Chapter 5: Regimes and values in the Global South
5.3. Discussion
5.3.5. Framework for exploring contested sustainabilities in transitions
Several authors have critiqued the underlying conceptualisation and criteria of sustainability adopted in sustainable transition case selection and theory (Shove and Walker, 2007a), and the over-emphasis on financial efficiency (Smith et al., 2013) and environmental considerations.
Notably, Silver and Marvin (2016) stress the presence of ‘contested transitions’ in relation to African urban energy regimes. This chapter finds that such contestations largely surround conceptualisations and criteria of ‘sustainability’.
In the City’s case a number of regime policy reconfiguration agendas were identified. These roughly coincide with the four dimensions of sustainability i.e. environmental, social, economic and governance. First, the City of CT has established a social reconfiguration agenda that incorporates a range of criteria and indicators of the social dimension of transitions. These include a focus on poverty alleviation, redistribution, inequality, marginalisation, access and affordability, social needs, social welfare and justice. The identification of reconfigurations based on aspects of social sustainability due to the prominence of social considerations in infrastructure transitions in the Global South. Second, the City’s environmental reconfiguration agenda explicitly incorporates a range of criteria and indicators for measuring environmental sustainability. These include renewable energy, energy efficiency, electricity consumption reduction and climate mitigation.
Although environmental sustainability has been fleshed out more in sustainable transition case selection and theory, researchers nevertheless tend to adopt a narrow and vague conceptualisation of environmental sustainability (Genus and Coles, 2010). The City’s case, to some extent, demonstrates a broader definition of environmental performance.
Third, a range of economic criteria for sustainability may be extrapolated from the City’s infrastructure and economic policy and goals. These include resource decoupling68, internalising costs, livelihoods and improvements in quality of life, consideration of labour intensity, job potentials and economic opportunities, economic localisation, development and well-being and industrial development in both incumbent and potentially reconfigured socio-technical systems. On
68 Decoupling consumption from economic growth
127 the contrary, apart from a focus on financial feasibility and the market-based underpinning of the MLP (Shove and Walker, 2007a) economic aspects of sustainability are also ill-defined in sustainable transition studies. Further, numerous governance-related aspects of sustainability are manifest in relation to the City of CT’s electricity regime and reconfiguration agendas. These include issues of transparency, accountability and corporate governance of institutions involved in network infrastructure. From the above a multi-criteria framework that adequately addresses the four pillars (economic, environmental, social and governance) and concomitant indicators of ‘sustainable’
transitions may be inferred. This is represented in Figure 5.15.
Figure 5.15: Multi-criteria framework for evaluating sustainable transitions
Social
•Poverty alleviation
•Access and afforability
•Redistribution
•Inequality
•Marginalisation
•Social needs
•Social welfare
•Justice
Economic
•Decoupling
•Support for GDP
•Livelihoods
•Job potential
•Localisation
•Industrial development
•Growth in sector
Environmental
•Low-carbon
•Efficient
•Smart
•Green
•Renewable
•Comnsumption reduction
Governance
•Transparency
•Participation
•Corporate governance
•Accountability
•Corruption
•Decision-making REGIME RECONFIGURATION
AGENDAS
Sustainability Outcomes and Indicators
128 Specifically, this chapter highlighted that several competing reconfiguration processes have been initiated in relation to the City’s electricity regime. This has resulted in a range of nascent interventions and niches being incorporated into the incumbent regime. These interventions are at different stages of diffusion and adoption. Thus, due to contested policy agendas, a hybrid regime that achieves a mixture of sustainability indicators (economic, environmental, social and governance), to varying degrees, is emerging.69 This provides a basis for categorising transitions according to the extent of change or reconfiguration of the regime. This correspondingly may inform a sustainability framework that incorporates the process or temporal scales of transitions.
In brief, it is possible to classify transitions in terms of: no transition, partial transition, hybrid transition, or ‘radical transition’. Only the latter could be regarded as a fully ‘transitioned’ or reconfigured socio-technical system with a completely different structure and function. This classification offers a mechanism to clearly define the extent of reconfiguration of a socio-technical regime under study.
A temporal axis is useful in the assessment of long-term processes of change. This responds to a critique by Shove and Walker (2007a) that sustainable transition cases are often vague and unclear as to what constitutes a ‘transitioned’ socio-technical system. A temporal dimension can further enable a distinction between sustainable transitions as a process of becoming or an end result.
Figure 5.16 provides a diagrammatic representation of the temporal dimensions of sustainable reconfigurations.
Figure 5.16: Temporal dimensions of sustainable reconfigurations
69 Further, in previous sections the presence of hybrid regime features were identified in relation to mixed institutional features, i.e. competitive versus state-owned monopolies (Eberhard 2010) and informal and formal socio-technical structures.
NO TRANSITION [Incumbent STS]
PARTIAL TRANSITION [Adjusted STS]
HYBRID TRANSITION [Hybrid STS]
RADICAL TRANSITION [Reconfigured]
0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5
1 2 3 4
Extent of reconfiguration (sustainabletransition)
Time or temporal dimension of sustainable transition [Transition as process < > Transition as end result
129 The above framework provides a more robust conceptualisation of sustainability for exploring transitions; in terms of process, timeframes, criteria and indicators. Notably, it enables a more explicit identification of the pillars and criteria of sustainability that are primarily being investigated or are manifest within specific transition cases or contexts. This to some extent reconciles sustainable transitions with more integrated conceptualisations of sustainability including ‘Just Sustainabilities’ (Agyeman et al., 2013) and ‘Just Transitions’ (Swilling and Annecke, 2012). The above framework further integrate indicators such as inter alia social sustainability (Genus and Coles, 2008), improvement in quality of life, well-being, livelihoods, justice and equity, control and ownership over resources (Schlosberg, 2012a; Lawhon and Murphy, 2011), and development and economic opportunity into a transitions paradigm.
Exploring the City’s electricity regime illustrates that the framing and criteria of sustainability, in relation to socio-technical transitions, are contested and contextual. Thus, a broadened conceptualisation of ‘sustainable’ transitions is particularly important for applying a transitions and STS framework in diverse contexts, where different dimensions of sustainability are prioritised and manifest in transition processes. A robust sustainability conceptualisation thus has general application as a framework to evaluate sustainable transitions in other contexts.