~Call for papers deadline: 31st December 2015~
Transitions that reduce dependence on fossil carbon, that increase resilience and adaptive capacity and that help societies to make progress towards sustainability require innovative new solutions as well as policy development and improved governance. Experiments have emerged as a way of obtaining potentially new knowledge, practices, networks and iconic examples for local, national and even international climate and sustainability governance. So called natural experiments have furthermore, been seen as an improved way to demonstrate causal inference. An essential part of the new drive towards experimentation is evaluation that should inform learning and thereby contribute to a transition towards sustainable low or no-fossil-carbon and more resilient societies.
Experimentation as a driver of societal transitions has caught the attention researchers and governmental leaders. Experimenting is seen as a way of overcoming bureaucratic hurdles and other inertias on the routes towards more sustainable solutions. Experiments supporting sustainability transitions can be specified as 1) making something new and concrete, are 2) trials or tests in a restricted environment in terms of time, space, scope and/or actors and are 3) intended to provide proof of principle that subsequently has the potential of wider societal relevance through various up-scaling mechanisms.
The objectives of this Special Volume (SV) of the Journal of Cleaner Production (JCLP) are based on the need to deepen our understanding of what experiments aiming at sustainability and climate change transitions can achieve. The SV will explore under what conditions they can fulfil the expectations they have raised and what stumbling blocks they may encounter, especially in the process of upscaling. The SV will, in particular, examine how and why experiments succeed or fail to contribute to wider transitions towards sustainability and climate challenges.
Full details about the focus of the Special Issue and submission criteria can be found here.
Photo credit: Pawel Pacholec/Flickr
