Strategies for Sustainability Transformations in Self-Reinforcing Social Systems

Abstract:

Sustainability transformations are processes of radical change in social systems that involve a broad range of mechanisms, such as politics, economics, values, and technologies, and that aim to fulfill human needs without degrading ecosystems (Linnér and Wibeck 2019; Hölscher, Wittmayer, and Loorbach 2018; O’Neil et al. 2018). As sustainability transformations are complex processes, researchers often turn to modelling for assistance. Popular methodologies for modelling, such as integrated assessment models, ABMs, and system dynamics, are suitable for representing certain aspects of sustainability transformations (i.e., non-linear behaviours, diversity, cross-scale dynamics, uncertainties, and contingencies) but not others (i.e., qualitatively different states, normative change) (Köhler et al. 2018, 15). Through our research, we show that an alternative methodology, Cross-Impact Balances (CIB) analysis (Weimer-Jehle 2006), is capable of representing all these aspects of sustainability transformations. CIB analysis blends the qualitative richness of descriptive approaches (e.g., narratives) with the quantitative rigour of modelling (Lloyd & Schweizer 2014). It does this by using categorical variables to describe a system and an algorithm to identify alternative system states that are self-reinforcing. Moreover, CIB analysis can be used to simulate the dynamics of a system (e.g., to trace the pathways that a system might take from one self-reinforcing state to another). In our research, we used CIB analysis to study sustainability transformations. Our CIB model is inspired by the social-ecological co-evolutionary perspective (Kearney forthcoming; Beddoe et al. 2009; Norgaard 1994). In this perspective, social and ecological systems co-evolve, and social systems consist of interdependent worldviews, institutions, and technologies (Nolan & Lenski 2015; Beddoe et al. 2009; Axelrod 1997). Our research identified alternative, self-reinforcing combinations of worldviews, institutions, technologies, and social and ecological selective pressures; aspects of social systems that are associated with poor performance on sustainable development; and strategies for transforming unsustainable aspects of social systems into sustainable alternatives (Abson et al. 2017; Meadows 1999).