Transition versus transformation: What's the difference?

‘Transition’ and ‘transformation’ have become buzzwords in political and scientific discourses. They signal the need for large-scale changes to achieve a sustainable society. We compare how they are applied and interpreted in scientific literatures to explore whether they are distinct concepts and provide complementary insights. Transition and transformation are not mutually exclusive; they provide nuanced perspectives on how to describe, interpret and support desirable radical and non-linear societal change. Their differences may partially result from their etymological origins, but they largely stem from the different research communities concerned with either transition or transformation. Our review shows how the respective approaches and perspectives on understanding and interpreting system change can enrich each other

Steering transformations under climate change

In light of the persistent failure to reduce emissions decisively, facilitate long-term resilience against climate change and account for the connectedness of climate change with other social, environmental and economic concerns, we present a conceptual framework of capacities for transformative climate governance. Transformative climate governance enables climate mitigation and adaptation while purposefully steering societies towards low-carbon, resilient and sustainable objectives. The framework provides a systematic analytical tool for understanding and supporting the already ongoing changes of the climate governance landscape towards more experimental approaches that include multi-scale, cross-sectoral and public-private collaborations. It distinguishes between different types of capacities needed to address transformation dynamics, including responding to disturbances (stewarding capacity), phasing-out drivers of path dependency (unlocking capacity), creating and embedding novelties (transformative capacity) and coordinating multi-actor processes (orchestrating capacity). Our case study of climate governance in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, demonstrates how the framework helps to map the activities by which multiple actors create new types of conditions for transformative climate governance, assess the effectiveness of the capacities and identify capacity gaps. Transformative and orchestrating capacities in Rotterdam emerged through the creation of space and informal networks for strategic and operational innovation, which also propelled new types of governance arrangements and structures. Both capacities support stewarding and unlocking by integrating and mainstreaming different goals, connecting actors to each other for the development of solutions and mediating interests. Key challenges across capacities remain because of limited mainstreaming of long-term and integrated thinking into institutional and regulatory frameworks. As the ongoing changes in climate governance open up multiple questions about actor roles, effective governance processes, legitimacy and how effective climate governance in the context of transformations can be supported, we invite future research to apply the capacities framework to explore these questions

Transition pathways to sustainability in greater than 2 C climate futures of Europe

The complex challenges arising from climate change that exceeds the +2 °C target (termed ‘high-end climate change’) in Europe require new integrative responses to support transformations to a more sustainable future. We present a novel methodology that combines transition management and high-end climate and socioeconomic change scenarios to identify pathways and move Europe closer to sustainability. Eighteen pathways have been co-created with stakeholders through a participatory process. The pathways support Europe in moving towards a desirable future vision, through top-down and bottom-up actions that lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce impacts of and vulnerabilities to climate and socioeconomic changes and enhance well-being. Analysis shows that the pathways that are robust to future scenario uncertainty are those that shift Europe towards sustainable lifestyles, support and strengthen good governance for sustainability and promote adaptive resource management for water, agriculture and energy. The methodology can support the design of the urgent actions needed to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement and to transform Europe, in preparation for an uncertain future

Archetyping shared socioeconomic pathways across scales: an application to central Asia and European case studies

The complex interactions of drivers represented in scenarios and climate change impacts across scales have led to the development of multiscale scenarios. Since the recent development of global shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), which have started being downscaled to lower scales, the potential of scenarios to be relevant for decision making and facilitate appreciation and inclusion of different perspectives has been increasing, compared with a single-scale global scenario set. However, in practice, quantitative downscaling of global scenarios results in narratives that are compressed from the global level to fit the local context to enhance consistency between global and local scales. We brought forward the concept of scenario archetypes to analyze multiscale SSP scenario narratives and highlight important diverging assumptions within the same archetype. Our methodology applied scenario archetypes both as typologies, to allocate specific cases of scenarios into existing scenario archetypes, and building blocks, conceptualized with worldviews from cultural theory. Although global SSPs generally match existing archetypes and tend to be well defined, the socially unequal SSPs at subglobal scales are more nuanced, and dominant worldviews are much less straighforward to interpret than in global scenarios. The closest match was the great transition–sustainability (SSP1) archetype, whereas the most divergent was the market forces–fossil fuel development (SSP5) archetype. Overall, our results highlight the need to improve uptake of bottom-up approaches in global scenarios to improve appreciation of different perspectives as sought after in multiscale scenarios

A participatory, multidimensional and modular impact assessment methodology for citizen science projects

This paper presents a multidimensional methodology for assessing the scientific, social, economic, political and environmental impacts of citizens science (CS) projects. Besides these five areas of impact, the methodology considers also the transformative potential of the CS projects, i.e. the degree to which a CS project can help to change, alter, or replace current systems, the business-as-usual, in one or more fields such as science production or environmental protection. The methodology is designed to be modular and flexible so to adapt to the specificities of different CS projects and offers operational tools for its use by non-experts. The paper also describes the co-design process followed for its development and discusses the main lessons learned as emerged during its testing with 16 citizen science projects

Advancing the use of scenarios to understand society’s capacity to achieve the 1.5 degree target

With a range of potential pathways to a sustainable future compatible with the Paris Agreement 1.5 °C target, scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool in studies of climate change mitigation and adaptation. A wide range of alternative scenarios have been created, and core amongst these are five socio-economic scenarios (Shared Socio-economic Pathways or SSPs) and four emission scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways or RCPs). Whilst mitigation scenarios (the Shared Policy Assumptions, or SPAs) have been developed for each SSP-RCP combination, describing the actions necessary to match the climate pathway of the RCP, there has not yet been a systematic approach to address whether and how these actions can be enabled in practice. We present a novel and transferable framework to understand society’s capacity to achieve the 1.5 °C target, based on four participatory case studies using the SSP-RCP scenarios. The methodology builds on a framework for categorising different types of societal capitals and capacities and assessing their impact on the potential to implement different types of mitigation actions. All four case studies show that SSP1 has the highest potential to reach the target. Although environmental awareness is high in both SSP1 and SSP4, continued social inequalities in SSP4 restrict society’s capacity to transform, despite economic growth. In the two least environmentally-aware SSPs, SSP3 and SSP5, the transformation potential is low, but the view on capitals and capacities nonetheless helps identify opportunities for actors to develop and implement mitigation actions. The study highlights that techno-economic assessments of climate strategies need to be complemented by consideration of the critical role played by social and human capital, and by societal capacity to mobilise and create these capitals despite different socio-economic trends. These capitals and capacities are essential to enable the rapid innovation, behavioural change and international co-ordination needed to achieve the 1.5 °C target

External Validation of Pretreatment Pathological Tumor Extent in Patients with Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy Plus Surgery for Esophageal Cancer

Background: This study was conducted to validate a pretreatment (i.e. prior to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy) pathological staging system in the resection specimen after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for esophageal cancer. The study investigated the prognostic value of pretreatment pathological T and N categories (prepT and prepN categories) in both an independent and a combined patient cohort. Methods: Patients with esophageal cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and esophagectomy between 2012 and 2015 were included. PrepT and prepN categories were estimated based on the extent of tumor regression and regressional changes of lymph nodes in the resection specimen. The difference in Akaike’s information criterion (ΔAIC) was used to assess prognostic performance. PrepN and ypN categories were combined to determine the effect of nodal sterilization on prognosis. A multivariable Cox regression model was used to identify combined prepN and ypN categories as independent prognostic factors. Results: The prognostic strength of the prepT category was better than the cT and ypT categories (ΔAIC 7.7 vs. 3.0 and 2.9, respectively), and the prognostic strength of the prepN category was better than the cN category and similar to the ypN category (ΔAIC 29.2 vs. − 1.0 and 27.9, respectively). PrepN + patients who became ypN0 had significantly worse survival than prepN0 patients (2-year overall survival 69% vs. 86% in 137 patients; p = 0.044). Similar results were found in a combined cohort of 317 patients (2-year overall survival 62% vs. 85%; p = 0.002). Combined prepN/ypN stage was independently associated with overall survival. Conclusions: These results independently confirm the prognostic value of prepTNM staging. PrepTNM staging is of additional prognostic value to cTNM and ypTNM. PrepN0/ypN0 patients have a better survival than prepN +/ypN0 patients