Conceptualising variations in societal transformations towards sustainability

Calls for societal transformations in response to climate change and unsustainable trajectories are surging in scientific journals, political proposals and news media. The multifaceted usages of the concept of transformation creates challenges for scientific assessments, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as well as for the implementation of the Paris Agreement process, the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, the EU’s long-term climate strategy, the European Green Deal, and other political decisions. In this paper, we suggest an analytical framework to differentiate between how sustainability transformations are made sense of in terms of system level, pace and scope. We distinguish between four general modes of transformations: quantum leap, convergent, emergent, and gradual approaches. We also discuss how they can be used to make sense of interventions to foster major sustainability transformations. We expand on three examples of interventions that were pertinent in our cross-country studies: technological innovations, transformative learning and the formulation of new narratives of sustainable societies.


Introduction
There is an urgent need to transform the world.This claim features frequently in scientific journals, national plans and news media.Incremental change simply will not meet the enormous societal challenges of rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and safeguarding the environment while increasing access to energy, eradicating poverty and securing food and health for all (Brand, 2016;Fazey et al., 2018;Hölscher et al., 2018;Linnér and Wibeck, 2019;Patterson et al., 2017).There is now a mere decade before the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the heading of "transforming our world" should be achieved.Referring to transformation in various ways over 300 times, the IPCC special report on limiting global warming to 1.5°C reinforces that 'this temperature goal would require transformative systemic change, integrated with sustainable development' (IPCC, 2018: 16).With one million species risking extinction, a core argument for the 2019 global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is that transformative changes are imperative in order to restore and safeguard nature (IPBES, 2019).
While these proposals appear to be in accord, a challenge for global governance is the multifaceted usages of the concept of transformation in the context of sustainable development.Not only the IPCC report and the IPBES report, but also many Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, and the EU climate strategy and the European Green Deal, refer to different scopes, scales and pace of transformations as well as to diverging societal goals and sometimes conflicting political agendas.In international policy proposals and scientific reports, the fundamental questions of what is to be transformed, how, by whom, to what end, and to what extent transformation can be governed, are often less pronounced.
However, when taking a closer look, we see that how sustainability transformations are understood varies significantly within and across societies.To avoid the possiblity that transformation merely becomes a buzzword antonym for incremental change, as well as to be able to assess the appropriateness and feasibility of transformation strategies, the different perceptions of the means and goals of societal transformation towards sustainable development need detailed analysis (e.g.Blythe et al., 2018;Fazey et al., 2018;Feola, 2015;O'Brien, 2011).This paper aims to contribute to the analyses of explicating the different agendas and interests in transformation, by providing a basic framework for the different ways in which the concept of transformation is made sense of by various actors.Elaborating upon the concept provides 'an opportunity to radically rethink and rebuild social, ecological, and economic relations' (Gillard et al., 2016: 256) and to make the ideological and societal choices for deep decarbonisation more tangible for both policy-makers and the public.Understanding these varying expectations is pivotal to the call for analyses of the many endeavours to govern sustainability transformations.How transformations are construed has profound implications for transformative governance strategies.
To assist in generating clarity on the varieties of transformations, this paper examines what types of changes are called for and how the system boundaries, scale and pace of transformation are framed.Based on these distinctions we discuss governance pathways and transformative interventions.In addition, we suggest two pertinent areas for research on and for transformation.

Method
This paper builds on findings from comprehensive studies that have taken a mixed-methods and cross-country approach to sense-making analysis (for more details, see Linnér and Wibeck, 2019;Wibeck et al., 2019).These studies explored varieties as well as commonalities in sense-makings of societal transformations towards sustainability, across actor groups, communicative genres and countries.To this end, multistrand analyses combining several types of data and methods (Bryman, 2006) were conducted, integrating four types of data: 1) Research literature; 2) Policy documents; 3) Media texts; 4) Focus group discussions.
The analyses of the research literature, policy documents and international media texts were undertaken in order to provide a broad context for the variety of sense-makings of transformations.These analyses explored how societal transformations towards sustainability have been made sense of, over time and in different parts of the world.Our approach to sense-making analysis is inspired by dialogical communication theory, particularly the works of Bakhtin (1986); Linell (1998Linell ( , 2009) ) and Marková et al. (2007).This means that we conceive of sense-making as a process in which dialogue between people, arguments and ideas shapes our thinking, understandings and positions towards our surrounding world.We pay particular attention to linguistic resources that contribute to sense-making of complex, unfamiliar and/or contested concepts and phenomena, specifically analogies (Marková et al., 2007), metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980), framing (Entman, 1993;Goffman, 1974) and narratives (Harré et al., 1999).
Peer-reviewed scholarly literature was identified through a Scopus database search employing the search string TITLE-ABS-KEY (societ* W/15 transform*) AND NOT (©PRE/10 societ*) on the titles, abstracts and key words of articles, reviews, book chapters and books.The search was delimited to publications in English up to 2016, resulting in a total of 6549 hits.The search results were analysed through: 1) mapping the distribution of the identified papers over time; 2) categorising the papers with respect to subject areas and geographical origins, using Scopus' analysis function; and 3) scrutinising the papers' most frequently used terms over three distinct time periods (1970-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2016), using the VOSviewer visualisation software.
The study's analysis of policy documents included all the 162 Intended and Decided Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement that had been submitted at the time of our analysis.These NDCs represent 190 parties.Background documents to which the NDCs refer in relation to transformation were also included in the analysis.Moreover, the analysis encompassed the 65 Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) of the UN Sustainable Development Goals submitted during 2016-2017.NVivo software was used to code and categorise the NDCs and the VNRs with respect to the types of actors and transformation actions specified in the documents.
International, English-language, media texts were identified through the Retriever database.Three different search strings were used: 1) to gain an overview of media coverage of the broader field of transformation towards sustainability (transformation* AND sustainab*); 2) to gain an overview of the narrower field of social or societal transformation towards sustainability ('soci* transformation*' AND sustainab*); 3) to home in on a sample of texts that explicitly addressed societal transformations and sustainability ('societal transformation*' AND sustainab*).The first two samples were analysed for dominant frames through mapping the most frequent words, using NVivo software.The third sample was subject to in-depth qualitative analysis, focusing on, among others, 10 dimensions: (1) main focus, (2) root causes of unsustainability, (3) forms of change (e.g.incremental, disruptive), (4) goals of deliberate change actions, (5) target populations, (6) temporal dimensions (e.g.short term or century wide), ( 7) system level (e.g.civilisational or sectoral), (8) drivers, (9) agents, and (10) linguistic resources (e.g., metaphors).
Focus groups with lay people in Cabo Verde, China, Fiji, the USA and Sweden were conducted in collaboration with an international team of researchers, to enable in-depth analysis of sense-making in action.Four focus groups were conducted in each of these sites, encompassing a total of 20 groups with in total 136 participants.The focus groups were undertaken in places where the transformation concept has been explicitly used, although in different ways, in official policy documents.To ensure breadth in the study, we also took care to include study sites that are culturally, politically and economically diverse, and that also confront different types of vulnerabilities to environmental and social change (for details of the study, see Wibeck et al., 2019).
The studies first took a vertical approach to analysis, exploring sense-making in each of these contexts separately, with a particular focus on analogies, metaphors, stories and framing.In addition, we constructed an analytical framework based on our readings of the societal transformations literature of ex-post transformations (Linnér and Wibeck, 2019).This framework paid attention to how the different sets of empirical data made sense of the goals, scale, scope, pace, drivers, agents, and periodisations of transformative change.
The vertical analyses formed the basis for a subsequent horizontal analysis, identifying varieties and commonalities across the data, with a particular focus on societal narratives of transformations towards sustainability.

Conceptualising transformation
To distinguish transformation from incremental and other forms of change, we suggest that it be defined as a deep and sustained, nonlinear systemic change, generally involving cultural, political, technological, economic, social and/or environmental processes (Fazey et al., 2018;Feola, 2015;Linnér and Wibeck, 2019;Patterson et al., 2017).Transition is oftentimes used interchangeably with transformation.However, the etymological difference is important: transition originates from the notion of 'going across' from one state to another, whereas transformation connotes a 'change in form or shape'.Rather than being synonyms, they are complementary to understanding societal change, with transition primarily addressing the technological systems, whereas societal transformation also addresses a broader range of social practices and knowledge (Hölscher et al., 2018;Scoones et al., 2015).
A wide variety of transformations to sustainability have been proposed across the world, which differ in terms of both goals and processes.Decision-makers and researchers need to make explicit what type of transformation that is intended.To do this, we need to consider system boundaries as well as the pace at which a transformation is intended to occur.Overarching schematic types of societal transformation can be identified along two axes, depending on their focus (Fig. 1).On the y-axis we find the speed of transformations, from sudden and disruptive to gradual and protracted change.An example of the former is the 11-year perspective in the joint report by Future Earth and Earth League (2018:11), which concludes that 'Pathways to limit warming to 1.5 °C require at least a halving of emissions to 2030… Such rapid reductions require transformations of full sociotechnical systems, across all sectors and scales'.An example of the latter is Thomas Homer-Dixon's ( 2009) call for cultural transformation needed to address climate change: 'The shift to a zero-carbon world economy is going to take at least a century'.
The historical analogies used in the research literature to make sense of transformations also range from the extensive period of the great European transformation of industrialisation and modernisation, which took place over the course of centuries to the relatively more rapid British abolition of slavery, which took place over fifty years.These are two analogies that are often used to make sense of contemporary sustainability transformations (e.g., Azar, 2007;Leggewie and Messner, 2012;Pearson and Foxon, 2012;Westley et al., 2011).Other examples are the protracted transformation of the Neolithic revolution (Leggewie and Messner, 2012), in contrast with the contemporary rapid transformation of the city of Guangzhou in China, to which focus group participants bore witness (Wibeck et al., 2019).
The x-axis signals the scale of the system that is transformed, ranging from mega-transformations spanning entire civilizations to the transformation of particular systems or parts of systems.Rapid developments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and digitalisation, including the associated reshaping of cultural and economic practices throughout societies across the globe is an example of a mega-transformation, while particular transformations promote changes within specific systems, such as the Energiewende in Germany, which aims for a piecemeal transformation of the energy sector by 2050, or Nigeria's Agricultural Transformation Agenda, which seeks to transform the agricultural sector through climate-smart agriculture that addresses both food security and climate change challenges (UNFCCC, 2015).
The upper-left quadrant of Fig. 1 represents the quantum leap approach to transformation; that is, sudden and abrupt social changes in which new politics and practices appear as 'mutations' that break with the steady progress of current social organisation.In the upper-right quadrant -the convergent approach -we find new initiatives promoting abrupt changes in particular societal segments, such as the concerted transformation initiative of 13 major cities around the world to have all new buildings operate at net zero carbon by 2030 (C40, n.d.).In the lower-left quadrant, the evolutionary emergent approach typically relies on conceptual breakthroughs that recombine familiar elements to create new forms of social organisation and world views, such as globalisation.The lower-right quadrant -the gradualist approach -represents piecemeal targeted governance approaches, in which familiar initiatives are combined or repackaged to attain goals targeting a particular issue or segment of society, such as the renewable energy sector which has developed over the course of the last fifty years, but is still several decades from having successfully and completely transformed energy systems in virtually all countries, with the possible exception of some regions and countries like Iceland, which at present obtains 89 per cent of its primary energy supply and almost all of its electricity from renewable-energy sources (OECD, 2019).
The location of these examples within the four-quadrant schematic can of course, and should, be debated.It depends very much on how we make sense of the examples and where we draw the system boundaries.For instance, the C40 cities initiative aming for zero-carbon emissions from new buildings can be described as a rapid transformation of the building sector, but it can also be seen as one leverage point in a protracted transformation towards sustainable cities, which in itself can be seen as one element that can instigate a society-wide, even civilisational, sustainability transformation.Our ambition with the schematic overview of transformation initiatives is not to categorically establish how they should be defined, but the typology rather serves as an heuristic categorisation enabling us to reflect upon the different perspectives on various forms of transformation and how they can be accomplished.

Transformative governance
The typology of transformations can be useful for distinguishing between the rationales of transformative governance proposals, which range through the whole spectrum, from particular sectors or local places to civilisation-wide global aspirations.Naturally, the governance arrangements will differ substantially depending on the scale of the transformations, but also depending on whether transformation is envisioned as a slow process over the course of several decades or a rapid endeavour in a single decade or two.
As regards the pace of transformations, one rationale for governance pathways is the rapid introduction of 'megapolicies' at a civilisational scale involving technology, energy, politics, and lifestyles to meet the acute environmental threats (e.g.Schellnhuber et al., 2010).Others reject rapid-pace approaches.For instance, Levin et al. (2012), characterise the 'quantum leap' governance approach as a 'one-shot "big bang"' strategy, which is too simplistic and linear for 'wicked' problems.As feedback changes over the course of a transformation process, transformative governance measures need to be implemented and adjusted stepwise in order to be adaptive to emergent transformations in the economy, technologies, society and culture.Policy shocks can also reduce legitimacy and compliance (Göpel, 2016;Levin et al., 2012), triggering counter reactions that can be exploited by populist movements.Ian Scoones et al. (2015:5) propose a 'slow race' transformation which, while urgently taking on pressing environmental challenges, will do so in a progressive manner to allow for 'inclusion, deliberation, Fig. 1.A schematic typology of societal transformations.The yaxis indicates the pace of transformations and the x-axis signals the scale of the transformed system.The figure is adapted from Linnér and Wibeck (2019: 57, 152).The typology is inspired by Durant and Diehl's (1989) analysis of transformations in US foreign policy arenas.
democracy and justice'.
At the system level, some authors and policy documents target a global-scale transformation.The 2030 Agenda is the paramount example, whose emphasis on the global implementation of 17 goals as an inseparable entity indicates the world-wide transformation of entire societies towards ecologically, socially and economically sustainable development.Other examples of major transformations brought up in science, policy and public debates address the international economic order, suggesting for instance a socially transformative World War IIlike mobilization effort to decarbonize society (McKibben, 2016) or the complete rejection of the capitalist system, which Haley Stevenson (2015) labels 'radical transformationism'.
Although some type of civilisational-scale transformation is often the implicit or ultimate goal, the bulk of the transformation governance targets specific sectors or issues in societies, such as the transport sector, energy systems or urban areas.Many of the NDCs target transformations of specific sectors, such as energy or transport.Others seek transformations toward decarbonisation and resilience, which has a wider societal focus.The different scales do not necessarily conflict or have different ultimate societal goals.For instance, Patterson et al. ( 2017) advocated a small-win incremental strategy to ultimately achieve a major societal transformation.Tangible outcomes in a smaller setting, such as a food system, can set in motion large-scale changes.Others call for a small-win governance strategy that can trigger a break with path dependencies, which is captured in concepts such as 'directed incrementalism' (Grunwald, 2007), 'progressive incrementalism' (Levin et al., 2012), 'strategy of incremental change' (Patterson et al., 2017) or 'radical incremental transformation' (Göpel, 2016).The narrative of a major transformation is still necessary to guide action, provide inspiration and help to change perspectives on what is possible to change (cf.Kuenkel, 2019;Leggewie and Messner, 2012).Yet, the policies are introduced in particular settings to provide examples or stepping stones for a larger societal change.
To illustrate this line of argument with an example from contemporary political discourse, when US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders outlines his vision for a Green New Deal, societal transformation is essential.In the near term it is necessary to: 'Transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to 100 percent energy efficiency and sustainable energy by 2030 at the latest' (Sanders, 2019).Yet, this one element in the broader strategy aims to 'generate the political will necessary for a wholesale transformation of our society' (ibid.).
Another example can be taken from the appeal for just transformations, 'solidarna transformacja', under the Polish presidency at COP 24, where the resulting declaration is underpinned with an economywide, but protracted-pace rationale: a step-wise structural change in which support for workers whose jobs will be lost or changed is fundamental in order to assure popular support for major changes over time.
While the examples above illustrate the logics of small-win governance strategies, ultimately aiming for a large-scale transformation, the UN General Assembly's decision on the 2030 Agenda seemingly rests on a reverse logic.The 2030 Agenda explicitly aims for a largescale sustainability transformation, while it is less clear-cut about how this will be leveraged through particular transformations of specific systems.The 2030 Agenda is an example not only of a major transformation, but of a quantum leap transformation.It is not only aiming for concerted society-wide change around the world, but also a very rapid process: 'We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to achieving this Agenda and utilizing it to the full to transform our world for the better by 2030' (UN General Assembly, 2015: para. 91).The 169 targets can be seen as check points to ensure that progress is made, or smaller system leverage points to initiate transformative actions.However, when we examine the Voluntary National Reviews of the proposed actions to realise the 2030 Agenda in the member countries, it is hard to see how the targets can instigate such rapid and wide-ranging change over the 15-year time period of the Agenda.
The examples above illustrate the importance of distinguishing between the system and pace aspects, when assessing how visions of transformation should be transferred into concrete policy pathways.The conceptual framework of this paper is not only useful to point out the different strategies of 'small-win' or 'big bang', but it also reminds us of the necessity to analyse the smaller-scale system transformations in the light of the full society transformations and their implications, such as in terms of economic distribution, political power, and participation.Distinguishing between types of transformations can also facilitate reflection on interventions for spurring transformative action.In our data, we see that, when discussing transformation governance, interventions are often referred to in generic terms, and the scale and pace dimensions are often not foregrounded.Whether we seek to leverage rapid action for comprehensive, civilisation-wide transformation in ten years, or whether we aim for transformations of, for instance, countries' transport systems over several decades, has significant governance implications.

Transformative interventions
Despite all the ongoing efforts to identify governance pathways for sustainability transformations, we can learn from historical analogies that efforts to govern large-scale transformations are unlikely to unfold exactly as intended.The complexity of the world system's interactions makes it far too complicated to fully control the transformative processes (Flood, 2002;Miller and Page, 2007).Nonetheless, transformative interventions can set us on a path.When we examined society-wide transformation strategies across the world in the aforementioned studies, we identified a long list of suggested drivers for transformation, such as visions, values, political leadership, public engagement, communication, political decisions, institutional innovations, rules and practices for economic exchange, technological development, storytelling in art, performances, and literature, life style changes, and economic measures encompassing a broad range of actions from green finance initiatives and circular-economy incentives to replacing the current political-economic order (Linnér and Wibeck, 2019).
Here, we briefly mention three prominent interventions to illustrate the importance of reflecting on the system and pace dimensions: technological innovations, transformative learning and formulating new narratives of sustainable societies.
The diffusion and adoption of renewable and resource-efficient innovations are generally seen in the literature and policy documents around the world as fundamental elements of sustainability transformations, especially in connection with energy production and consumption.In policy documents, technological change is sometimes presented as the sole driver, but in the societal transformation literature it is generally seen as a necessary, but not sufficient element of transformations (Linnér and Wibeck, 2019).However, the time frames for the realisation of technologies throughout the innovation chain are very uncertain.In response to the climate change energy technology innovations initiatives in connection with the Paris Agreement of at least a doubling of research, development and demonstrations to meet the climate temperature goal, Gross et al. (2018) analysed the historical evidence for possible time frames of energy supply and energy end-use technologies from invention to market diffusion and far-reaching deployment.They conclude that the historical examples vary from 20 to close to 70 years, with three to four decades being a common timeframe.Even though we need to be careful in extrapolating from previous experiences, we can conclude that the available historical data challenge the aspirations for an urgent large-scale diffusion of new technologies to achieve fossil-free transformations in at least all the high-income countries within the next couple of decades.
Transformative learning surfaces as a key driver in the sustainability transformation literature (Linnér and Wibeck, 2019) and in focus groups in countries like Cabo Verde and Fiji (Wibeck et al., 2019) as being fundamental for societal transformations.The core rationale is that actors should always expect the unexpected in societal development.Transformative learning involves awareness that actors' sensemaking about how the world works needs to change and a search for new ways for shifting meaning perspective by reconsidering assumptions, exploring new knowledge, probing new roles, taking novel courses of action, shifting perspectives or broadening an understanding of how others make sense of the world (Mezirow, 2000).
The need for education and learning was pronounced in our data as a society-wide intervention, addressing everyday behaviours as well as fundamental knowledge structures and deep-seated values.While perspective shifts can occur rather rapidly, transformative learning is generally seen as a more long-term intervention aimed at empowering actors to be adaptive in a transforming world and to create a knowledge base for enduring change.
Shifting narratives is another highlighted dimension of perspective change, which pivots on changes in how we understand ourselves, in our worldviews or belief systems.Any major societal transformation has coincided with shifting preferences and identities (Mezirow, 2000).After two centuries of a narrative of perpetual economic growth hinging on an abundance of fossil energy and natural resources, societies now need new narratives to galvanise and guide transformation towards sustainability (Leggewie and Messner, 2012).Narratives can provide a language for enunciating and deliberating upon desired futures that can challenge us to rethink our presuppositions about what we can actually change -in the personal, practical and political spheres (O'Brien, 2018).
Shifting meaning perspectives often occurs over a long time period, but perspective shifts can also happen rather rapidly, like the eruption of popular protests against slavery in the British Isles during the 1790s (Hochschild, 2005).For example, in the wake of the historically unprecedented school strikes for the climate with over six million people taking to the streets over the course of a week in September 2019, the notion of a 'social tipping point' came to the fore.Could it be that countries around the world were now experiencing a moment when a cultural mass movement erupted and changed not only the climate discourse, but the course of history?
Consider Chenoweth and Stephan's (2011) findings that it only requires 3.5 % of the population to actively engage in protests for change to be unstoppable.Amongst others, this rule has directly inspired the Extinction Rebellion movement (BBC, 2019).When 170,000 people in New Zealand, almost four percent of the population, participate in the climate marches, Chenoweth and Stephan's 3.5 % rule spurs expectations of such a social tipping point.Whether this will transform the New Zealand society remains to be seen.Here, it can be useful to consider not only the pace, but also the system level of change.Chenoweth and Stephan have studied 323 violent and non-violent protests that took place between 1900 and 2006.Most of these aimed to topple a political regime or oppressive system.Some 3.5 % successes, like the singing revolution in Estonia, proved to be lasting.For others, like many of the Arab spring protests, the success was more short-lived and the lasting effects of political change are less certain.And, at a system level, most achieved political regime changes, but not necessarily a deeper societal change in line with the calls for profound societal transformations towards sustainability involving technology, economics and world-views.

Conclusions
To meaningfully engage the concept of societal transformation in decision-making and research, we need specificity about what societal aspects are being addressed, through which type of changes and within what time frame.Without such clarity, it is difficult to assess whether the proposed governance mechanisms are reasonable, meaningful and feasible.In this paper we have argued that, as a first step, clarity about the pace and system level is essential when distinguishing between different versions of societal transformation towards sustainability.Such clarity can enable us to discern at an elementary level whether the scope of transformation corresponds to expressed societal goals as well as to proposed governance pathways, and the types of interventions that are intended to guide the system change.Furthermore, we have argued that a typology of societal transformations that distinguishes between the paces of change as well as between system levels is a useful tool for supporting deliberations about whether, how and with what implications a particular transformation, which may be aiming at rapid change in a particular sector, can at the same time form a leverage point for society-wide transformations on a more protracted time scale.
Regarding the scope of transformations, the 2030 Agenda illustrates the system and pace aspects.It is hard to see how the 2030 Agenda's ultimate aspiration of 'transforming our world' could be accomplished by a quantum leap in only 15 years.The 169 targets are not designed to disrupt the economic, political and social systems in such a way that such revolutionary change would occur.Rather, the targets and the countries' corresponding actions as they come across in the Voluntary National Reviews will at best set us on a path towards an emergent transformation, where protracted state and non-state approaches can serve to catalyse larger changes.Nevertheless, the vision of a quantum leap towards sustainability or decarbonisation can in itself be an important governance practice.The 2030 Agenda plays into a narrative of what a just, holistic and global sustainable development requires.That such rapid civilisational-wide system change may not be realistic today, is precisely the point of utopian thinking, in which the ideal goals for society are unattainable under present circumstances.This recognition forces deliberation about what needs to be done if the impractical goal is to be achieved, and thus compels us to reconsider what structures are needed to be changed and what alternative practices that need to be considered (Kumar, 1991).By outlining a desired society, even though it appears unachievable based on current trajectories, the 2030 Agenda compels us to ponder a wider set of alternatives beyond present means that would be needed in order to realise this desired future.
In contrast to the quantum leap approach, the gradual approaches seek to begin with what is possible in the near term for a system change.Interventions can also work with different logics regarding system level and change, without necessarily being contradictory in practice.While technological innovations may support a rapid change, it is also likely that there will be a considerable time-lag from the innovation stage until widespread deployment.Learning and narratives as interventions are usually associated with a more protracted approach in building momentum for deep cultural and social transformations.Yet, if the social tipping point hypothesis would hold true, they can also be part of abrupt changes.
Of course, these processes can work at different paces.Profound civilizational transformations may require the combination of convergent transformations in circular economies, or renewable energy transformations need to be combined with protracted changes in education, new narratives on social, ecological and economic relations, and perspective change.
The surge in attention to transformations towards sustainability poses new challenges for research that seeks to contribute to the transformations while also deepening our understanding of such processes.We are still lacking research on how the different versions of transformation play out in practice and how that can inform theorybuilding on societal transformation process.
Further analyses of historical and contemporary examples at both the particular and civilisational scales from around the world would provide analogies to spur reflection about transformation beyond the 2030 Agenda process.There is quite a rich literature on niche developments in renewable energy technology systems, but developments in other sectors and how these different sectors interact in different places around the world still remains largely unexplored.While the transition literature provides many such examples of niche developments in the energy and urban sectors, we see the need for a broader palette of studies, not only of whether and how niche developments can trigger transformations in other particular sectors, but also of the extent to which they can influence civilisational-scale system change, within what timeframes, and under the influence of what restraining factors.
Finally, the need for 'a common outlook and for common principles to inspire and guide the peoples of the world in the preservation and enhancement of the human environment' (United Nations, 1972) has been an emblematic notion in global environmental governance since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (Linnér and Selin, 2013).Yet, the variations in sense making about the desired means and ends of societal transformations around the world require that the research community advances its explorations across countries and groups of both conflicting and converging transformation narratives.