What are sustainability transitions?

Have you ever considered how societies become more sustainable? Have you ever thought about what it takes to transition to a renewable energy system or sustainable agriculture practices?

The field of Sustainability Transitions emerged in the early 2000s in recognition of the need to address major sustainability challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity.

Sustainability transitions engage with the complex multi-dimensional processes of change within socio-technical systems over time.

These transitions are multi-actor and multi-scalar processes driven by the desire to tackle numerous sustainability problems. These processes of change are inherently messy, encountering contestation, normativity, technological challenges, policy prioritization, power and justice dynamics, geographic sensitivities, feedback loops and more. Research on socio-technical systems, within which transitions occur, explicitly explores the interaction between, and intertwined nature of, society and technology. We recognize and embrace uncertainty, multiple and diverging solution pathways, values, contestation, disagreement, co-evolution of systems and the trade-offs between stability and change.

Sustainability transitions are not only about the emergence of new systems, but also about destabilization, disruption and decline of unsustainable and deeply locked-in practices.

Popular empirical topics include renewable energy technologies, low carbon mobility, sustainable agriculture and farming practices, health care, construction and the built environment, social innovation – such as energy villages or food cooperatives – water, the circular economy, and more. 

Our Research Agenda, published in 2019 in STRN’s official journal, EIST, specifies many research and policy challenges that the network is currently engaged with.

Visit our Learning Resources page to learn more, explore prominent books and special issues in the field of transitions and watch an extensive set of webinars. 

Our journal – Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (EIST) – is the leading, high-impact journal in the field.

The Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN) is the preeminent international, scientific body engaged in the advancement of the field of sustainability transitions. Four core goals of the network orient our activities: knowledge, education, exchange and outreach.

Our flagship event, the annual International Sustainability Transitions Conference (IST), welcomes 500+ scholars, practitioners and policy makers to debate, discuss and share new and cutting edge research in the field of sustainability transitions.

We organize theoretical and methodological trainings for PhD Candidates and early career researchers. These annual, week-long programmes train future generations of transitions scholars and policy makers.

We foster science-policy engagement through invited lectures, panels and policy debates by policy makers. Many members of our community are actively engaged in science-policy impact, serving on scientific committees and contributing to high impact policy reports. 

Eleven thematic groups are bottom up initiatives with a specific focus. Our 5000+ community welcomes a wide range of diverse perspectives and expertise in the field of sustainability transitions with strong representation across the globe. Our sister network, the Network for early career researchers in Sustainability Transitions (NEST), is run by and for PhD and early career researchers.