluralist understandings of knowledge; (2) from economic materialism toward post-growth strategies; and (3) from anthropocentrism toward reconnecting human-nature relationships. For each of these strategies, we illustrate their implications for transition governance with different dimensions of justice in agri-food systems.
Finally, we argue that this brings along six different challenges, or balancing acts, in institutionalizing transition governance. These refer to (1) balancing (trade-offs between) multiple dimensions of justice; (2) combining democratization efforts with urgencies implied by transition ambitions; (3) moving beyond the bottom-up and top-down dichotomy in setting governance directionalities; (4) navigating the translocal scales involved in bringing about just transitions, in particular between local interventions and global dynamics of injustice; (5) finding creative ways to combine realist and idealist interpretations of just transition governance; and finally, (6) rethinking the role of scientists and scientific systems in how they can best contribute to just transitions. Balancing these tensions for a deepened understanding of democracy in agri-food transitions requires thoroughly rethinking transition studies’ normative and democratic ambitions.
This paper contributes to the debate on how transition governance efforts could be democratized in order to facilitate just transitions in agri-food systems. Our main contributions are a further clarification of how democratization of transition governance might pave the way for enacting just transitions in agri-food systems, and an elaboration on several key challenges democratization brings along in institutionalizing transition governance efforts.
We first elaborate on a multidimensional understanding of justice. Just transitions comprise the four interrelated dimensions of (1) distributive justice; (2) procedural justice; (3) recognition justice; and (4) restorative justice. While democratization of transition governance is most strongly related to issues of procedural justice, we contend that democratizing the governance of agri-food transition is inherently grounded and related to other (outcome-oriented) justice dimensions. In our analysis we explicate this take, by arguing that democratizing the governance of agri-food transitions requires three paradigm shifts. These entail the move (1) from expert toward pluralist understandings of knowledge; (2) from economic materialism toward post-growth strategies; and (3) from anthropocentrism toward reconnecting human-nature relationships. For each of these strategies, we illustrate their implications for transition governance with different dimensions of justice in agri-food systems.
Finally, we argue that this brings along six different challenges, or balancing acts, in institutionalizing transition governance. These refer to (1) balancing (trade-offs between) multiple dimensions of justice; (2) combining democratization efforts with urgencies implied by transition ambitions; (3) moving beyond the bottom-up and top-down dichotomy in setting governance directionalities; (4) navigating the translocal scales involved in bringing about just transitions, in particular between local interventions and global dynamics of injustice; (5) finding creative ways to combine realist and idealist interpretations of just transition governance; and finally, (6) rethinking the role of scientists and scientific systems in how they can best contribute to just transitions. Balancing these tensions for a deepened understanding of democracy in agri-food transitions requires thoroughly rethinking transition studies’ normative and democratic ambitions.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - Oct 2022 |
Event | 2022 Toronto Conference on Earth System Governance: Governing accelerated transitions: justice, creativity, and power in a transforming world - Toronto, Canada Duration: 20 Oct 2022 → 24 Oct 2022 |
Conference
Conference | 2022 Toronto Conference on Earth System Governance |
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Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Toronto |
Period | 20/10/22 → 24/10/22 |