Tools for Integrated Sustainability Assessment: a two-track approach

Sustainable development has become an overarching policy target for the global policy arena. However, the international policy-making process and that of the individual countries remains largely sectoral in nature: a wide spectrum of international policies pursue narrow sectoral concerns and do not contribute fully enough to the achievement of broader sustainability targets. New policy tools such as Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) have therefore been adopted by the European Union to ensure that sectoral policies can be evaluated in relation to their wider sustainability impacts. However, what is really needed is a cross-sectoral approach to assessing sustainable development at an even higher, much more strategic level: Integrated Sustainability Assessment (ISA). ISA involves a longterm, comprehensive assessment of international and national policy programmes against sustainability targets and criteria. In order to perform ISA at the international level, new assessment tools and methods are needed which are rooted in a new paradigm. Sustainable development is a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon, with a breadth and depth that cannot be fully covered by the current portfolio of ISA tools. We therefore need a new generation of ISA tools, in particular modelling tools that can (semi-)quantitatively assess the multiple dimensions of sustainable development, in terms of multiple scales, multiple domains and multiple generations. Although a new paradigm is on the horizon and its contours are gradually becoming clearer, it will take a while before it can be used to develop practical ISA tools. Within the context of the European MATISSE project we therefore propose a two-track strategy: find new ways to use the current portfolio of ISA tools as efficiently and effectively as possible, while at the same time developing building blocks to support the next generation of ISA tools

Research and practice of sustainability transitions in the Netherlands

This paper reports on the research outcomes and practical experiences with transitions and transition management in the Netherlands. Transitions are phenomena that receive increasing interest from researchers, policy-makers and the business community as an integrated paradigm for dealing with persistent unsustainability problems as well as with structuring activities aiming at radical breakthroughs towards sustainability. Within the Netherlands, the Dutch research network on System Innovations and Transitions (KSI) and the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) have functioned as the core centres for research and practices in this area

The SCENE Model: getting a grip on sustainable development in policy making

Abstract. Sustainable development is a politically and scientifically contested concept. This is partly due to its definition, which contains ambiguous, normative and subjective elements. In addition, sustainable development is a complex concept describing developments at different time-scales, geographical scales and across domains. In this article, we describe the ‘SoCial, ENvironmental and Economic (SCENE) model’, a conceptual approach towards sustainable development that explicitly addresses these characteristics. The model is based on the structural representation of economic, ecological and social stocks and the interaction between them. The possible applications of the SCENE model include integrated issue description, monitoring of sustainable development, evaluation of complex sustainability-related issues, strategy planning and a framework for quantitative modelling. In addition, the model provides a tool for the communication of these issues. The different applications are described on the basis of case studies. The common goal of all applications is a better understanding of the underlying dynamics of sustainable development and related issues

Transities & transitiemanagement: Oorsprong, status en toekomst

Begin jaren negentig formeerde Jan Rotmans op het RIVM in Bilthoven de GLOBOonderzoeksgroep, die onderzoek deed naar mondiale verandering en duurzame ontwikkeling. Centraal in dit onderzoek stond het begrip transitie en de eerste serie transitie-experimenten werden gedaan met het TARGETS-model (Rotmans 1997). Ook bij de VN introduceerde Rotmans de notie van transities, bij de Commissie Duurzame Ontwikkeling, in wiens opdracht hij een evaluatie maakte van de UNCED-conferentie in Rio in 1992. Dit resulteerde in het rapport ‘Critical Trends’ (UN 1997), een mondiale, integrale trendanalyse waarin het begrip transitie de kern vormde

Transitions in a globalising world

The increasing complexity of our global society means that sustainable development cannot be addressed from a single perspective or scientific discipline. By using the concept of transitions, we examine current and future tensions between welfare, well-being and the environment, and focus on four major issues that are of global importance: two of our key natural resources, water and biodiversity; the health of human populations; and the developments related to global tourism. In our global assessment we base ourselves on the most recent scenario efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Future developments are explored along the lines of four development paths (scenario groups), defined along two dimensions (global versus regional dynamics and emphasising economic objectives versus environmental and equity objectives

Managing transitions for sustainable development

The challenge of sustainable development presents our society with the need for longterm, structural changes or transitions in sectors such as energy-supply, mobility, agriculture and health-care. Based on a multi-phase and multi-level framework for transitions, we ask whether managing transitions is possible and then outline an operational method for transition management

Conceptualizing, observing and influencing socio-ecological transitions

This article creates a meeting ground between two distinct and fairly elaborate research traditions dealing with social “transitions”: the Dutch societal transitions management approach, and the Viennese sociometabolic transitions approach. Sharing a similar understanding of sustainability transitions—namely as major transformational changes of system characteristics—and a background epistemology of complex systems, autopoeisis, and evolutionary mechanisms, they address the subject from different angles: one approach asks how transformative changes happen and what they look like, and the other approach tries answer the question of how to bring them about. The Viennese approach is almost exclusively analytical and deals with a macro (“landscape”) level of human history with a time scale of decades to centuries; the Dutch approach is based on intervention experiences and deals with a shorter time frame (decades) of micro–meso–macro levels of industrial societies. From both their respective angles, they contribute to some of the key questions of sustainability research, namely: how can a transformative change toward sustainability be distinguished from other types of social change? By which mechanisms can obstacles, path dependencies, and adverse interests be overcome? And what are the key persistent problems that call for such a transition

Towards transition management of European water resources

Global change fundamentally changes the nature of water-related problems. We will illustrate this by showing how perceptions of the water-problems in the Netherlands have shifted in the past four decades. The nature of water-related problems changed from a technical problem’ to a so-called ‘persistent’ problem, characterized by plurality, uncertainty and complexity. Although integrated water resource management (IWRM) has been advocated to cope with this type of problem, the complexity of the transition process towards such a water management regime is often underestimated. Therefore, transition management is needed in the water sector. Transition management theory is presented and applied to the Dutch case. Transition management strategies are suggested that would reinforce this transition. Comparison between the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) and transition management indicates that the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) in its current form is not sufficiently stimulating an innovation climate