Blog

Blog - February 25, 2021

Grassroots Innovations for Sustainable Development – A DT Dialogue with Johan Schot and Adrian Smith

Jenny Witte, Adrian Smith
According to Smith and Seyfang (2007), the term ‘grassroots innovations’ describes networks of activists and organisations that generate novel bottom–up solutions for sustainable development –solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved. This differs from more mainstream greening practices in the sense that grassroots initiatives operate in…
Blog - November 23, 2020

How to Identify Rules from Text Mining

Frederique Bone, Daniele Rotolo
Technologies can shape society and individual behaviours. Historical data helps to understand how different socio-economic actors within society, can influence the emergence of new technologies within and across different socio-technical systems (e.g. mobility, food, energy). Traditional historical work on understanding technological evolution and diffusion has relied on examining archives in considerable detail, but this meant…
Blog - November 4, 2020

Power to the people? The role of citizen collectives in fighting climate change: A #DTdialogue with Johan Schot and Tine de Moor

Jenny Witte
In pre-modern times commons or citizen collectives were an important mode of governance, in which groups of people collectively managed and used a collective resource, such as land, watercourses or fisheries. Commons functioned according to three underlying principles namely, solidarity, reciprocity and sufficiency. This implied that members of the commons could take as much as…
Blog - October 22, 2020

Redirecting Public Finance in the Global South to Support Deep Transitions (Fancy Footwork and Windows of Opportunity)

David Walwyn
Transitions in the Global South share many aspects with similar processes in developed countries.  However, there are a number of important asymmetries which disproportionally affect the Global South, and will alter the timescales and the nature of sustainability transitions in these countries. One aspect, which has received a great deal of attention in the literature,…
Blog - July 27, 2020

Deep Transitions, Green Transitions, Just Transitions: A #DTdialogue with Johan Schot and Mark Swilling

Jenny Witte
In this #DTdialogue Johan Schot and Mark Swilling reflect on Professor Swillings well-received book called “The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World” and relate the findings of the book to the Deep Transitions Framework.  Professor Swilling’s book, which Johan Schot describes as ‘an eyeopener’, is highly relevant to Deep Transitions research as…
Blog - July 14, 2020

Imagining a good life in a green and fair society: You must visualise the future in order to shape it!

Carlota Perez
The Deep Transitions project has emphasised how much the shaping of technology since the industrial revolution has been crucial in bringing us to the current environmentally threatening situation. Mass production, in particular, has brought the use of earth’s material resources and the emission of CO2 to dangerous levels. Excess possessions and waste in mass consumption…
Blog - May 6, 2020

Computing: A Change in Rules for the Deep Transition?

Ed Steinmueller
It is commonly said that we live in the digital or information age, an acknowledgement of the centrality of information and communication technologies in our daily work and private lives.  It is often believed that technologies such as the laptop computer and mobile phone come about because of the inventive genius of an individual or…
Consequences of COVID-19
Blog - April 6, 2020

Conversaciones sobre COVID-19: consecuencias para la segunda transición profunda y la revolución de la sostenibilidad

Johan Schot, Bipashyee Ghosh, Geraldine Bloomfield
Por: Johan Schot , Bipashyee Ghosh y Geraldine Bloomfield Traducido por: Diana Velasco, investigadora invitada de Ingenio UPV-CSIC. Comentarios para la versión en español de la entrevista, por Diana Velasco Un mundo en transición profunda, empujado a hacer cambios radicales en los patrones de conducta, de comportamiento, y de valores de las personas, más que por una dirección…
Blog - March 31, 2020

War, huh, what is it good for….?

Phil Johnstone, Caitriona McLeish
According to Edwin Starr, “absolutely nothing” but when we present our work on the influential role of the World Wars in the culmination of the first deep transition, we keep being asked the same question: “So, you’re saying that we need a war then?” It seems the question is asked in relation to two considerations…
Consequences of COVID-19
Blog - March 25, 2020

Conversations on COVID-19: Consequences for the Second Deep Transition and the Sustainability Revolution 

Johan Schot, Bipashyee Ghosh, Geraldine Bloomfield
The COVID-19 public health emergency facing the world is the worst in living memory. It is changing everyday life in an immediate and stark fashion not seen, arguably, since the Second World War. The, perhaps unhelpful, metaphor of ‘war’ is being used to evoke our attempts at mastering the attacking virus. In the worst-hit country,…