Mapping Sustainability Transitions. Networks of Innovators, Techno-economic competences and Political Discourses

With this book we have set ourselves an ambitious target: to provide the readers with a simple graphical tool – the socio-technical map – that may help them understand how the environmental sustainability of human activities may be reached. In other terms, we have tried to make simple a very complex process. To reach this goal we founded our work on the recently emerged research field of sustainability transitions (SusTrans). The starting point of the SusTran approach is that most of human needs are fulfilled by systems which have proved to be environmentally unsustainable, and it is precisely for this reason that these systems should be radically changed. In other words: system innovation is at the heart of SusTrans.
Systems that fulfill human need feature two relevant characteristics which should be seriously taken into consideration when aiming at the ambitious goals of curbing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing all other environmental impacts of human activities. First characteristic: these systems are embedded in the very structure of our society. Behind each good and service we produce and consume every day one can find several interconnected elements: individuals and organizations, values and ideologies, technologies and infrastructures, markets and industries, rules and norms, and so forth. Thus the functioning of these systems simultaneously involves the cultural, institutional, technological and economic dimensions of human life: any attempt at reductionism – for example to the technological or economic dimension of such systems – is not correct. Second characteristic: these systems are continuously changing. Their dynamics is generated by a process of structured action: systems are changed by human agents, but their action is in turn conditioned by the very structure of systems. Moreover – and maybe more important here – the outcome of such a process is uncertain: no change is known ex-ante, but it emerges as the (sometimes unintended) result of human action. This is why any attempt to describe system innovation as the result of a choice between given alternatives is not correct. If we keep in mind these two characteristics, we realize that an effective approach to environmental sustainability must be: 1) systemic, that is, able to consider all dimensions of innovation, not only technologies or markets, but also behavior, rules, discourses, policies, etc.; 2) dynamic, that is, able to understand how new systems emerge through the alignment of innovations as they are generated.
In order to meet these two requirements, the SusTran approach mostly refers to the socio-technical (ST) analysis of innovations. Here any societal function is fulfilled by one or more ST systems, and its evolution is strongly affected by the interaction between a stable and dominant ST system and other existing or emerging ST systems. Each of these ST systems is supported by a network of agents interested in its reproduction. Following ST theories and concepts, a SusTran can be represented as a ST transition to sustainability: a process of radical change where the current dominant position of an unsustainable ST system is destabilized and took over by a new – and environmentally sustainable – ST system. In such a representation innovators play a key role: both those innovating to protect a dominant position, and those innovating to take it over. Such a competition between alternative ST systems – and their supporting networks of innovators – is strongly affected by policies. In particular, a ST system is holding a dominant position also because it was able to gain support from favorable policies that now protect the status quo. This is why a SusTran may not take place without new and specific policies that: a) help emergi