Search

Since it was first proposed in 2000, the concept of the Anthropocene has evolved in breadth and diversely. The concept encapsulates the new and unprecedented planetary-scale changes resulting from societal transformations and has brought to the fore the social drivers of global change. The concept has revealed tensions between generalized interpretations of humanity’s contribution to global change, and interpretations that are historically, politically and culturally situated. It motivates deep ethical questions about the politics and economics of global change, including diverse interpretations of past causes and future possibilities. As such, more than other concepts, the Anthropocene concept has brought front-and-center epistemological divides between and within the natural and social sciences, and the humanities. It has also brought new opportunities for collaboration. Here we explore the potential and challenges of the concept to encourage integrative understandings of global change and sustainability. Based on bibliometric analysis and literature review, we discuss the now wide acceptance of the term, its interpretive flexibility, the emerging narratives as well as the debates the concept has inspired. We argue that without truly collaborative and integrative research, many of the critical exchanges around the concept are likely to perpetuate fragmented research agendas and to reinforce disciplinary boundaries. This means appreciating the strengths and limitations of different knowledge domains, approaches and perspectives, with the concept of the Anthropocene serving as a bridge, which we encourage researchers and others to cross. This calls for institutional arrangements that facilitate collaborative research, training, and action, yet also depends on more robust and sustained funding for such activities. To illustrate, we briefly discuss three overarching global change problems where novel types of collaborative research could make a difference: (1) Emergent properties of socioecological systems; (2) Urbanization and resource nexus; and (3) Systemic risks and tipping points. Creative tensions around the Anthropocene concept can help the research community to move toward new conceptual syntheses and integrative action-oriented approaches that are needed to producing useful knowledge commensurable with the challenges of global change and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the concept of the Anthropocene reflects the past and present nature, scale and magnitude of human impacts on the Earth System, its true significance lies in how it can be used to guide attitudes, choices, policies and actions that influence the future. Yet, to date much of the research on the Anthropocene has focused on interpreting past and present changes, while saying little about the future. Likewise, many futures studies have been insufficiently rooted in an understanding of past changes, in particular the long-term co-evolution of bio-physical and human systems. The Anthropocene perspective is one that encapsulates a world of intertwined drivers, complex dynamic structures, emergent phenomena and unintended consequences, manifest across different scales and within interlinked biophysical constraints and social conditions. In this paper we discuss the changing role of science and the theoretical, methodological and analytical challenges in considering futures of the Anthropocene. We present three broad groups of research questions on: (1) societal goals for the future; (2) major trends and dynamics that might favor or hinder them; (3) and factors that might propel or impede transformations towards desirable futures. Tackling these questions requires the development of novel approaches integrating natural and social sciences as well as the humanities beyond what is current today. We present three examples, one from each group of questions, illustrating how science might contribute to the identification of desirable and plausible futures and pave the way for transformations towards them. We argue that it is time for debates on the sustainability of the Anthropocene to focus on opportunities for realizing desirable and plausible futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores transnational linkages in sustainability experiments. Transnational linkages refer to diverse cross-border relationships and interactions that can complement local, regional and national capabilities enabling sustainability experiments. The paper develops a typology of transnational linkages and applies it to solar photovoltaic energy initiatives in India. Our analysis shows that transnational linkages appear to be almost universal in these experiments. Of seven solar photovoltaic technology domains present in the sample, experiments in only one – off-grid power plants – can be characterised as predominantly domestic. These findings underscore the significance of capabilities, resources and linkages spanning local, regional and national scales in innovative solar PV experiments in India, suggesting similar patterns for other socio-technical experiments. This study contributes to an emerging literature on the geography of sustainable transitions, which argues for a move away from a predominantly national framing in transition studies to embrace a multi-scalar understanding of transition processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sets out a proposal for bridging and linking three approaches to the analysis of transitions to sustainable and low-carbon societies: quantitative systems modelling; socio-technical transition analysis; and initiative-based learning. We argue that each of these approaches presents a partial and incomplete picture, which has implications for the quality and usefulness of the insights they can deliver for policy and practice. A framework for bridging these different approaches promises to enrich each of the approaches, while providing the basis for a more robust and complete analysis of sustainable transitions pathways that serves better to address questions and dilemmas faced by decision-makers and practitioners. We elaborate five key challenges for the analysis and governance of transitions pathways, and compare the three approaches in relation to each of these. We suggest an integration strategy based on alignment, bridging, and iteration, arguing that a structured dialogue between practitioners of different approaches is needed. In practical terms, such a dialogue would be organised around three areas of joint knowledge production: defining common analytical or governance problems to be tackled through integration; establishing shared concepts (boundary objects); and establishing operational bridging devices (data and metrics, pathways evaluation and their delivery). Such processes could include experts and societal partners. We draw conclusions about future research perspectives and the role of analysis in transitions governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ensuring modern household energy services is a key focus for national governments of many developing countries and of international development agencies aiming to support sustainable development issues, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. While renewable energy options are considered to have social and environmental benefits, and despite substantial efforts to support the dissemination of new and improved renewable energy technologies, rates of diffusion remain extremely low. For instance, biogas digester penetration in Rwanda accounts for just 1% of national potential as of 2012. This is in part due to the lack of innovation systems, which foster technology diffusion. This paper analyzes the development of a technological innovation system (TIS) for bio-digestion in Rwanda between 2000 and 2011. We apply the so-called ‘functions approach’ in analyzing the emergence of a Rwandan biogas technological innovation system. We show the accumulation through time of TIS functions, linking these to the weak diffusion of bio-digesters. We argue that international development assistance should aim to support to the build-up of technological innovation systems in their support for energy technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Recent calls for risk-based approaches to climate assessments and discussions of adaptation limits relate to each other in little explored ways. [•] A novel risk-based approach to adaptation limits to climate change is described. [•] As climate change deepens and accelerates, we expect more adaptation limits of actors to be reached, generating major challenges for climate risk governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Linking knowledge with action for effective societal responses to persistent problems of unsustainability requires transformed, more open knowledge systems. Drawing on a broad range of academic and practitioner experience, we outline a vision for the coordination and organization of knowledge systems that are better suited to the complex challenges of sustainability than the ones currently in place. This transformation includes inter alia: societal agenda setting, collective problem framing, a plurality of perspectives, integrative research processes, new norms for handling dissent and controversy, better treatment of uncertainty and of diversity of values, extended peer review, broader and more transparent metrics for evaluation, effective dialog processes, and stakeholder participation. We set out institutional and individual roadmaps for achieving this vision, calling for well-designed, properly resourced, longitudinal, international learning programs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The multi-level perspective (MLP) is a widely adopted framework for analysing stability, change and transitions in socio-technical systems. Key to explanations of change is the interaction between nested levels (niche, regime, landscape) constituting socio-technical systems over time. This paper proposes a second generation, multi-scalar MLP that explicitly incorporates a spatial scale. Recent developments in innovation studies and contributions from regional studies and geography are reviewed. We draw on notions of space as being relational, fluid and contested by institutionally situated actors. Dynamics in socio-technical systems are explained not only by interactions between modes of structuration and developments over time, but also by interactions between actors and institutions situated across different levels of spatial scale. The paper explores the kinds of insights that might emerge from adopting a second generation MLP to socio-technical systems with a case study of biomass gasification in India. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a scenario framework that could provide a scenario “thread” through the different climate research communities (climate change – vulnerability, impact, and adaptation - and mitigation) in order to support assessment of mitigation and adaptation strategies and climate impacts. The scenario framework is organized around a matrix with two main axes: radiative forcing levels and socio-economic conditions. The radiative forcing levels (and the associated climate signal) are described by the new Representative Concentration Pathways. The second axis, socio-economic developments comprises elements that affect the capacity for mitigation and adaptation, as well as the exposure to climate impacts. The proposed scenarios derived from this framework are limited in number, allow for comparison across various mitigation and adaptation levels, address a range of vulnerability characteristics, provide information across climate forcing and vulnerability states and span a full century time scale. Assessments based on the proposed scenario framework would strengthen cooperation between integrated-assessment modelers, climate modelers and vulnerability, impact and adaptation researchers, and most importantly, facilitate the development of more consistent and comparable research within and across these research communities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Scenarios are used to explore the consequences of different adaptation and mitigation strategies under uncertainty. In this paper, two scenarios are used to explore developments with (1) no mitigation leading to an increase of global mean temperature of 4°C by 2100 and (2) an ambitious mitigation strategy leading to 2°C increase by 2100. For the second scenario, uncertainties in the climate system imply that a global mean temperature increase of 3°C or more cannot be ruled out. Our analysis shows that, in many cases, adaptation and mitigation are not trade-offs but supplements. For example, the number of people exposed to increased water resource stress due to climate change can be substantially reduced in the mitigation scenario, but adaptation will still be required for the remaining large numbers of people exposed to increased stress. Another example is sea level rise, for which, from a global and purely monetary perspective, adaptation (up to 2100) seems more effective than mitigation. From the perspective of poorer and small island countries, however, stringent mitigation is necessary to keep risks at manageable levels. For agriculture, only a scenario based on a combination of adaptation and mitigation is able to avoid serious climate change impacts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates the contribution of socio-economic scenarios to improve decisions and policies in climate assessments. We specifically looked at adaptation projects in the Dutch Climate changes Spatial Planning programme. Based on the four decision failure criteria neglect of internal information, bounded rationality, insufficient expansion of existing mental models and stickiness and lack of friction of information and knowledge, it was concluded that in these projects, socio-economic scenarios appear to generate useful data, but that their full potential to reduce decision failure is not likely to be exploited. Therefore adaptation options suggested by these studies may not be ‘future-proof’: they may be appropriate in some future societies, but fail in others. We believe similar results would be obtained in other contexts. Possible decision failures are caused by neglecting socio-economic developments, limiting the number of storylines generated by scenario studies to one or two, lack of stakeholder involvement in the scenario development and ignoring discontinuities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this article I argue that the climate controversies of 2009 and 2010 should be seen as a contest about the boundaries of science; a contest which sociologists argue has long been important in establishing claims about the nature and authority of science. This boundary typically comes under pressure where science is asked to contribute to public policy. Three changes appear to have brought pressure on this boundary, and therefore on the authority of science, in the domain climate change: public scrutiny of practices in science, such as peer review; the intensification of climate politics, especially around the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit; and the opportunities provided by new media for dissident opinions to play a role in the international public discourse about climate change. These changes explain the intensity of the recent climate controversies. They seem to confront climate science and science generally with uncomfortable questions about its own procedures, about the status of scientific knowledge claims in the public realm and about the role of expertise. At the end of the article I speculate about how to reconstruct a more open and interactive boundary between science and public discourse as a basis for more reasoned debate about climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Global sustainability is increasingly influenced by processes of industrialisation and urbanization in non-OECD countries, especially in Asia. Growth models suggest that developing economies and regions will become first relatively more resource- and pollution-intensive, before converging on more resource-efficient and low-pollution production and consumption patterns expressed in developed countries. Alternative less resource- and pollution-intensive growth models for latecomer countries promise social and economic benefits in the short- and long-term. Drawing on insights from system innovation research on long-run change in socio-technical systems, we discuss the potential role of ‘sustainability experiments’ to generate innovations that will constitute new ‘greener’ growth models. We observe a great number of technology-based initiatives that we characterize as sustainability experiments in East and South Asian countries. These experiments emerge in the context of the growth of new socio-technical regimes in key sectors, including energy, transport, manufacturing, food and the built environment. We set out a conceptual framework for assessing the role of experiments, and for evaluating how they link with and become anchored into alternative more sustainable regimes. In this paper we argue that sustainability experiments represent a significant new source of innovation and capability-formation, linked to global knowledge and technology flows, which could reshape emergent socio-technical regimes and so contribute to alternative development pathways in latecomer countries. We conclude by summarizing the six papers published in this Special Issue. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Climate change may cause most harm to countries that have historically contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change. This paper identifies consequentialist and non-consequentialist ethical principles to guide a fair international burden-sharing scheme of climate change adaptation costs. We use these ethical principles to derive political principles – historical responsibility and capacity to pay – that can be applied in assigning a share of the financial burden to individual countries. We then propose a hybrid ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ approach as a promising starting point for international negotiations on the design of burden-sharing schemes. A numerical assessment of seven scenarios shows that the countries of Annex I of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would bear the bulk of the costs of adaptation, but contributions differ substantially subject to the choice of a capacity to pay indicator. The contributions are less sensitive to choices related to responsibility calculations, apart from those associated with land-use-related emissions. Assuming costs of climate adaptation of USD 100 billion per year, the total financial contribution by the Annex I countries would be in the range of USD 65–70 billion per year. Expressed as a per capita basis, this gives a range of USD 43–82 per capita per year. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Rapid industrialisation in Asia is generating a significant new demand for raw materials and pressure on local, regional and global environments. In the future these demands and pressures are expected to increase markedly. These concerns are models of development that assume that economic growth follows a pattern leading to a convergence between the structure, growth and productivity of economies over the long run. In these models, the structure of industries and sectors, technological capabilities and consumer preferences are regarded as converging towards patterns established in more advanced economies. By extension, convergence is also assumed to hold for the resource intensity and environmental pressure associated with growth in industrialising countries. This paper argues for greater attention to the resource and environmental quality of development. It argues that by applying ideas from an emerging literature on ‘systems innovation’ it becomes possible to envisage the emergence of new, more resource-efficient socio-technical systems as the basis of more sustainable development pathways in developing Asia. Such sustainable socio-technical systems will emerge in the context of interaction between domestic and globalised markets, knowledge flows and governance. Key issues for a research agenda are set out. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We argue that globalization is a central feature of coupled human–environment systems or, as we call them, socio-ecological systems (SESs). In this article, we focus on the effects of globalization on the resilience, vulnerability, and adaptability of these systems. We begin with a brief discussion of key terms, arguing that socio-economic resilience regularly substitutes for biophysical resilience in SESs with consequences that are often unforeseen. A discussion of several mega-trends (e.g. the rise of mega-cities, the demand for hydrocarbons, the revolution in information technologies) underpins our argument. We then proceed to identify key analytical dimensions of globalization, including rising connectedness, increased speed, spatial stretching, and declining diversity. We show how each of these phenomena can cut both ways in terms of impacts on the resilience and vulnerability of SESs. A particularly important insight flowing from this analysis centers on the reversal of the usual conditions in which large-scale things are slow and durable while small-scale things are fast and ephemeral. The fact that SESs are reflexive can lead either to initiatives aimed at avoiding or mitigating the dangers of globalization or to positive feedback processes that intensify the impacts of globalization. In the concluding section, we argue for sustained empirical research regarding these concerns and make suggestions about ways to enhance the incentives for individual researchers to work on these matters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Drawing on recent literature on the environmental impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet, this paper identifies three main types of effects: direct impacts of the production and use of ICTs on the environment (resource use and pollution related to the production of infrastructure and devices, electricity consumption of hardware, electronic waste disposal); indirect impacts related to the effect of ICTs on production processes, products and distribution systems (de-materialisation, substitution of information goods for material goods, and substitution of communication at a distance for travel); and structural/behavioural impacts, mainly through the stimulation of structural change and growth in the economy by ICTs, and through impacts on life styles and value systems. This paper argues that the diffusion and use of ICTs are leading to both positive and negative environmental impacts. However, because the effects of ICTs on economic activity are pervasive, their impacts on the environment are difficult to trace and measure. The paper argues for a need to move beyond the dichotomy between pessimism and optimism demonstrated in much of the emerging literature. Instead the relationship must be recognised as complex, interdependent, deeply uncertain and scale-dependent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Climate impact assessment needs to take account of two interrelated processes: socio-economic change and climate change. To date, future change in socio-economic systems has not been sufficiently integrated with an analysis of climate change impacts. Participative and synthetic scenario approaches offer a means for dealing with critical issues of indeterminacy, innovation, reflexivity and framing in analysing change in socio-economic systems, paving the way for a coherent way of handling of socio-economic futures in impact assessment. We argue that scenarios represent heuristic tools that encourage social learning in climate impact assessment. The advantages and disadvantages of a scenario-based approach are explored using examples from regional climate impact assessment in the UK. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents an introduction to and overview of the papers in this Special Issue of Technological Forecasting & Social Change on 'Transition Pathways' is presented. Each of these papers are an output of the PATHWAYS project (EC FP7-funded, 2013–2017) which looked into ways to integrate alternative approaches for analysing sustainability transitions. Methods to bridge across scenario-modelling, socio-technical transition, and practice-based action research approaches (Turnheim et al. 2015; Geels et al., 2016) were implemented in eight empirical and modelling studies reported here. A variety of approaches to bridging emerged in practice, with differing methodological strategies employed, analysing transitions processes across different sectors, at a range of scales, and separately, comparatively or in a fully integrated way. This paper suggests a framework for understanding different approaches to bridging and shows how policy- and decision-making can be enriched by theoretically- and empirically-informed bridging approaches to transitions analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]