In April 2021, the program Towards a Sustainable Economy and Society: the Second Deep Transition in the Netherlands received seed money funding from the SEED Alliance program. The program is a collaboration of research groups at Utrecht University, Wageningen University & Research, and Eindhoven University of Technology. For the TU/e History Lab, Harry Lintsen, Frank Veraart and Erik van der Vleuten feature as co-applicants.
From the application:
“In the coming decades government, business, knowledge institutions and civil society will need to work together and accelerate a wide range of system transitions for energy, healthcare, mobility, water and food provision. Such transitions align technological change to behavioural, institutional and cultural change with the aim of delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals. While there is a lot of effort to analyse individual system transitions, an overarching analysis of how these transitions relate and influence one other is noticeably lacking.
The proposed project will develop a strong research consortium and research program for such an analysis, taking into account the historical analysis of the construction of current systems as well as a range of pathways for future interconnected systems changes. The historical analysis is crucially important to uncover barriers for change (lock-ins) as well as niches that may become a steppingstone for system transitions. The future oriented analysis will develop a new type of scenario methodology for enabling system change across many areas. The project will cover the period of 1900 to 2050, focus on the Netherlands, whilst grounding the analysis firmly in a European and global context. The project work will elaborate the recently introduced Deep Transition Framework (www.deeptransition.net) and couple it with the Measurement Framework for Well-being and Sustainability as developed by the CBS.”