Adaptive governance and economic resilience: Deliverable 6.8 of the TURAS Project

Why is governance so central to sustainability transitions? A superficial answer to this question would argue that these transitions are about the policies for and the politics of a significant move towards a resilient and sustainable society. This answer correctly emphasizes the important interplay between the State, civil society and the market in formulating appropriate measures (policies for transitions) as well as the importance of bargaining power when it comes to negotiating between alternative trajectories (politics of transition). But on a deeper and arguably more relevant level, the reason why governance constitutes both a bottleneck and a key to societal transitions is that the latter will involve a much broader, complex and fuzzier set of interventions than merely formulating adequate policies: changing the current social-ecological regimes in European cities and regions will require transcending the State-civil society-market triangle and overcome seemingly insurmountable barriers, powerful vested interests, incommensurate metrics, dazzling complexities and a multiplicity of agencies: in practice, the State is not a unified actor but includes both political and administrative agencies; civil society is also diverse and contains potentially antagonistic interests; finally, the market is a place where radically different players such as multinational corporations and small family business interact. Dealing with such an intricate problem as social-ecological transitions therefore requires new ways of approaching societal problems, forging new politico-economic alliances and reframing the terms of the debate – and many of the innovations necessary to achieve this are likely to be social and related to governance rather than technological.

So how can we govern the adaption of European cities and regions to the urgency of the current social, environmental and economic crises? How can we make extant governance models more adaptive so as to ensure sustainable and resilient transitions rather than short-run solutions?

For additional information on this deliverable please email Stephan Kampelmann at stephan@osmosnetwork.com

For additional information on the TURAS project see here, or email marcus.collier@tcd.ie.