The key message from the report, Perspectives on transitions to sustainability, is that achieving sustainability will require society-wide transformations and bring huge challenges for Europe. It will involve fundamental changes in how Europe meets its demand for necessities such as food, energy, mobility and housing.
cCHANGE contributed a paper to this report, which brings together five papers drafted by internationally recognised experts in the field of sustainability transitions and transformations. The report addresses how systemic change could be achieved by presenting different analytical perspectives on systemic change and the insights they collectively offer for policy, governance and knowledge creation.
Responding to systemic environmental challenges
The report highlights how systemic environmental challenges are tied in complex ways to jobs and investments, policies and institutions, social norms and traditions. Collectively, these interlinkages can mean that it is often very hard to achieve the needed systemic change through business as usual actions.
The contrasting approaches in the report also offer shared insights into how transitions could be achieved. While emphasising that governments alone cannot catalyse and steer transitions, they highlight the essential role of policy and public institutions in supporting local processes of experimentation and learning, upscaling and reconfiguration. Governments also have a key role to play in supporting networking of local initiatives and in creating the shared goals and frameworks that can help coordinate and steer society-wide processes towards long-term sustainability goals.
Read:
Perspectives on transitions to sustainability
European Environment Agency Report No 25/2017
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