Towards a new transformation and new governance

D.A. Loorbach
DOI:  10.12910/EAI2015-010

While a consensus seems to exist on the need to move towards a sustainable development pathway, we seem to be unable to develop the appropriate policy responses. From a transition perspective, this inability to create fundamental change is related to existing path dependencies and associated interests that help to sustain existing societal regimes. In many ways are existing governments, and the societal regimes they are part of, practically dependent on sustaining unsustainability. Instead of looking for solutions to our grand challenges coming from policy, I argue that we need to look towards transformative social innovation and new forms of governance and science. This paper offers a new perspective that might help to develop new governance and science approaches that focus on institutionalizing emergent social innovation along with managing the breakdown of unsustainable systems and structures.