2009 ISIE Conference: Transitions Toward Sustainability

There are many dimensions on which sustainability depends, including
technical, socio-economic, cultural, spatial, environmental
preservation, distribution of wealth, etc. Achieving sustainability
therefore requires a multitude of changes identified by different
disciplines as ‘system innovation’, ‘regime transformation’,
‘industrial transformation’, ‘technological transition’, or
‘socio-economic paradigm shift’. The term “transition” covers all of
these and its direction and speed are determined by the collective
innovation decisions of various actors involved.

The notion of transition has increasingly gained attention over the
past years, in academic as well as in policy arenas. Policy makers are
especially interested in transitions since incremental change is
thought by many to be insufficient to lead toward sustainability.
Transition is perceived as a policy objective that has great potential
to guide solutions to current problems in various domains.

In a transition within a complex socio-technical-ecological system,
both the technical as well as the social/cultural dimensions change
drastically. This emphasis on the co-evolution of technical and
societal change distinguishes transitions from incremental processes,
which are primarily characterized by technical change (through
successive generations of technologies) with relatively little
alteration of the societal embedding of these technologies.

To stimulate transitions toward sustainability we need to build a strong knowledge base in this field. Industrial Ecology, as a framework for capturing both theoretical and practical knowledge, should contribute in many areas, including the following selected to shape this conference:

- Sustainable consumption
- Designing sustainable cities
– the urban and the social metabolisms

- Industrial Ecology tools for sustainability

- Visions on new IE-based paradigms towards sustainability

- Sustainable resource management
- Managing end-of-life products

- Industrial symbiosis

- Eco-design: products and services of the future

- Industrial Ecology in developing countries

- Environmentally Extended Input Output Analysis