The Dual Challenge of Sustainability Transitions: Different Trajectories and Criteria

The notion of sustainability transition was introduced as a response to major socio-economic challenges including depletion of certain critical natural resources and global climate change. The idea is that systems of transportation, agriculture and energy have to be superseded by other systems. Such encompassing transitions have occurred in the past, such as the shift from sailing boats to steamships during the nineteenth century, the shift toward individual, motorized mobility from 1890 to 1960/1970 and the change from coal to natural gas for space heating after World War II. And thus, the argument goes, they are likely to happen again. Such systemic changes have been studied by evolutionary researchers, historians and other scholars in the fields of science, technology and society. Frameworks such as the multi-level perspective (MLP) and strategic niche management (SNM) highlight both the persistence of incumbent regimes, as well as their vulnerability. The guiding assumption is that it is possible – based on an understanding of the systemic and dynamic properties of existing and emerging systems – to guide or actively encourage a transition from the current to a new system (Rotmans et al., 2001; Rotmans and Loorbach, 2009). To do so will be a major challenge that goes well beyond the capability of governments and individual actors.