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In this innovative work, Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Monica Gruezmacher analyse the challenges and possibilities of sustainability transitions, presenting the dilemmas facing the path to more sustainable communities and societies, as well as proposing creative solutions. The authors deploy evolutionary governance theory as a conceptual framing for transition strategy, highlighting the importance of understanding governance and community strategy in any potential response to environmental crises.This timely book expertly draws on a wide range of disciplines and theories, in considering the limitations imposed by unpredictable dynamics of power, discourse and affect and the shifting boundaries of what is governable. The authors demonstrate the creative potential of both instabilities and rigidities in governance. Chapters detail the basics of evolutionary governance theory, developing and applying it to transition strategy by engaging in an accessible manner with post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, institutional economics, systems theory and critical management studies. In a clearly constructed theoretical narrative, the results of this engagement become clear, in a new understanding of the weight of the past on governance and community, the construction of temporality, change and strategic change, contextual notions of good governance, and how these affect major shifts towards sustainability.Strategy for Sustainability Transitions is an important addition to an ever-expanding and crucial field. Particularly relevant to practitioners and policy makers interested in sustainable development and environmental governance, it will greatly appeal to students and scholars of human geography, public policy and administration, environmental politics and planning and development studies.

This book provides an innovative approach to understanding the governance of resource communities, by showcasing how the past and present informs the future.Resource communities have complicated relationships with the past, and this makes their relationship with the future, and the future itself, also complicated. The book digs deeply into the myriad legacies left by a history of resource extraction in a community and makes use of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives to understand the complex issues being faced by a range of different communities that are reliant on different types of resources across the world. From coal and gold mining, to fishing towns and logging communities, the book explores the legacies of boom and bust economies, social memory, trauma and identity, the interactions between power and knowledge and the implications for adaptive governance. Balancing conceptual and theoretical understandings with empirical and practical knowledge of resource communities, natural resource use and social-ecological relationships, the book argues that solutions for individual communities need to be embraced in the community and not just in the perspectives of visiting experts. Linking the past, present and futures of resource communities in a new way, the book concludes by providing practical recommendations for breaking open dependencies on the past, including deepening awareness of the social, economic and environmental contexts, establishing strong governance and developing community strategies, plans and policies for the future.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of natural resource governance and management, extractive industries, environmental policy, community planning and development, environmental geography and sustainable development, as well as policymakers involved in supporting community development in natural resource-dependent communities across the world.