Thread by @julialeventon

SOOOO many good papers giving knowledge about #Sustainability #Transformations in the last week+. Here are some highlights: We are talking POWER in governance and science today. 🧵 1/14

First up, @mmbuchs gives an excellent comparison of universal basic income and universal basic services according to their compatibility with planetary boundaries; needs satisfaction; fair distribution; & democratic governance. 2/14 sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Milena concludes with “The sustainable welfare performance of both UBI and UBS is likely to be shaped by institutional contexts within which they operate”. Governance and decision-making processes are fundamental in transformations. 3/14

On processes of transformation, @acherp and @jessicadjewell offer this belter of a paper. They compare est. max. growth rates of renewables to that envisioned in IPCC 1.5 and 2 scenarios. To meet scenarios, growth must exceed historical precedent. 4/14 nature.com/articles/s4156…

See conclusions for the important finding: “Declining costs of technologies have already led to a relatively high growth in the OECD, although currently this growth is becoming constrained on sociotechnical and political rather than economic grounds” 5/14

And zooming into a detailed case, @beyersfelix and I (yes, sneaking my own in here 😳), look at an example of collaborative governance for transformations in the textile sector. We explore how learning is facilitated… 6/14 sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

When thinking about what works and what doesn’t to create transformation, we show a tension in leaning on (political) CSR relating to roles and capacities for meaningful engagement. 7/14

So... Three papers that point us to issues of power and politics, and that lead us to questions of the role of the state, private sector and citizens in transformations. 8/14

Lets go a bit more ‘meta’ here, and onto a paper from authors inc. @g_kallis From Planetary to Societal Boundaries: “...a critical analysis of dominant social structures and processes and already existing alternatives makes power relations visible.” 9/14 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

And power needs to be visible! Check out reasoning from the all-star team inc. @KevinClimate @PeterJNewell_ @StuartBCapstick They look at why we haven’t yet managed to bend our emissions curve. Power is central, and appears in many forms. 10/14 annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…

🔑🔑🔑“Orthodox schools of thought and research traditions (including highly constrained forms of modeling), particularly in the fields of economics, energy, and climate mitigation, need to be challenged and replaced with, or complemented by, more heterodox approaches.” 11/14

Which is a theme expanded by @EstherTurnhout: The power structures in science are blocking “rethinking and reform”. She argues that a dominant natural science approach limits contribution to transformative change. 12/14 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

In summary #transformation is about reconfiguring power – Including in how we make and implement decisions; and how we define problems and knowledge. These NOT separate issues: see this (marginally older) paper: 13/14 journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

Before I go – if you do transformations work, and perhaps want to push for shifts in problem framings, IPBES are looking for experts to their transformative change assessment 14/14

https://twitter.com/ONet_IPBES/status/1417396476108496905