Climate geoengineering: issues of path-dependence and socio-technical lock-in

As academic and policy interest in climate geoengineering grows, the potential irreversibility of technological developments in this domain has been raised as a pressing concern. The literature on socio-technical lock-in and path dependence is illuminating in helping to situate current concerns about climate geoengineering and irreversibility in the context of academic understandings of historical socio-technical development and persistence. This literature provides a wealth of material illustrating the pervasiveness of positive feedbacks of various types (from the discursive to the material) leading to complex socio-technical entanglements which may resist change and become inflexible even in the light of evidence of negative impacts. With regard to climate geoengineering, there are concerns that geoengineering technologies might contribute so-called ‘carbon lock-in’, or become irreversibly ‘locked-in’ themselves. In particular, the scale of infrastructures that geoengineering interventions would require, and the issue of the so-called ‘termination effect’ have been discussed in these terms. Despite the emergent and somewhat ill-defined nature of the field, some authors also suggest that the extant framings of geoengineering in academic and policy literatures may already demonstrate features recognizable as forms of cognitive lock-in, likely to have profound implications for future developments in this area. While the concepts of path-dependence and lock-in are the subject of ongoing academic critique, by drawing analytical attention to these pervasive processes of positive feedback and entanglement, this literature is highly relevant to current debates around geoengineering

Small scale socio-technical experiments as stepping stones for eco-efficient product-service systems diffusion: A new role for strategic design for sustainability.

Eco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. Despite that the adoption of such business strategies is still very limited because it often involves significant corporate, cultural and regulatory barriers. Changes in basic belief, values, and interpretative frames (in other words higher order learning) are required. One way to facilitate this type of learning is through socio-technical experiments. Starting from these considerations, and bringing together insights from innovation sciences (in particular Strategic Niche Management), the paper investigates the potential contribution that a strategic design approach can have in designing small scale socio-technical experiments as a way to stimulate and favor the adoption and diffusion of eco-efficient PSS