1 Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges of Ensuring Equitable and Sustainable Transitions

2023 ENLIGHT summer school on equity and sustainability transitions:

In early summer 2023, as Ireland entered into its hottest June on record, 30 students came together with 15 academics and practitioners for the ENLIGHT Summer School on Equity and Sustainability Transitions, hosted by the University of Galway. What followed was an invigorating and convivial week of learning, exploration, debate, and dialogue. Students, academic staff, and practitioners travelled from universities and institutions across the ENLIGHT network to participate. A diverse array of academic disciplines was represented, while speakers and participants addressed themes, concepts, and issues that traverse traditional disciplinary boundaries and require true inter- and transdisciplinary approaches. Participants brought a depth of knowledge from disciplines as diverse as Sociology, Engineering, Education, Architecture, Biomedical Science, Geography, and Law. The themes and topics covered encompassed climate justice, urban design and planning, mobilities, gender-based violence, decoloniality, housing, and planetary boundaries, all of which are reflected and expanded upon within this report.

The summer school aimed to engage with a wide range of topics relating to equity and sustainability transitions in a necessarily nuanced, multifaceted manner. The historical roots of issues surrounding (in)equity and (un)sustainability were analysed alongside their contemporary implications. Sessions focused on both abstract theoretical concepts and practical, on-the-ground case studies. Topics discussed were simultaneously local and global in both nature and reach. The diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives of participants allowed for challenging, productive, and enlightening discussions. The heatwave, though abnormal, allowed participants to venture outside the classroom at points throughout the week, facilitating learning and exploration beyond traditional academic environments. The walking tour of Galway, for instance, allowed students to engage further with questions and ideas covered in sessions on the built environment and urban mobilities. Similarly, the session led by Petra Dzurovčinová, Chief Innovation Officer of the City of Bratislava, provided illuminating real-world examples of planning and implementing sustainability transitions on the ground, expanding upon ideas covered elsewhere throughout the week. The chance to engage with such multi-layered perspectives on questions of sustainability undoubtedly informed the contributions that make up this report.

Questions of equity and sustainability, though global in their extent, are productively understood and addressed when contextualised locally. Acknowledging this, the summer school sought to highlight some key local challenges being faced within Galway city and elsewhere along the West coast of Ireland. As an Atlantic-facing island in North West Europe, Ireland’s coastline is acutely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. As such, concerns around adaptation and coastal resilience are vitally important to local communities and academics alike. As communities face the many challenges emanating from climate impacts and adaptation along the coast, ensuring equity and sustainability within transitions is crucial. The summer school, therefore, provided an excellent opportunity to introduce students to several sites in and around Galway City within which processes of adaptation planning have recently occurred. This field engagement, outlined in Chapter 5, allowed students to explore the relevance of concepts covered throughout the week within contemporary local contexts.

Output:

The outcome of the summer school was a renewed collective commitment to address the myriad equity and sustainability challenges facing the world. Within and across disciplines, across various sites and scales, and on different timelines, each participant identified issues and concerns pertinent to their own context and field. This report is the material output of the cumulative effort to account for the diversity of lessons learned and topics engaged with throughout the week, whilst highlighting the common underpinning themes of equity, justice, and sustainability transitions. The chapters which follow are comprised of seven essays written collaboratively by student participants. The remainder of this report is structured into three comprehensive thematic chapters.

Chapter two begins with an essay that sets the context for those which follow. Outlining the concept of planetary boundaries, Alfieri, Höschle, and Skelton track several key debates emanating from the recognition that many countries are exceeding such boundaries at an alarming rate. Acknowledging this, the essay that follows grapples with one of the most prominent areas of transition: energy systems. Placing equity at the centre of discussions around energy transitions, Joos, Kasuk & Zhang explore two emerging frameworks for accelerating community engagement within, and potential local ownership of, transitions towards sustainable energy systems.

Chapter three takes many of the concerns, issues, and concepts that arise in chapter two and applies them within the urban realm. The first essay in this chapter engages centrally with the complimentary themes of mobility and liveability. Adopting a macro-scale approach to analyse such key components of urban life, Hamel, Nientimp, Sultanova, and Yang emphasise the importance of applying an equity lens when conducting such analyses by incorporating concerns for accessibility. Following this, Hrćan, Gomez and Persiau delve deeper into micro-scale urban mobility issues, investigating the specific challenges arising from car dependency within cities. Highlighting the link between inadequate urban design and planning and inefficient and unsustainable transport systems, this essay provides recommendations on how such challenges might be overcome at the city scale. The final essay in this chapter impels us to think towards practical interventions and solutions and reminds us of the critical role of co-productive and collaborative research in doing so. Exploring the potential of Urban Labs as sites of resistance, productive collaboration, and crucial dialogue across scales, Blahová, Gaitan, Vasileiadis Vasileiou and Vázquez urge us to consider the role these labs can play in addressing urban challenges and bridging divides between governments, institutions and citizens.

Chapter four concludes with two critical interventions and reflections applicable to all topics covered in this report. Firstly, Dalton, Roles, Matulová, and Styhler remind us that despite global efforts and progress towards equity and sustainability, women and girls still face vastly uneven risks of violence and discrimination. This essay emphasises the absolute need to ensure that current crises – and efforts towards transition -do not exacerbate already disproportionate vulnerabilities, and that we must never neglect the pursuit of justice for victims, women and girls, everywhere. The final essay in this chapter seeks to contextualise many of the points discussed throughout – particularly those pertaining to justice and equity – within the broader historical global context. Tracing the interconnections between colonialism and current ecological crises relating to climate change and its impacts, Auwelaert and Svitkova highlight the inextricability of social and ecological systems, charting their vulnerability under specific colonial logics of domination and control. Drawing on the case of Australia, this essay highlights the material impacts – socially, ecologically, and politically – of centuries of colonial domination, which render people and places more vulnerable to contemporary crises, including climate change.

Capturing lessons learned:

In the face of intersecting crises, it has become abundantly clear that we require many large-scale societal changes that challenge our current ways of living, particularly in the global North. The 2030 Agenda, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provided a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As we face the climate crisis alongside energy, food, and housing crises, the sustainability of our social and economic systems is under pressure. The transition towards more sustainable economies and societies is urgently required. However, such a process can appear overwhelming to many and can seem unattainable to those with fewer resources or pathways to change. Acknowledging the many barriers to transition, this summer school aimed to identify and explore various sustainability transitions within and beyond the classroom. Further, while ideas formed around climate justice have proliferated in recent years, there is a clear need to investigate the concrete means by which such aspirations can translate into practices that sustain gains made in the fight for equity over centuries and render these compatible with mandates emanating from climate-related goals and imperatives. The final contribution within this report can be found in Chapter 6, where Adekale, Van Cauwelaert and Murray outline the urgent need to attend to questions of measuring equity and sustainability transitions, shedding light on some potential trajectories for monitoring and tracking both change and progress. Given the need to implement ambitious environmental and climate objectives and move towards carbon neutrality, a circular economy, cleaner air, cleaner transport, and sustainable consumption, the 2023 ENLIGHT summer school on Equity and Sustainability Transitions set out to explore how sustainable transitions can be advanced ensuring equitable distribution of benefits and burdens. This report, and the essays within, illustrate the lessons and experiences gleaned from a week of exploring, challenging, and contextualising equitable and sustainable transitions in the contemporary moment. It is hoped that the reflections within, on the importance of considering communities, institutions, scalar processes, cross-linkages, and historical and contemporary dynamics will bolster future transitions.