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Summary Lectures Sustainability Transitions: Concepts, Issues and Indicators (ENP23806)
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SummaryIntroduction course:
1987: sustainable development leading concept in environmental debates
Uses of sustainability:
Engineers: use the concept in technology design and assessment
Policy makers: use the concept to design and evaluate policy instruments and future scenarios
Scientists: use the concept in modelling, i.e. assessing carrying capacity of ecosystems
Economists: use it in cost-benefit analyses and modelling exercises
Sustainable development: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
- Decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation
- Applies to all domains in society
- Adopted by environmentalists as well as multination corporations, because of its multi-
interpretability
- Too many interpretations of sustainable development so it can be embraced by many
Transitions: the whole of transformation processes in which (sectors of) societies change in a
fundamental way over a time span of one generation or more
- Useful frame to discuss historical, societal and technological change towards sustainability
How does society transform into a sustainable society? How to initiate and manage a transition from
the current stage to a more sustainable stage?
- Focussing on
o Water systems and energy systems
o Covering both production and consumption domains
- From historical, social and technological perspectives
,Three perspectives:
- Historical perspective: major transitions in the past
o Sewer building after the Great Stink in London, end 19th century
- Technological perspective: innovation in water and energy systems
o Plant-e: living plants generate electricity
- Social perspective: policy for societal change and transitions
o Room for the river
Exploring ‘sustainable development’
Origins sustainability concept
- Club of Rome ‘limits to growth’ report 1972:
o ‘current trends are not sustainable and will lead to serious problems’
o Emphasizing environmental and natural resource aspects
- Scarcity of petrol in 1973 in NL
- UN Convention 1972 in Stockholm
o First time mentioning of link between environmental degradation and poverty
- 1970’s: Developmental literature
o Stressing inequalities between North and South
o ‘third world countries’
- 1980 IUCN World Conservation Strategy
o First time use of ‘sustainable development’ in the context over conservation
o Emphasizing carrying capacity of natural resources
▪ Carrying capacity: How much an ecosystem can carry before it collapses
- 1987: World commission on environmental development (WCED)
o Brundtland’s world commission on environmental development: ‘our common
future’ & 1992 UNCED Conference in Rio:
▪ Sustainable development: balancing, environmental, economic, societal
sustainability
▪ Decoupling economic growth and environmental degradation
▪ Including the ‘needs of future generations’
▪ Sustainable development as the base concept for the Rio Declaration and
Agenda 21
• Rio declaration: The Earth Summit (1992)
• Agenda 21: not only having world leaders to negotiate about
environmental goals, but to bring environmental issues to local level
(municipalities, NGO’s, citizen groups)
Social, environmental, economic development or people planet profit
Economic development:
- Growth
- Profit
- Market expansion
- Internalize costs
Ecological development:
- Resource conservation
- Sustainable yield
- Carrying yield
- Biodiversity
,Social development:
- Self-reliance
- Participation
- Basic needs
- Social accountability
- equity
Core ideas within sustainable development:
- Environment – economy integration
o relative weights? Are underdeveloped countries allowed to grow first?
- Futurity: explicit concern about future generations
o What sacrifices to make today to address the needs of non-existing people?
- Environmental protection
o Efficient use of resources or recognizing intrinsic value of non-human nature?
- Two dimensions of ‘equity’:
o Meeting basic needs of the poor of the present or between generations
▪ Meeting today’s needs intervenes with needs of future?
- Quality of life: more than economic growth alone
o If not purely economic, how to measure it?
- Participation:
o New institutions needed to allow all voices to be heard
o Consultation of experts, market actors, governments or of all citizens, and how to
organize? Public-private participation?
Policy principles for sustainable development:
- Policy integration:
o Horizontal (integration of policy themes):
▪ Agriculture
▪ Energy
▪ Spatial planning
▪ Water management
o Vertical policy integration:
▪ From local to global
Policy principles for SD:
- Equity
o Equitable distribution of costs and benefits among groups in society
- Intergenerational solidarity
o Solidarity with, or taking into account the interests of future generations (who have
no voice yet)
- Internalization
o Of social and environmental costs in production and consumption
- Participatory policy making
o Involving stakeholders in policy making:
▪ Functional and normative arguments
Academic criticism around sustainability:
- Vagueness of the concept
o Everyone can make an own definition
o But this also counts for freedom, liberty, equality, etc
o Sustainability development may have same function while being essentially
contested
, - Environmental bias
o Ecosystem = essential precondition
o Environmental NGOs strongest proponents
- North-South bias
o ‘again another Western concept trying to capture global inequalities. It reaffirms
power structures that underlie the issues for which it claims to be the cure.’
- Implementation gap
o A lot of lip service paid by all at global conferences, but implementation always
lagging behind and targets are not met
UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030: 17 goals for sustainable development
Sustainable development of large technical systems: water and energy
- Large Technical Systems (LTS):
o Range of interconnected technological artefacts as well as social actors managing,
using and regulating these systems
- Examples:
o Infrastructures: energy system, transport system, sanitation system, water supply,
telecom
- Features: material components + social components + collective character
o Linking everyone to everything
Energy systems: shift from linear (power plant – households) to ‘smart’
Transition: changing LTS involves multiple actors, concerns multiple levels of society and it takes a
long time
- Long-term, multi-level changes
Example question:
One of the policy-relevant principles of Sustainable Development is policy integration in both
horizontal and vertical ways
a) What is meant by horizontal policy integration? Give an example
b) What is meant by vertical policy integration? Give example
c) Explain why sustainable development requires both horizontal and vertical policy integration
Limits to Growth? The concept of sustainability from an historical perspective
Why does history matter?
- We better understand the present when knowing about the past (contextualizing ourselves)
- We better understand current developments when placing these in a long-term historical
perspective
- History is full of insightful cases of transitions (but: history does not repeat itself)
- Historical myths have to be debunked. History is often misused
History of relationship between human race and its environment:
- How did human race and environment interact before the industrial revolution (pre-modern
societies)?
- How did human race overcome environmental constraints?
- What were the long-term effects?
Pre-modern societies:
- nothing ‘new under the sun’
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