Utopia competition: a new approach to the micro-foundations of sustainability transitions

We present a new evolutionary political economy approach to the study of transition dynamics based on a co-evolutionary model of differential citizen contributions to competing ‘utopias’—market fundamentalism, socialism, and environmentalism. We model sustainability transitions as an outcome of ‘utopia competition’ in which environmentalism manages to coexist with the market, while socialism vanishes. Our simulation-based framework suggests that the individual economic contributions of citizens to the battle of ideas—both the distribution within a utopia, and the interaction between different utopias—are crucial but much overlooked micro-factors in explaining the dynamics of sustainability transitions.     

Policy assessment and simulation of actor orientation for sustainable development

Understanding, assessing, and simulating behavior requires knowledge of the precepts that are explicitly or implicitly orienting behavior. Human actors can be viewed as (conscious) self-organizing systems attempting to remain viable in a diverse environment containing other self-organizing systems (other human actors, organisms, ecosystems, etc.), all driven by their own viability (sustainability) interests. These fundamental system interests, or basic orientors, have emerged in response to general environmental properties and are therefore identical across self-organizing systems: existence, effectiveness, freedom of action, security, adaptability, coexistence. Even in simulated actors learning to ‘survive’ in a difficult environment, the basic orientors emerge in the (simulated) evolutionary process — but different actors may evolve into different ‘cultural types’ with different orientor emphasis. Since balanced attention to all basic orientors is crucial for viability, the set of orientors can be used to derive indicators that facilitate comprehensive viability and sustainability assessments. The paper outlines the theoretical approach of ‘orientation theory’ and its application to the assessment and simulation of sustainable development issues. The formal approach of mapping indicators on basic orientors and assessing sustainability dynamics is illustrated using Worldwatch indicator time series. In an actor simulation this approach is used to successfully guide a small global model onto a sustainable path with high ‘quality of life’.     

On sustainability and materiality. Homo faber,a new approach

This paper explicitly engages with recent debates in Ecological Economics on what mode of humanity and person the sustainability project requires (e.g. Becker, 2006; Siebenhüner, 2000) and responds to calls to widen our understanding of the human being beyond homo economicus (e.g. Bina and Guedes Vaz, 2011). Using the example of the increasing attention to well-being, both within policy and academic circles, we seek to contribute to current critical considerations of ‘the sustainable person’ (Becker, 2010, 2012). We do this by incorporating often neglected perspectives from disciplines rooted in the Arts and Humanities – specifically anthropology and philosophy – introducing to debates on sustainability the notion of ‘homo faber’. Our aim is threefold: (1) to invite creative thinking about the role that materiality and practice play in the constitution of alternative notions of ‘being’; (2) to soften the anthropocentrism of western worldviews by considering the possibility of a different mode of humanity based upon “connection rather than separation, interdependence rather than autonomy” (Gibson-Graham, 2011:2), and (3) to encourage deeper reflection about the need for, and the challenge of interdisciplinary sustainability research.     

Sustainable mobility transitions and the challenge of countervailing trends: the case of personal aeromobility

Research on sustainable mobility transitions has focused on battery-electric vehicles, urban ‘smart’ cars, fuel-cell powered transport modes and power-assisted bicycles. While these studies have usefully exposed some of the dynamics governing sociotechnical change, developments outside the purview of sustainability have been largely ignored. A critical area of neglect concerns the growing popularity of personal aeromobility. Passenger dissatisfaction with commercial airlines, public concerns about terrorism, increasing affluence and creative marketing have expanded interest in private aviation. In parts of the USA, customised air travel is becoming a straightforward and affordable transport alternative. This article describes the mounting popularity of four segments of this trend: business/personal airplane acquisition, fractional aircraft ownership, flight-time cards and air taxis. It also highlights the role that the federal government is currently playing to overcome the technological obstacles to more pervasive personal aeromobility. A concluding section considers the ramifications of these activities on contemporary efforts to foster sustainable mobility and to conceptualise viable transition pathways.     

Managing the transition to sustainable supply chain management practices: Evidence from Dutch leader firms in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Governance literature identifies so-called ‘leader firms’ as the directors of global value chains. But in what direction are they leading? Some leader firms actively try to make a transition towards sustainable supply chain practices, but how can this be assessed? Supply chain management literature provides fragmented insights into the antecedents of transition processes. They adopt a largely ‘top-down’, ‘inside-out’ perspective rather than (also) take a ‘bottom-up’ and ‘outside-in’ perspective in which the consequences for the business models of supplying firms at the bottom of the supply chain are rarely taken into account. This contribution develops a more integrated eclectic approach on sustainable supply business models. We conceptualise antecedents of change along consecutive stages of management that combines different supplier ‘upgrading’ approaches with different ways in which leader firms integrate suppliers in their purchasing strategies. We apply this model to the strategies of 10 leading Dutch companies active in Africa, but with different supply chain positions.     

Innovation intermediary challenging the energy incumbent: enactment of local socio-technical transition pathways by destabilisation of regime rules

ABSTRACT

The energy sector needs to transform towards sustainability. The multi-level perspective on sociotechnical transitions is embracing an enactment perspective, which focuses on the agency of various actors in shifting transitions pathways but has yet to study local urban experiments from such an enactment perspective. Our empirical research examines an innovation intermediary’s work in destabilising the regime rules in relation to the local energy incumbent company in Helsinki, Finland. Our paper seeks answers to the questions: How does the collaboration of the intermediary and the local energy company unfold? What are the impacts of the intermediary work on the local energy company in terms of enactment of transition pathways and what are the mechanisms causing the impact? Our research shows that the intermediary contributes to the transition by disturbing existing rules, structures, practices and networks by convening innovation champions from different constituencies, renegotiating regime rules and disrupting existing R&D alliances.     

Cultural Identity and Securitising the Korean Peninsula: Transformations in the South Korean Security Narrative

In response to enlargement, the EU’s ‘Wider Europe’ initiative and emerging European Neighbourhood Policy envisage ‘positive interdependence’ with neighbouring countries of the ‘East’ and ‘South’. ‘Partnerships’ are seen as an alternative to direct EU membership and thus as a sustainable incentive for regional cooperation. In order to be effective, such regional partnerships must transcend market logics and accommodate heterogeneous economic and socio-political realities. However, Wider Europe is characterised, in terms of realpolitik, by competing rationales of ‘stability’, ‘prosperity’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘security’ and thus by considerable potential for exclusionary policies. It is unclear whether exclusion can be counterbalanced by multilevel and ‘de-centred’ forms of regional engagement that also define Wider Europe. Applying a pragmatic approach, discussion will centre on rationales, discourses and reconceptualisations of European space upon which the notion of Wider Europe is being constructed and on whether they signal gradual changes in the direction of a ‘post-Westphalian’ geopolitics.     

Model for evaluating the environmental sustainability of energy projects

This article focuses on the problem of assessing the environmental sustainability of energy projects. For this purpose an original model, which is based on various indicators that measure the environmental sustainability of energy projects, has been developed. This model, so called index of environmental sustainability of energy projects (IESEP), can be used in scenario comparison, while measuring the effectiveness of the proposed alternatives. Finally, an example of how to use this model is provided by analyzing alternatives to ameliorate the environmental sustainability of a hydroelectric project. In doing so, it is possible to show the usefulness of this model when used as a decision making tool for energy planners.     

Individual’s financial investment decision-making in reward-based crowdfunding: evidence from China

This article extends the work of Cecere et al. (Appl. Econ., 49(57): 5802–5813, 2017) and explores the antecedents of backers’ decision to invest in projects from eight categories on a reward-based crowdfunding platform in China. We extract data from 2011 to 2016 from the pioneer Chinese reward-based crowdfunding site ‘Demohour’. Our empirical investigation using OLS reveals that feedback score, social capital (followers on Weibo, project sharing on social media) and project quality (number of updates) are key motivating factors in investment decision and subsequently, project success or failure. Robustness tests also confirm the findings.     

The New ‘Passive Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the ‘Sustainable Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism

This paper analyses the rapidly emerging discourse of a green economy based on green growth. It highlights inherent conflicts and contradictions of this discourse such as the myth of decoupling growth from the environment, pollution generations and resource consumption. Using key theoretical constructs of both Gramsci and Polanyi, the paper argues that the green economy/growth discourse can be seen as a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ whereby the dominant sustainable development discourse, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is protected in the context of global environmental, economic and development crises. The ‘neoliberalising of nature’, or in other words, the privatisation, marketisation and commodification of nature, akin to Polanyi's fictitious commodities, continues and intensifies with green economy/growth strategies. Greening the economy and associated strategies of green growth divert attention from the social and political dimensions of sustainability and issues of social and international justice. In this way, the inexorable march or ‘sustainable development’ of neoliberal capitalism is maintained. This paper goes on to argue that contesting the claims of green economy/growth discourse through political struggles by civil society against the neoliberalisation of nature is a sign of a slowly emerging counter-hegemonic ‘double movement’ which challenges capitalist hegemony and the commodification of society–nature relations.     

基于云模型的基础设施项目可持续性评价

基础设施项目可持续性评价是基础设施项目决策的重要组成部分。在文献研究的基础上,构建了城镇基础设施项目可持续性评价指标体系。在评价过程中,针对基础设施项目可持续性表现出的随机性和模糊性等特点和评价过程中决策者可能存在的属性状态偏好,引入云模型描述基础设施项目可持续性的各属性,实现了基础设施项目可持续性的不确定性度量,并通过惩罚因子对属性值进行修正,提出了基于云模型的基础设施项目可持续性评价方法。     

The Political Economy of Energy Transitions: The Case of South Africa

This paper explores the political economy of energy transition in South Africa. An economic model based around a powerful ‘minerals-energy complex’ that has previously been able to provide domestic and foreign capital with cheap and plentiful coal-generated electricity is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable. The paper analyses the struggle over competing energy visions, infrastructures and political agendas in order to generate insights into the governance and financing of clean energy transitions in South Africa. It provides both a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provides reflections on how best to theorise the contested politics of energy transitions.     

两类工业研究院协同创新项目治理比较

工业技术研究院（简称“工研院”）包括由传统科研单位转型和由多主体直接组建两种类型。工研院是项目型组织，合适的治理机制是项目成功的基础。针对不同工研院项目治理特征，设定合适的治理机制是当前研究亟待解决的问题。鉴于利益相关方通过契约关系和信息关系形成项目治理网络且其能够反映治理特征，可借助该网络对两类工研院项目治理进行比较。基于社会网络分析（SNA）方法，从网络整体和网络关键节点两个方面设计网络评价指标，选取两类工研院典型项目构建相应的治理网络，通过量化比较，分析项目治理特征和问题，最终提出针对性建议。     

A hard slog, not a leap frog: Globalization and sustainability transitions in developing Asia

How does globalization influence transitions toward more sustainable socio-technical regimes in the developing world? This paper argues that transformations of regimes, the networks and institutions governing technological and environmental practices in an industry, can be positively influenced by globalization but it depends on how global forces interact with local socio-political landscapes—the political-economic institutions, values, and regulations broadly guiding an economy and its relationship to the environment. We evaluate these relationships through a comparison of two kinds of socio-political landscapes—the neo-liberal export-led development model commonly found in the developing world and the uniquely Asian capitalist developmental state. We first show how the neo-liberal model overemphasizes the power of market forces to facilitate upgrading and more sustainable industrialization. We then argue that capitalist developmental states in East and Southeast Asia have been better able to harness global economic forces for technological and sustainability transitions through an openness to trade and investment and effective public-private institutions able to link cleaner technologies and environmental standards to production activities in firms. We buttress this argument with firm-level evidence showing the evolution of socio-technical regimes in two industries—cement and electronics. The case studies demonstrate how interactions with OECD firms can contribute to environmental technique effects provided the socio-political landscape is amenable to changes in an industry's regime. Ultimately, we find the process of transition to be complex and contingent; a hard slog not a leap frog toward a potentially more sustainable future. We close by considering the limitations on the capitalist developmental state model and with comments about what else needs to be learned about globalization's role in sustainability transitions.     

The state-augmenting effects of globalisation

Recent debates have drawn attention to the legitimacy challenges faced by new forms of global governance. Privatised governance in particular has come under considerable scrutiny. This paper attempts to contribute to this debate through an analysis of the widespread critiques of climate governance that focus on its ‘marketized’ or ‘privatized’ character. Such critiques fundamentally attempt to delegitimise dominant governance mechanisms which can be collectively known as the ‘global carbon market’. The paper argues that to understand the political dynamics of legitimacy surrounding these forms of governance we need to take into account the recurrent tension within capitalism between accumulation and legitimation. This focus enables us to understand the legitimacy problems surrounding climate governance. First, it draws attention to the character of the discourses which are critical of marketized climate governance, which attack it precisely because of the forms of accumulation it enables. Second, many of these governance projects have themselves been developed in part precisely in order to overcome legitimacy crises inherent in capital accumulation, and specifically in the current context in relation to the dominance of finance within contemporary capitalism. Finally, it suggests that one of the strategies of firms involved in such governance is to attempt to overcome this legitimacy-accumulation tension in the way that automobility did in the Fordist era. Climate governance practices should be understood as a pursuit of this sort of coherence which might give rise to an ‘ecological regime of accumulation’ that aims to forestall more radical critiques that argue that capitalism and sustainability are inimical.     

A framework of disruptive sustainable innovation: an example of the Finnish food system

Disruptive innovations are perceived necessary for accelerating sustainability transitions. However, it is not always clear what exactly is meant by it, what is to be disrupted, and by whom. Socio-technical transition research on pays too much attention at the technological niche-innovations in the production, and overlooks business model innovation and user practices in the consumption, whilst management literature on disruptive innovation falls short in the scale and scope of disruption in terms of systemic outcome. Thus, the first aim of the paper is to synthesise the extant literature and put forward a general practice-based view on disruptive sustainable innovation. The second aim of the paper is to use empirical data to elaborate the theoretical framework in the Finnish food system context. Four firm-level cases provide empirical scrutiny to each type of disruptive sustainable innovation in the food system and shed light on the interlinked practices of producer-entrepreneurs and citizen-consumers.     

Significance of environment in the assessment of sustainable development: The case for south west Victoria

The assessment of sustainable development is often based on the three pillars of sustainability model using social, economic and environmental indicators. It is thought that by measuring the performance of each system, information can be gained about the sustainability of the whole system. However it seems there has been no attempt to evaluate if such an assumption is true. During the development of a sustainability assessment framework for south west Victoria, Australia, it has become evident that this approach to sustainability assessment does not provide an accurate assessment of system sustainability. The project found that environmental indicators were considered the most important for assessing regional sustainability. As a consequence, the assessment produced shows that in south west Victoria, sustainability is largely determined by the condition of the environment. This finding highlights the current disconnection between the theory and reality of sustainability. Here, we describe a framework for sustainability assessment that attempts to re-connect theory to practice.     

Making a Market for Sustainability: The Commodification of Certified Palm Oil

In the same way there are markets for carbon, there is now a market for sustainability. Ostensibly produced as a means of conserving land in South-East Asia, a commodity called ‘certified sustainable palm oil’ has been created by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and exchanged on its own international trading platform completely independently of the flow of physical palm oil. In this way, sustainability has acquired a precise pecuniary value and can be bought by ‘socially responsible’ companies to offset their use of conventional and potentially environmentally destructive palm oil. This is yet another instance of the commodification of nature, but of a kind largely unexplored in the literature because it has emerged without formal governmental authority. What this case adds analytically to the study of capitalism and environmentalism is two-fold. First, what is commonly described as non-state, market-driven governance must now be seen as actively market-making. Second, rather than foreclosing politics by moving outside the state and within markets, the fragile authority of the RSPO has opened space for activists and other interest groups to challenge both the regulatory mechanisms and social purpose of primary commodity governance.     

Intersections in system innovation: a nested-case methodology to study co-evolving innovation journeys

Current persistent sustainability challenges are widely understood to require transitions and system innovations. As these systemic changes typically emerge from multiple co-evolving innovations, Schot and Geels [2008. Strategic niche management and sustainable innovation journeys; theory, findings, research agenda, and policy. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 20, no. 5: 537–54] urge to study the interactions between innovation journeys. Their call for multiplicity has been met through several studies. Yet considering that these analyses still leave the attendant navigational challenges underexposed, this article demonstrates the usefulness of nested-case methodologies. Focusing on the ‘intersections’ between interpenetrating case histories, in-depth investigation is combined with broader attention to next-order changes. The relevance and implications of these intersections are illustrated through four innovation journeys in the Dutch traffic management field: unfolding largely in parallel, but sometimes intersecting, they yield a mixed picture of trajectory formation and fragmentation. The phenomenon of emergent incoherence is identified as a key strategic challenge in system innovation processes.