40 Innovation Policy and Sustainable Development - IWT

An Integrated Policy for Innovation for the Environment
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support for a transition (resulting in a transition
programme which is politically legitimised)
and commits societal actors to
change. Transition management provides a
basis for coordination of public and private
action. It does not fix a path but explores
various options. It adds a top-down element
to bottom-up initiatives.
In my view, transition management offers a
promising alternative for a planning and
control approach and the use of economic
incentives that both suffer from serious
problems: economic incentives are likely to
be too weak and probably too general to
promote system innovation whereas a planning
and implementation approach is likely
to be disruptive, by failing to include the
multitude of microconcerns at the decentralized
level.
Transition management involves a change in
policy making, which will be more oriented
toward long-term goals of sustainability
(instead of short-term goals), to system innovation
and to new actors. Transition management
is not something consensual.
Transition management does not exclude the
use of control policies, such as the use of
standards and emission trading. We need
corrective policies besides push policies. The
policies can be chosen and legitimised as part
of the transition endeavour or independently
from it. For example the use of CO2
taxes and other types of economic incentives
can be legitimised by the economic principle
that says that one should internalise external
costs. Perhaps the commitment to a transition
facilitates their introduction. We’ll see.
Transition management is not a magical tool
but does appear to be a promising perspective.
Dutch authorities think so. It may be
used to achieve a greater coherence in policy
and in societal actions for sustainability. It is
a different type of governance model, ained
at modulating dynamics, not an instrument.
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