International Sustainability Transition conference

On my way back, I thought about what the main takeaways of this year’s International Sustainability Transition (IST26) conference were. What is it that I take with me?

Of course I must start with the wonderful encounters. For example, it was lovely to attend the conference with many colleagues from the Athena Institute. I think I never went to a conference with so many appreciated colleagues. I also had the pleasure to meet again in person colleagues from the justice group that I am part of. I even met a former professor of mine. After all these years! It was such a pleasant encounter. I cannot highlight enough, how much I appreciate the education I got. Much of my critical thinking was formed in this time, by the courses, by the professors, be the literature.

It was a busy conference. Busy because of the social interactions, but also because of the presentations to hold, the session to host and the problems along the way.

I was co-hosting the Justice track. The track consisted of 5 sessions, full with a diverse set of presentations. Presentations, which I could not all listen to. To the non-conference goer. A conference usually hosts several sessions at the same time. This means that one must decide what to listen to. Thus, choices needed to be made and I did not always attend the justice sessions. However, I was very glad to hear, during the closing session, that people especially appreciate that justice is not a marginal topic, but a core theme within the conference. I am glad that by co-organizing the track, we contributed to giving the theme space. Yet of course all of this would not have been possible if there was no interest by the research community (presenters and listeners!). I am glad that the track received much interest and that it was full of diverse contributions.

That leads me to potentially one of the biggest take aways. We are not yet doing enough justice to justice. After the conference, the Ju-ST Thematic group (some of the track organizers) met to discuss various things. We met just outside the conference venue. Anyone could join. At some point Eve joined the conversation. And this turned out to be one of the most insightful conversations of this conference. She presented “Care, Survival, and Collective Futures: A Transgender Perspective on the Commons”. I unfortunately missed her presentation. I must admit, I do hardly know anything about transgender perspectives and / or queer perspectives. In our conversation she indicated that they are not the same and that she consciously uses transgender perspectives. I have to catch up on. However, what was more striking was our conversation about the next conference.

For the first time IST will be outside central Europe. IST moves to Brazil! For many of us, this means traveling far. Talking about the next conference, Eve stated that she would need to check if she could go. I responded that we all would have to. I thought her comment was about travel budget. But she did not mean checking with her institution, she meant immigration rules. As a transgender person, she needs to make sure that she can visit a country and that this visit would not leave her traumatized. I honestly had not thought about this. When we had the conversation, I was not at all thinking about the problems she is facing. Not necessarily because I am completely unaware. I am aware that e.g. gay people have to take precautionary measures before traveling places. But this concern was only somewhere at the back of my head. The conversation that followed, made me think how one-dimensional the justice conversation still often is.

I strongly advocate that the sustainability transformation will require more than a techno fix. It requires deep societal changes. The deep societal change is not only about income disparities or gender or global structures of suppression. It includes much more, such as notions of gender. This conversation reminded me that the conversation needs to be opened up much more. It reminded me that while we have conversations about justice, that these are still dominated by certain topics and certain perspectives. I hope that contributions like Eve’s will become more abundant!

Another highlight was seeing the enormous interest in degrowth! I could only attend one of the two sessions in the track. But luckily, I could also attend one of the plenaries. I witnessed the first degrowth session to be packed with people. There were so many people who wanted to attend the session, that they were standing in the hallway. The second session, I was told, was attended by even more people. I am very pleased that the degrowth and postgrowth community is getting stronger and stronger. I believe it is people realizing that a transition requires the end of the capitalist system we live in and acknowledging the limitations of techno-optimist perspective offered by the founding fathers of the sustainability transition field. This was sort of echoed in the panel. The panelists discussed how degrowth connects to the field. I liked what was stated. Yet, what I was struggling with framing the field as monolithic. I am a sustainability transformations researcher, and I hardly identify with the field. I do not at all identify with the theoretical lens used, the multi-level perspective (MLP), the focus on market-based solutions and the techno-optimism. I much more identify with other streams within the global transformations community. A community, the sustainability transitions community has hardly any exchange with. I find it very irritating that the field is so unreflected to frame itself as monolithic. To be clear, I do not think that the degrowth experts made a framing error. I think that the community successfully pushed for a monolithic identity, repressing alternative views.

How often does one have conversations with other researchers who try to publish alternative views in the community’s journal but fail, because they do not integrate the MLP or because they do not frame the system as being socio-technical. This is striking and ironic. A field that studies transitions is unable to transition, blocking alternative views and limiting exchange or the acknowledgement of a wider global transformations research community that does not at all use socio-technical lenses. In this sense, the sustainability transition community can also learn more from degrowth. I do have my frustrations with the degrowth field as well. And there are deep struggles within the community. However, I have the impression that within degrowth at least these deep struggles and disagreements can be voiced. For example, Julia Steinberger made it clear that for this conversation she will define degrowth as she understands it and that this is not a – nor is there any other – universal perspective within the field. When will the moment come that sustainability transitions conferences will not push socio-technical narratives anymore? When one can talk about socio-ecology for example, without the need to connect this to socio-technical lenses? I would argue, it is about time the field transitions and recognizes that there is more out there. I would also argue that the very notion of degrowth does not at all match with socio-technical views or the MLP. I think the panelist did a great job trying to build bridges. Yet, the MLP is born out of a certain mindset, a mindset that degrowth wants to get rid of. I think the most telling point was made stating that using a degrowth lens, the capitalist system itself would need to change. Yet within MLP capitalism is often conceptually placed in an area that societies cannot (or hardly) influence (landscape). This exactly shows, that the MLP takes capitalism as natural law, instead of understanding that it is MAN-made and thus should be object of the transition discourse itself. I think at least some researchers within the community have understood this, which is why the degrowth sessions are well attended.

I wanted to add another section here about a rather shocking presentation that a colleague of mine attended. It is about geopolitics about populism, about fascism, about Zionist agendas, about how we or conference organizers or academia positions itself. I removed it from this blog. It made me think a lot and I do not know what to do with my thoughts, my anger, my frustration. The text is clipped to an empty sheet, waiting for another blog post.

Then there were some more frustrations. On Monday morning I once more rehearsed my presentation. I then went to the conference. In short, I then failed to access my laptop using my password. The laptop remained locked until Wednesday when I got the recovery codes. My presentations were on my laptop. So, this was a quite stressful situation. Nothing I tried solved the problem. In the end, I had to give in and accept that for now I do not have a laptop. I had to practice some deep belly breathing that moment. Walking back to the conference I was breathing deeply, telling myself that any agitation is misplaced, because it already happened and there is nothing my agitation would change about the situation. It helped to calm me down. I still was a bit sad; I had to present an old version that I had saved on a pen drive. I had put much work in the new version. But well, I assume this was a lesson in non-attachment. All went fine. Both presentations went well, hosting the session went well. For sure this technical hick-up is something I will remember.

Of course, the food was an issue. While, I think the conference was overall very well organized, I do not understand why it is so difficult to provide vegan and gluten free food. People still cannot wrap their head around the fact that there are people who do not eat either. And honestly this is just such an annoying topic. I would prefer not having to talk about it, worry about it. Because I am annoyed by the topic myself, I will keep it at that…

Finally, the train trip. I want to write a separate blog post about it. Not because there is much exceptional to write about. I want to write about it, because there is nothing exceptional to write about it. There were small hick ups, but all in all it worked out fine. This is a noteworthy change! I want to write a positive blog post about train trips.

And so, after the conference is before the conference.