Large-scale system transitions take time and are full of political battles and small
steps. The actors that steer or influence a transition are, at the same time, part of it.
Their freedom is a structured one, framed by the existing path dependencies. Here
we find the basis for the concept ‘radical incremental transformations’: no deep and
wide changes will happen without pre-development and build-up leading to frictions and crises that provide the space for them.
2.1.2 Socio-ecological Systems and Their Safe Operating
Spaces
From an ecosystem perspective, the main question for the SES camp could be
summarized thus: how can we best understand sustainable human societies and
apply system innovations to achieve them? Important institutional research in this
field is carried out at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Stockholm, Sweden, and
also the STEPS Centre in Brighton, United Kingdom.
One report that made significant waves in Germany was the WBGU’s 2011
World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability. The WBGU was founded
just before the 1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development with the
mandate of providing independent scientific advice. A key idea promoted by the
WBGU in an earlier report was that of “planetary guard rails” similar to the
“Planetary Boundaries” introduced by Rockström et al. (2009). While acknowledging other environmental domains and their overuse, the main emphasis of both
the WBGU guard rails and the 2011 transition or transformation report (the German
title uses ‘Transformation’ but the English translation is ‘transition’) lies on climate
change (WBGU 2011a).
Overall, the single most important issue and overarching goal of the different
measures and strategies discussed, is the avoidance of catastrophic climate change
with all its implications for “the world’s ecosystems and their ability to sustain
human life.” Given the wide-reaching consequences of the carbon cycle for life on
earth, a transformation toward “climate compliance” is declared an “ethical
imperative” similar to that of the abolition of slavery and child labor (WBGU
2011c: 1).
Climate change is introduced as the most important environmental global
challenge and the report discusses other global megatrends in order to understand
interlinkages: economic development; democratization; global energy supply and
demand; urbanization; and patterns of increasing competition for land use between
food, bio-energy and forests. It also seeks to identify how these and ecological earth
system trends interrelate. As a result, the three areas with the highest transformative
impact are identified. These are the sustainable design of future energy systems,
urbanization trends, and land use patterns. The programmatic gist of these required
transformations is to turn current carbon-based economies into ones based on
renewable, or at least recyclable resources. The magnitude of this remodeling is
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research
29
steps. The actors that steer or influence a transition are, at the same time, part of it.
Their freedom is a structured one, framed by the existing path dependencies. Here
we find the basis for the concept ‘radical incremental transformations’: no deep and
wide changes will happen without pre-development and build-up leading to frictions and crises that provide the space for them.
2.1.2 Socio-ecological Systems and Their Safe Operating
Spaces
From an ecosystem perspective, the main question for the SES camp could be
summarized thus: how can we best understand sustainable human societies and
apply system innovations to achieve them? Important institutional research in this
field is carried out at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Stockholm, Sweden, and
also the STEPS Centre in Brighton, United Kingdom.
One report that made significant waves in Germany was the WBGU’s 2011
World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability. The WBGU was founded
just before the 1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development with the
mandate of providing independent scientific advice. A key idea promoted by the
WBGU in an earlier report was that of “planetary guard rails” similar to the
“Planetary Boundaries” introduced by Rockström et al. (2009). While acknowledging other environmental domains and their overuse, the main emphasis of both
the WBGU guard rails and the 2011 transition or transformation report (the German
title uses ‘Transformation’ but the English translation is ‘transition’) lies on climate
change (WBGU 2011a).
Overall, the single most important issue and overarching goal of the different
measures and strategies discussed, is the avoidance of catastrophic climate change
with all its implications for “the world’s ecosystems and their ability to sustain
human life.” Given the wide-reaching consequences of the carbon cycle for life on
earth, a transformation toward “climate compliance” is declared an “ethical
imperative” similar to that of the abolition of slavery and child labor (WBGU
2011c: 1).
Climate change is introduced as the most important environmental global
challenge and the report discusses other global megatrends in order to understand
interlinkages: economic development; democratization; global energy supply and
demand; urbanization; and patterns of increasing competition for land use between
food, bio-energy and forests. It also seeks to identify how these and ecological earth
system trends interrelate. As a result, the three areas with the highest transformative
impact are identified. These are the sustainable design of future energy systems,
urbanization trends, and land use patterns. The programmatic gist of these required
transformations is to turn current carbon-based economies into ones based on
renewable, or at least recyclable resources. The magnitude of this remodeling is
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research
29