‘Transitions in the Making’: The Role of Regional Boundary Organisations in Mobilising Sustainability Transitions Under a Changing Climate

Abstract

Sustainability under a changing climate requires transitioning away from institutionalised processes, norms and cultures that underpin and reproduce unsustainable practices and development. The volume and diversity of actors, and the closeness and density of interactions and interrelationships, make urban transitions complex, contested and dynamic, challenging established management practices, institutions and governance. Therefore, enabling sustainability transitions requires social processes of adaptive, if not transformative, change and learning, facilitated by improved capacities for working across diverse forms of jurisdiction, scale, knowledge, organisations, landscapes and institutions. Recognition of the challenges inherent in these issues has led to arguments for new forms of governance, such as Transition Management. The dynamic relations between niche and regime have been identified as requiring further analytical attention. In our research, we have identified ‘boundary organisations’ as operating in this space as they work to enable energy and natural resource transitions in Victoria. This paper explores what we are learning about and from these organisations in enabling some of the conditions considered important in the governance of transitions, such as experimentation, long-term thinking and learning by doing across multiple boundaries.