Transforming Innovation

8/12/2019 Transforming Innovation

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TransformingInnovation for

Sustainability


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As the world gears up for the Rio + 20 conference inJune 2012, many are pinning hopes on SustainableDevelopment Goals (SDGs) as a concrete outcome.First mooted by the Colombian government, theidea is now supported by many governmentsnorth and south, and gures prominently in the

conferences zero draft document and therecommendations of the UN High-level Panel

on Global Sustainability (UN GSP). Many are nowarguing that a set of SDGs should ll gaps in theMillennium Development Goals (MDGs) up totheir 2015 target date and beyond, becoming asuccessor to the MDGs in thinking and action onenvironment and development. Yet, as highlightedin a recent brieng from New Yorks Centre on

International Cooperation, there is little clarity onwhat SDGs should involve, who should set them,and how they can be realised in practice (Evansand Steven 2012).

This commentary article draws on recent researchby the STEPS Centre, the Stockholm ResilienceCentre and the Tellus Institute to argue thatSustainable Development Goals that keep humansocieties within a safe operating space are indeednow urgently needed. However delivering on theserequires a radically new approach to innovation,that gives far greater recognition and power to

grassroots actors and processes, involving themwithin an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics.

INTRODUCTION


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The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability,already emphasised by scientic analysis, has now

been claried with unprecedented precision. A

series of nine planetary boundaries has beenidentied, referring to the biophysical processes

in the Earths system on which human life depends(Rockstrm et al. 2009). Together, these dene a

safe operating space for humanity. Human actions

are rapidly approaching or have alreadytransgressed key global thresholds, increasingthe likelihood of unprecedented ecologicalturbulence. Potentially catastrophic thresholds arein prospect, which will compromise developmentboth globally and locally undoing past progress.The future is uncertain, with surprises and shocksin store. It is increasingly clear that developmentpathways must reconnect with the biospherescapacity to sustain them (Folke et al. 2011).

For the United Nations High-Level Panel on

Global Sustainability (GSP), the Tellus Institutehas now applied its Polestar modelling approachto construct a series of high-level scenarios linkedto the planetary boundaries data (Gerst et al. 2011).These indicate that even with far-reaching policyreforms implemented across nations and withinkey sectors, from energy supply to foodproduction, the world is still likely to transgress

critical planetary boundaries, in particular lossof biodiversity. The conclusion, in a worldwhere auence among billions of formerly poor

communities is rapidly rising and where equitymust be a core pillar of world prosperity in anenvironmentally constrained planet, is thatbusiness as usual is not an option, even a strong,sustained programme of policy adjustments may

be insucient to counter harmful trends. Ourassessment is that the recommendations in theUN GSP report, while certainly being the mostambitious set of policy reforms in support ofsustainability on the global policy scene today,still fall short of delivering what the scenariossuggest is required. Furthermore, based onpast experience, the outcome of the UN Rio+20summit could well be far less ambitious than theUN GSP recommendations. In other words, we facea deeply unsettling risk that the UN Rio +20Summit will not deliver an adequate action plan

for the required transition to a sustainable future.Rather, radical transformations are required inorder to steer away from potential earth systemthresholds and tipping points, and SDGs need, atminimum, to keep global societies within this safeoperating space. An alternative scenario is linkedto a set of provisional SDGs, including thosesummarised in table 1.

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FROMPLANETARY

BOUNDARIES TOSUSTAINABLE

DEVELOPMENT GOALS


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Table 1: Selected provisional sustainable development goals (from amongst those dened by planetary boundaries

and Polestar transition scenarios, Raskin et al. 2010)

Indicator Measure Base year (2005) 2025 2050 2100

Incidence of % of 2005 50 25 6chronic valuehunger1

Population Billion people 1.73 < 2 < 2 < 2in water stress

Volume of 2,600 km3/yr < 4,000 km3/yr of consumptive usefreshwater of blue water resources (runo for

use from rivers, irrigation, industry and domestic use)lakes, aquifersin km3/yr

Climate change CO2 Current level Stabilise < 350 ppm by 2100 and/orconcentration 391 ppm A total climate forcing at equilibrium ofin ppm < 1 W/m2

Land Use Fraction of ~12% < 15 % of land surface on Earthchange global land converted to cropland cover

converted tocultivatedsystems (%)

Rate of Extinction rate 100-1000 < 10 species lost per million species eachBiodiversity as extinctions year, which still is roughly 10 times theLoss per million natural background rate of loss of species per species on Earth

year (E/MSY)

1Proxy also for reduction of absolute poverty

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So, compared with previous major moments ofglobal reection about human and planetary

futures Stockholm in 1972, Rio in 1992 we nowknow much more about what the dynamicplanetary boundaries are, and the scale of thechallenges to be met. Yet our degrees of freedomare closing in. Crises in climate, food, biodiversityand energy are already playing out across local and

global scales, and are set to increase as weapproach critical thresholds. What is now neededis nothing short of major transformation not onlyin our policies and technologies, but in our modesof innovation themselves to enable us tonavigate turbulence and meet SDGs that respectthe safe operating space. Goals such as those intable 1 are inevitably highly ambitious so howcan they be met? Innovation broadly dened as

new ways of doing things, in science andtechnology but also associated institutions andsocial practices has essential roles to play. But

what kinds of innovation are needed?

Recently, a variety of high level panels haveconvened to address sustainability challenges,amongst them the UK Government Foresightexercise on Global Food and Farming Futures; TheEconomics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)initiative, and the Inter-governmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC). All agree on the enormityand urgency of the challenges. But most settle onsolutions based on combinations of internationalco-operation and top-down global and nationalpolicies and management, often relying on rather

nebulous notions of political will. So, for example,the Synthesis report of the UK Foresight projectstates: [T]here is still much more that nationaland international organisations can do to tacklehunger This will not occur without a series oftargeted interventions which will themselvesrequire the development of a more robust andconsistent consensus on tackling hunger and

strong levels of political will and leadership to carryit through to actions (UK Foresight 2012: 3), butdetails of how this will be achieved remain sketchy.Michael Jacobs recently argued in Nature for aLeaders Summit in 2015 as a central way forwardon climate change (Jacobs 2012). Such top downpolicy proposals are often coupled to particularforms of technological x, whereby advanced

science and engineering are harnessed towardssolutions that can be rolled out at scale whetherin biotechnology (to produce high yielding cropsto feed 9 billion people), or geo-engineering and

low carbon energy technologies (to mitigateclimate change). Much of the pre-Rio + 20discussion of SDGs implies this kind of approach.

But are such high-tech, top-down approaches topolicy and innovation enough? We need to recallthe past 20 years of experience in attempting torealise the ambitions of sustainable developmentfollowing the 1992 United Nations Conference onEnvironment and Development in Rio. The 1990ssaw a proliferation of international conventionsand agreements linked to global science, focusedon challenges like biological diversity, climate

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THE NEED FORNEW APPROACHES

CONNECTING GLOBALAND GRASSROOTS


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change and desertication. At the same time,

Agenda 21, launched at Rio, envisaged acommunity-led response to sustainabledevelopment challenges, based on local initiatives.But these two strands of sustainable developmentrarely connected. The top-down managerialismdriven by high-level panels, Conferences of Parties

and meetings of senior ocials related onlysporadically, if at all, to the array of innovativegrassroots initiatives springing up in farms andforests, villages and municipalities, factories andhomes, across the globe. Local initiatives oftenourished and drew on peoples own, vibrant

forms of knowledge, technology andexperimentation, but for the most part theyremained at the margins, focused on localsustainable development needs rather thanarticulating with bigger-picture global challenges(Berkhout et al. 2003). We believe that there is nowa new urgency to (re) connect these two strands ofsustainable development, in order to nd ways to

navigate a safe operating space for humanity fromthe bottom-up. Global and multi-scale planetaryboundaries and SDGs now, more than ever, needto be met by embracing local action in multi-scaleapproaches.

Examples dryland agriculture, rural energy

What might this mean in practice? Let us considerthis in relation to selected examples of the keyplanetary boundaries and SDGs mentioned above.Drawing on our work at the STEPS Centre andStockholm Resilience Centre, we oer two both

involving particularly pressing challenges.

One example concerns the challenges of drylandagriculture in East Africa. Here biophysicalprocesses relevant to multiple planetaryboundaries land use, biodiversity, freshwater andsoil nutrient availability, and climate are

interacting to create growing local pressures inplaces where some of the worlds most vulnerablepeople live. If SDGs around reducing global hungerare to be met, addressing such place-specic

agricultural sustainability challenges must betaken seriously. In the maize-dominated farmingsystems of dryland Kenya (Brooks et al. 2009), forinstance, a variety of dierent technological and

policy options are possible. Some focus onaddressing current and impending food crisesfrom the top-down, through sophisticated

plant-breeding and high-level biotechnology toengineer drought-resistant hybrid and GM maize

seed and large-scale irrigation, often linked to thedevelopment of large-scale commercial farms from which smallholders will be excluded, ortransformed into labourers. Other options focuson building sustainability from below, for instancethrough alliances between crop breeders andfarmers to combine scientic and farmers

indigenous knowledge and practices to select anddevelop other more appropriate crop and seedvarieties, or to apply soil and water conservationtechnologies to improve fertility and productivity.Farmers own grassroots innovations play a centralrole, for instance in attuning technologies to localsocial and ecological conditions. Such farmer-ledstrategies emphasise sustaining smallholderlivelihoods, and recognise the importance ofdiversity of crops, seed varieties, agro-biodiversity and strategies in building resiliencein complex, dynamic local environments.Dialogues and fora that bring farmers, scientists,businesses and policymakers together such asthose conducted in Kenya (see Brooks et al. 2009)have helped to clarify the roles of these dierent

innovation pathways in addressing diversenational and local sustainability priorities, and boththe need for and challenges of building - themulti-scale approaches that will be essential toaddress dryland challenges. A second exampleconcerns the challenges of building sustainableenergy systems in Latin America, where energy

demands are expected to increase by 75% by2030, and where existing trajectories will intensifypressure on climate and impair the capacity ofecosystems to generate essential services (IDB2012). Some Latin American governments havemade political commitments to increaserenewable energy sources hydropower, wind,biomass, and solar and the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank recently announced a US$30million loan to the Emerging Energy Latin AmericaFund, focused on promoting private sectorinvolvement in clean technology. These regional

deals repeat the international pattern, with elitesnegotiating nance and hardware deals and

successors to the oft-cited Clean DevelopmentMechanism. Whilst the latter has denitely

underpinned successful energy projects, theirdistribution has been highly uneven, oftenreecting priorities of eciency in generating

carbon credits, rather than local developmentbenets for poorer communities (Byrne et al.

2011). In contrast, locally engaged initiatives,such as CEDECAP, the Appropriate Technology

Demonstration and Training Centre in rural Per,works with local communities to identify their

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priority uses for electricity and then to developenergy schemes that those communities control,run and benet from (CEDECAP 2012). CEDECAP

develops, trains and pilots alternative forms ofdistributed renewable energy for rural areas,focusing on low-cost technologies with lowenvironmental impact, and fostering local

research and capacity. The wider communicationseorts of NGOs like CEDECAP have helped to

foster greater attention to local energy priorities,needs and innovative capacities, highlighting theneed to address these more fully along withnational and global priorities, in multi-scale energypolicy debates.

Even presented briey, these examples highlight

the contrast between top-down and moregrassroots-led approaches to policy andinnovation in each setting, and the value ofmulti-scale approaches. Further, they illustratewhat we suggest are a set of underlying principlesthat need to guide the elaboration and meeting of

SDGs. Three interlinked dimensions need to beassessed together (STEPS Centre2010, Stirling 2010).

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The rst dimension concerns the specic Direction

of change. This means being clear on the particular

goals and principles driving policy and innovation,not leaving these open, undiscussed or driven bygeneral imperatives of growth or progress, butactively steering these towards the kinds oftransformation needed to stay within a safeoperating space and meet SDGs. Of course,dierent groups will frame the details in dierent

ways the particular priorities of plant breedersand female smallholders in dryland Kenya willdier, for instance. But it is only by directly

engaging with such dierences that we may hope

to steer the most robust overall directions. Andattention to direction also means more

deliberately steering away from unsustainabletrajectories fossil fuel driven energy pathways

for instance, or land use schemes geared only tomaximum commercial prot by more rigorously

and accountably channelling the incentives andinterests that drive innovation. It involvesinnovations that can improve the capacity to learnfrom, respond to and manage environmentalfeedback from dynamic social-ecological systems.In these, grassroots innovations that draw fromlocal knowledge and experience, and social andorganisational innovations for instance, thedevelopment of community micro-hydro

electricity projects are at least as crucial asadvanced science and technology.

TRANSFORMINGINNOVATION DIRECTION, DIVERSITY,

DISTRIBUTION


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Second, Diversity is also crucial. Nurturing morediverse approaches and forms of innovation (socialas well as technological) allows us to respond touncertainty and surprise arising from the complex,interacting biophysical and socio-economicshocks and stresses highlighted in both thesedryland agriculture and energy cases, avoiding the

risks associated with putting all our eggs in onebasket. Likewise, fostering diversity ofbiophysical resources and biodiversity, ecologies,strategies and institutions (as well as innovations),provides a richer resource to foster more robustand resilient innovation pathways into the future.In all these elds, despite their dierences,

diversity is about sustaining an evenly balancedvariety of disparate options (Stirling, 2007). Here,diversity also resists powerful process of lock-inand so helps catalyse more transformative formsof innovation. Moreover, as we see with the CleanDevelopment Mechanism and energy projects,singular policy and technological solutions thatappear optimal from a global perspective rarelyprove viable or desirable in all localities; instead,dierent cultural and ecological settings typically

require contrasting approaches. Thus, high-techinnovations to enhance maize productivity maywell suit certain of Kenyas better-watered,so-called high potential agro-ecological zones,but fail amidst the social and ecological realitiesof its poorer, drier regions. And whilst regions like

Guajira in Colombia have very promising windresources, issues of grid-based electrication

can prove prohibitively complicated and costlyfor, say, Andean communities that are isolatedor dispersed across wide distances far frompopulated cities in mountainous terrain.

A third dimension is Distribution. This meanstaking seriously how the safe operating space isshared between dierent people, and asking about

who gains and who loses from particular policiesand innovations aiming to navigate within it. Thereare often trade-os at stake, between contrasting

environmental and poverty reduction goals,

for instance, or national and local interests. Solarge-scale irrigated land developments in EastAfrica may contribute to sustainability from theperspective of national food security, increasedGDP and the intensication of productive land use,

but also be locally experienced as land and watergrabs that displace poor rural people and destroythe livelihoods of marginal groups like pastoralistsand women farmers. Large-scale dams for hydro-electric projects in Brazil and elsewhere aresimilarly controversial. Setting SDGs and steeringpolicy and innovation towards any goals requireskeeping distributional issues at centre stage notjust in achieving trickle down, but in shapingfundamental directions of change and engaginginstead of excluding people in ecosystemstewardship. Beyond global questions oversharing of the safe operating space for instancewith respect to per capita CO2 emissions andclimate footprints across dierent countries and

regions there arise more local questions. Hereagain, grassroots innovations oer particular

value, helping to favour and prioritise more fairly

the interests of the most marginal groups.


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Looking across these dimensions the three Ds ofDirection, Diversity and Distribution it becomes clearthat dening and navigating the particularities of

sustainability ultimately reects political values and

choices, as much as scientic and technical ones.

Some have posed the idea of social boundaries as acomplement to planetary boundaries, drawing attentionto the importance of poverty reduction and human

development goals akin to the MDGs (Raworth 2012).We argue however (and our cases illustrate), that broadcalls for integration need to be underpinned by ner-

grain attention to what sort of sustainability anddevelopment are being pursued, for whom and how,and what this implies for improved stewardship of ourplanet. This brings further and ultimately morefundamental socio-political and justice questions tobear, concerning how such choices are made in relationto what values, by real decision-makers in particularsocial and political contexts and their implications forecosystem stewardship and sustainability. A 3D

analysis, we suggest, can help to reveal the nature andstakes of such choices, and to guide decision-makersas they grapple with challenges in their own particularsettings. So for example a Kenyan agriculture ministeror Peruvian energy minister might consider the 3Dimplications of choices in an array of relevant arenas,from allocating scarce resources to dierent kinds of

research, to deciding regulatory policy or investing ininfrastructures. How government relates to business,civil society and farmer and consumer groups and thespace and support aorded to growth of bottom-up

networks are crucial in shaping how far grassrootsinnovations can ourish as a means to deliver SDGs.

But a fundamental challenge remains in more eectively

connecting local, grassroots innovation capacity withthe global parameters set by planetary boundaries. Tofacilitate this broader, deeper debate in Kenya or Per,dialogues and communications eorts have made some

headway. But a key missing link lies in the role of what wedub sustainability brokers. Drawing on ideas from themanagement sciences (Roe and Schulman 2008),

navigating the complex, uncertain world and dynamicthresholds that challenge sustainability requires us totrack between big picture planetary and socialboundaries, and the ways they interact in particularlocal settings (Westley et al. 2011). Global and regionalscenarios, forecasting and back-casting, need to betriangulated with grounded local processes andimplications. An understanding of shifting globalplanetary boundaries, safe operating spaces andthe global SDGs required to stay within them needsto be combined with appreciations of particular localsustainable development meanings and goals,

and of how to draw from innovative grassrootscapacity. Such sustainability brokering involvesskills and competencies that are currently seriouslyneglected. Building these requires new kinds of training,capacity-building and recognition. Guided by widerpolitical debate about values, interests and priorities informed by analysis of the 3Ds for any particular issueor setting such sustainability brokers could form thevanguard of transformation now needed to safeguardour planet for current and future generations.

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CONCLUSIONS


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Berkhout, Frans, Melissa Leach andIan Scoones. 2003. NegotiatingEnvironmental Change. London:Edward Elgar.

Brooks, S., J. Thompson, H. Odame,

B. Kibaara, S. Nderitu, F. Karin and E.Millstone. 2009. EnvironmentalChange and Maize Innovation inKenya: Exploring pathways in and outof maize, STEPS Working Paper 36.Brighton: STEPS Centre.

Byrne, R., Smith, A., Watson, J. andOckwell,D. 2011. Energy Pathwaysin Low-Carbon Development: FromTechnology Transfer to Socio-Technical Transformation. STEPSWorking Paper 46, Brighton:

STEPS Centre

CEDECAP. 2012. AppropriateTechnology Demonstration andTraining Centre (Centro deDemostracin y Capacitacin enTecnologas Apropiadas CEDECAP),http://www.cedecap.org.pe/,accessed 15 February 2012.

Evans, A. And D. Steven. 2012.Sustainable Development Goals a useful outcome from Rio+20?.Brieng, New York: New York Centreon International Co-operation.

Folke, C., . Jansson, J. Rockstrm,P. Olsson, S.R. Carpenter, F.S. Chapin,A.-S. Crepn, G. Daily, K. Danell, J.Ebbesson, T. Elmqvist, V. Galaz, F.Moberg, M. Nilsson, H. sterblom,E. Ostrom, . Persson, G. Peterson,S. Polasky, W. Steen, B. Walker, and

F. Westley. 2011. Reconnecting tothe Biosphere. Ambio 40:719-738.

Gerst, Michael D. And Paul D. Raskin.2011. Turning Toward Sustainability:A Business-as-usual and anAlternative scenario prepared forthe UN High-Level Panel on GlobalSustainability. Boston:

Tellus Institute.

IDB. 2012. IDB approves $30 millioninvestment in green fund for LatinAmerica and the Caribbean (January13) Inter-American DevelopmentBank news release. http://www.iadb.org/en/news/news-releases/2012-01-13/latin-america-renewable-energy-investment-fund,9807.html, accessedFebruary 15 2012.

Jacobs, M. 2012. Deadline 2015.Comment, Nature, 48, 12 January2012, pp. 37-38.

Raskin, P.D., C. Electris and R.A.Rosen. 2010. The Century Ahead:Searching for Sustainability.Sustainability, 2: 2626-2651.

Raworth, K. 2012. A safe and justspace for humanity: Can we livewithin the doughnut? OxfamDiscussion Paper. Oxford: Oxfam.

Rockstrm, Johan; Will Steen, Kevin

Noone, sa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin,III, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton,Marten Scheer, Carl Folke, Hans

Joachim Schellnhuber, Bjrn Nykvist,Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry Hughes,Sander van der Leeuw, HenningRodhe, Sverker Srlin, Peter K.Snyder, Robert Costanza, UnoSvedin, Malin Falkenmark, LouiseKarlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J.

Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker,Diana Liverman, KatherineRichardson, Paul Crutzen & JonathanA. Foley. 2009. A safe operatingspace for humanity. Nature 461,472-475.

Roe, E. and P. Schulman. 2008. HighReliability Management: Operatingon the Edge. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press.

STEPS Centre. 2010. Innovation,Sustainability, Development: A NewManifesto. Brighton: STEPS Centre(www.anewmanifesto.org).

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in Science, Technology and Society,Journal of the Royal Society Interface,4(15), 707-719, August 2007.

Stirling, A. 2010. Direction,Distribution and Diversity! PluralisingProgress in Innovation, Sustainabilityand Development. STEPS WorkingPaper 32. Brighton: STEPS Centre.

UK Foresight. 2011. Foresight Projecton Global Food and Farming Futures,Synthesis Report C11: Ending

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Westley, F., P. Olsson, C. Folke, T.Homer-Dixon, H. Vredenburg, D.Loorbach, J. Thompson, M. Nilsson, E.Lambin, J. Sendzimir, B. Banarjee, V.Galaz, and S. van der Leeuw. 2011.Tipping Towards Sustainability:Emerging Pathways ofTransformation. Ambio 40:762-780.

LITERATURE CITED


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