Introducción del libro Transformative Metrics: Contributions to the Studies for Monitoring and Evaluating How Science, Technology, and Innovation Can Address Social and Environmental Challenges https://doi.org/10.17533/978-628-7592-15-5

Presentation

This book aims to stimulate a new research agenda that encourages existing and new methodological approaches to be applied in the study and promotion of social and technological change. Sustainability transition scholars have begun to search for new methods and indicators to examine transitions. On the other hand, there is a body of research on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Both agendas call for new indicators, models, and methodological approaches to evaluate their implementation. In this sense, the transitions research community has called for the development of a ‘structured navigation’ method and a ‘formal model’ to study transformation and sustainability agendas.¹

This book emphasises the need for new metrics and techniques for visualisation and mapping based upon systems thinking, which will then lead to a more complex understanding of social and technological change. These new approaches to analysing transformative changes, which are either quantitative or qualitative, are needed to support transformation. New visualisations, metrics, and mapping techniques are paramount for greater learning, enabling policymakers to have the tools to deal with the grand challenges expressed in the sdgs and the UNFCCC These approaches also have a political role despite relying on scientific models because they have a significant influence on how priorities and policies are established. Thus, they allow a better understanding beyond atomic recipes. In sum, such methods enable learning to navigate the transformation of recurrent system problems such as poverty, biodiversity loss, inequality, and the consequences of climate change.

Consequently, how can we develop indicators and methods to study sociotechnical systems changes using sustainability transitions as a lens? To address this question, the book uses the most common theoretical framework in sustainability transitions, the multi-level perspective (MLP). This framework divides socio-technical systems into three domains: landscape (broader trends such as climate change), socio-technical regimes (dominant sub-systems e.g., fossil fuel energy), and socio-technical niches (alternatives to the prevailing system e.g., renewable energy). The MLP framework conceptualises transformation as occurring through three phases: building and nurturing niches (emergence phase), expanding and mainstreaming niches (growing phase), and opening up and unlocking regimes (niche institutionalisation phase). As a result, many processes can destabilise and expose regimes to allow niche emergence and growth such as landscape shocks or symbiotic/competitive interaction between niche and regime actors.

This book is divided into two sections. The first section, ‘Transformative Frames,’ presents five different conceptual and methodological approaches that can support the understanding and study of transformation. Chapter 1 introduces twelve transformative outcomes that summarise critical processes within the three phases of transformation outlined above. These transformative outcomes are then associated with both new and existing methods to monitor change processes. Chapter 2 discusses how current approaches to sustainability transitions can nurture the evaluation of the foregoing transformative outcomes considering the transformation of actor networks.

Section two, ‘Developing Transformations,’ describes a range of strategies for measurement and evaluation. The chapters in the second section present several case studies involving specific socio-technical changes and the evolution of niches towards sustainable shifts: climate change, energy, cities, as well as the interactions between science and social demands and local niches. In this light, Chapter 6 underlines the need for accurate metrics to support climate policy implementation and remarks on how existing quantitative metrics can be adapted to integrate multiple indicators. This chapter includes a concrete example of how landscape shock may trigger new policies and how metrics might help monitor regime destabilisation and niche development.

Chapters 7 to 10 apply a relational approach to the study of interactions within and between socio-technical niches, which is ground-breaking since cross socio-technical system interactions is an underdeveloped area in existing sustainable transitions literature.² Collectively, these chapters propose that a detailed study of socio-technical interactions can reveal how social actors build bridges across systems, shedding understanding on how new opportunities to address sustainable transitions emerge.

In this context, Chapter 7 posits the integration of energy systems by considering the coupling of natural gas and heating. This chapter presents energy system integration as a methodological approach to understanding the architecture of this sort of systems. Similarly, Chapter 8 considers the institutional and technological symbiotic interactions between energy and mobility within cities. The chapter proposes the combination of longitudinal analysis and ‘neighbouring’ analysis (identifying coupling between practises) using an analytical strategy to study these complex interactions.

Chapter 9 analyses the complex interactions between social demands and scientific knowledge production. The chapter uses knowledge mapping techniques to understand how research priorities in Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania are aligned with the main socio-economic challenges expressed in the sdgs. Finally, Chapter 10 studies how a social organisation can trigger niche building by generating alliances between diverse stakeholders in cities. This chapter discusses how external forces (landscape shocks) influence niche development using analysis of social networks as an empirical approach.

Referencias

Köhler, Jonathan, Geels, Frank W., Kern, Florian, Markard, Jochen, Onsongo, Elsie, Wieczorek, Anna, Alkemade, Floortje, Avelino, Flor, Bergek, Anna, Boons, Frank, Fünfschilling, Lea, Hess, David, Holtz, Georg, Hyysalo, Sampsa, Jenkins, Kirsten, Kivimaa, Paula, Martiskainen, Mari, McMeekin, Andrew, Mühlemeier, Marie Susan, Nykvist, Bjorn, Pel, Bonno, Raven, Rob, Rohracher, Harald, Sandén, Björn, Schot, Johan, Sovacool, Benjamin, Turnheim, Bruno, Welch, Dan, and Wells, Peter. ‘An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions.’ Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 31 (June 2019): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2019.01.004.

Universidad de Antioquia, Science Policy Research Unit of University of Sussex, and the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium. Transformative Metrics Workshop, Medellín, Colombia, October 5–6, 2020.