No abstract

The central role of cities in advancing sustainability transitions is nowadays universally recognised by the scientific community. Simultaneously, local leaders increasingly advocate for the sustainable, lowcarbon development of social and technological systems in their cities. This situation provides a window of opportunity for academic research to guide the development and implementation of innovative governance mechanisms capable of delivering urban low-carbon transitions in practice, and for practitioners to influence research. The current interest in tailoring the Transition Management (TM) approach to the urban scale is a result of such an interaction. However, as we argue in this article, there is still much to learn about the ways in which decisions related to local transitions are made in practice, in order to build a more complete understanding of the usefulness of TM techniques in the urban context. Our claim is based on a case study analysis of a pair of EU-funded projects involving eight cities from a diverse set of European countries. The main findings highlight the role of five contextual barriers specific to the urban level within the European multilevel governance scene, which sustain inertia and resistance to change among municipal administrators and other local stakeholders and counteract the successful implementation of TM-inspired governance mechanisms at the local level. As a consequence, a rather shallow version of TM is applied in practice, which is not powerful enough to overcome the messy and contingent character of decision-making surrounding ongoing urban low-carbon transition processes.

System Innovation (SI) is a critical approach in driving individual and collective actions towards sustainable development (SD). This article presents the validation process of the Climate-KIC Professional Competence Framework (CF) for SI. This framework is based on principles of system thinking and the need for human capital to deal with challenges related to long-term sustainability. It comprises twenty competences grouped into five stages that describe contexts where professionals implement transformations: Exploring, Framing, Designing, Implementing and Strengthening. The stages are not linear or strictly sequential because overlapping and loops are frequent in transformational and disruptive changes. The CF fulfils several functions in the development of human and social capital: competences’ assessment, their development and training, and their certification to make them more interpretable in the labour market. The methodology for assessing professionals’ competences and the certification procedure are described. Overall, the CF aims to promote the development and visibility of human capital in a critical area for sustainability.

No abstract

No abstract