First European Conference on Sustainability Transitions
"Dynamics & Governance of Transitions to Sustainability"
The 1st European Conference on Sustainability Transitions will bring together a rapidly growing community of researchers and practitioners interested in broad societal transitions towards sustainability. The common goal is to inform strategies for the governance of sustainability through a better understanding of the dynamics of transitions.
Understanding transitions
Transitions involve the transformation of the socio-technical configuration of whole sectors (such as materials or chemicals) or of patterns of production and consumption in areas such as housing and mobility. Recent research has aimed to better understand the ways in which transitions unfold and the process dynamics which can lead to them succeeding or failing.
Innovative transition experiments
Particularly in the Netherlands there has also been a great interest in recent years in the potential for governing transitions to sustainability and a number of innovative transition experiments have been facilitated by the Dutch government. This work has been supported by a major research programme on the opportunities and barriers to system innovations in the context of addressing climate change and sustainability. There have been similar developments in other European countries and a number of research programmes have been initiated.
Comparing different European contexts
As the findings of the first national-level research initiatives start to emerge and as research initiatives on transitions get underway in a number of other European countries, the time is right for a conference that begins the process of exchanging and comparing the new knowledge that is being rapidly gained in this emerging science of sustainability. Transitions to sustainability may turn out to be very strongly context specific - dependent on the socio-technical configuration of sectors and need areas, on national policy contexts and cultural aspects as well as specific political contexts. It is therefore of great interest to explore the current state of knowledge about the varied governance challenges that transitions to sustainability imply in different European contexts.
A venue for practitioners and policy-makers
The conference will also provide a venue for practitioners and policy makers who are either already involved in, or are interested in, initiating transition steering experiments in their own regions or countries.