Olivier Crevoisier (p), Angeon Valérie (p)

Adam Polko

Sustainable transitions (ST) involve innovations that create new relationships between society, the economy and the environment. ST are processes that reorganize stakeholders, rules, values and activities over time and space. ST articulate different scales (from global to local and vice versa) and relationships between the future and the present.
This article proposes a territorial conceptual framework for ST based on the concepts of referential (Muller 2010) and institutional regimes. It mobilizes valuation theory (see for instance Heinich 2020) to understand how socio-cultural values influence experimentation and innovation and, more broadly, referentials and regimes. In this context, innovation and/or experimentation are seen as socio-cultural processes where technology bears meaning. The valuation approach helps to formalize the tension between societal aspirations towards ecologization and the need for institutional regimes to be economically viable.
The suggested conceptual framework is a generic one that can be applied to different areas: energy, transport, agriculture, etc. The second part of the paper is an application to the agroecological transition (AET). It shows how the proposed conceptual framework allows to elaborate on the weak and the strong versions of the AET and describe their differentiated political referentials and institutional regimes. The tensions between both forms provides a picture of the AET that questions the concepts of transition and of regime.

Loïc Giaccone, Leïla Kebir (p), Emmanuel Reynard

Olivier Crevoisier

People living in mountain regions face many challenges related to global social and environmental changes. In response, new forms of collective action – that we call “new mountain commons” – are emerging at local level. Commons are defined here as a model of resource management gathering three socio-ecological components: a resource, a community and a set of rules regulating access, use and management of the resource (Ostrom, 1990). More specifically, commons include a collective action by the resource’ users (i.e. the “commoners”) characterized by self-organization allowing the sustainable management of the resource system (ibid.). Following Hess (2008) definition, commons are qualified as “new” by the fact that they are of recent creation (end of 20th century - beginning of 21st century), they appeared “without pre-existing rules or clear institutional arrangements” and they concern the provision of goods and services from resources other than natural. These “new commons” have been studied in various contexts or areas such as cities, often named “urban commons” in the literature (Kebir & Wallet, 2021), but not so much in mountain contexts. Possible cases in the Alps have been identified (project MOUN ), including infrastructure management (ski lifts, energy production), heritage restoration, and community services such as groceries, cafés, a nursery, and a maternity centre (Gros-Balthazard et al., in press). The current research – called ComMount –, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, aims to study their possible contribution to territorial development in mountain areas. We examine how these collective actions, through the relationships between the actors and the cumulative knowledge they build up, contribute to the transition towards sustainability. Two challenges mountain regions are facing – transitions in the tourism sector and the supply of proximity services – are investigated. For this end, an analytical framework built on the concept of innovative milieus is developed to explore social innovations and their dynamics, and data from in-depth case studies in two Alpine regions of Switzerland – the cantons of Valais and Tessin – are analyzed.

Marcin Baron (p), Artur Ochojski (p), Adam Polko

Leila Kebir

The paper is mainly inspired by research in transition management and the works on the centrality of justice theory in relation to the governance models. We use the experiences from the EU-funded (Horizon) BOLSTER project and focus on the Slaskie (Silesia) region in Poland. Our research objective is to cross-check whether the conceptual / academic framework of the just transition meets the framework of the funding. We primarily focus on the state of the art review concerning the just transition and on the analysis of the empirical evidence, i.e. the submissions being the answers to the JTF’s calls for proposals in Silesia, specifically those that are expected to boost bottom up initiatives and empower communities. The initial results allow some hypotheses on the governance mechanisms to be “path-dependant”, relying upon the tools, techniques and routines used for the “good-old-EU-money”. This enables efficiency and coordination. However, has no or negative impact on boosting small-scale bottom-up initiatives and enabling community empowerment. Municipalities and regional authorities tend to promote large-scale projects, so the syndromes of “the usual suspects” and “business as usual” are quite clearly visible. In case of the measures targeting the inclusion and community initiatives, we can see the “first mover advantage” taken by those who have already been in the funding game. Therefore the outreach to potentially left behind citizens is probably minor.

Adam Polko (p), Artur Ochojski, Malgorzata Czornik

Marcin Baron

The article focuses on the role of leaders in the process of urban commoning. Applying interviews with leaders of urban communities situated in Katowice, Poland, we scrutinize their role in shaping internal and external relationships across distinct stages of urban commons development. Thus, in the paper we develop the concept of leadership in urban commoning, drawing from place-based leadership but also building on original elements such as a priority for the leader in creating bridging social capital and ensuring a balance between work and pleasure. The research results indicate that the abovementioned conditions are critical for sustainable development of urban commons.