Climate & Environment
Sustainability Transition
Definition
A sustainability transition is a long-term, fundamental transformation of an established socio-technical system — energy, mobility, food, housing — toward more sustainable modes of production and consumption, involving co-evolving changes in technology, markets, policy, culture and infrastructure. Transitions research (the multi-level perspective of Geels and colleagues) explains how they happen: protected niches (solar, EVs) mature, landscape pressures (climate policy, oil shocks) destabilise regimes, and regime rules eventually reconfigure around the new practices.
References
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This reference provides supporting context for how “Sustainability Transition” is defined and used.
Overview
How it is used
The concept structures transitions research, national mission programmes, deep decarbonisation pathway analysis and just transition planning for declining sectors.
Why it matters
Sustainability transitions are the unit of the real task: not greener products, but different systems.