Understanding institutional capacity for urban water transitions

Abstract

Transitions management (TM) is emerging as an approach to governing complex sustainability problems. Critiques point to the need to understand dynamics of system change, particularly, with regard to actor agency at micro and meso scales. This paper begins to address this scholarly gap by first, developing an analytical framework of the institutional context of a transition that recognizes forms of agency. Second, a method to apply the framework to empirical cases of urban water socio-technical systems to map their institutional context is developed. The results revealed: i) ways to identify problematic features of current systems and underlying cognitive and normative frames, to assist with envisioning and transition pathway development, ii) a method of system analysis that can target leverage points for strategizing transitions agendas and experiments, and iii) a dynamic description of the system to assist with evaluating TM interventions and monitoring transitions. By providing a systems analysis cognizant of contextual dynamics and targeted to the knowledge needs of TM activities, this analytical tool shows promise for improving TM through further empirical application and research.

Social construction of stormwater control measures in Melbourne and Copenhagen: A discourse analysis of technological change, embedded meanings and potential mainstreaming

“…The story of Melbourne shows that regulation and standardisation are beneficial and that both normative, cognitive and regulative institutions are needed (Bettini et al, 2014;Ferguson et al, 2013). In…”

Doing water research differently for innovation in regional water productivity in Australia

“…Prompted by water scarcity, inefficient irrigation practices and environmental degradation of catchments, the Australian Government instituted the major reform effort in 2004, the National Water Initiative (see Dovers, Grafton, and Connell 2005). It is within this context that Australian governments, communities and the water industry are seeking new ways of understanding and managing water for a range of cultural, societal, environmental and economic benefits (Brown, Farrelly, and Loorbach 2013;Bettini et al 2015;Fam and Lopes 2015), applying more systemic perspectives. This paper reports on a research project with the explicit aim of generating new thinking and research practice to enhance water productivity in regional Australia.…”

“…Despite a growing literature on the topic of systemic approaches to understanding and organising system innovation in water management (Brown, Farrelly, and Loorbach 2013;Bettini et al 2015;Fam and Lopes 2015), there is still limited knowledge about how these initiatives applying systemic perspectives work out in the Australian context, and what this implies for research practice. Therefore, this paper aims to inform and support water resources management in the context of continuous learning about and negotiating the disparate roles and practices of this endeavour, and how research practices can better support this.…”

The Transition to Improved Water-Related Energy Management: Enabling Contexts for Policy Innovation

“…Concepts in this field have roots in systems theory, evolutionary economics and integrated assessment. Transition management concepts can be employed to gain insight into how to "formulate governance principles, methods and tools to deal more systematically with fundamental system change" [22], and they have frequently been applied to the problem of sustainable development (e.g., Bettini et al [27], Loorbach [28], Meadowcroft [26], Rotmans and Loorbach [29], Smith and Stirling [30], and Smith et al [31]).…”

“…Transitions academics have highlighted a dominant focus in the literature on the way in which change is stabilised and normalised at the regime level. They argue that a knowledge gap exists in understanding the interaction between niches and regimes through a transition, which produces new forms of governance [27,33,34]. It is further argued that an understanding of institutional context underlying societal transitions can assist in addressing this gap [27].…”