Interview of Teis Hansen, Full Professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen
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What is geography of sustainability transition for you?
Well, it's about understanding, I guess, how the classical geographical context of place and scale, and these kinds of things influence our understanding of sustainability transitions. So, what is the transition?
In my understanding, a transition is when we see changes in what the dominating configurations in a sociotechnical system are. If we have a sociotechnical system that delivers some kind of specific service, whether it's food, or energy or housing or water or sanitation or transportation, mobility. There are different ways of delivering these services, that we all need, that are foundational in a way to our everyday lives. And we talk about sociotechnical configurations, then sort of actors, institutions, technologies that are related to each other and that provide a specific service in a given way. For a long time, mobility has been provided predominantly through personal ownership of a car, that's running because it has an internal combustion engine. And that's changing now. It hasn't been the only configuration at work in the mobility sphere. But maybe we see some changes now in what's happening there. A transition then is a shift between different sociotechnical configurations, between which ones are dominating in delivering a certain service. And when we talk about sustainability transition, we talk about one of these shifts, where we go from a configuration that's clearly sort of less sustainable to one that's more. So, I think that's sort of the bottom line on transitions. And then, geography of transition is concerned with different things. It's understanding how and why these transitions happen unevenly across space, that we see some areas being front runners and others being the opposite. It's about understanding how transition processes, how they rely on contextual factors or they are influenced by contextual factors. But it's also about understanding how a transition travels over space, so to say. I guess these are some of the core topics when we talk about geography of sustainability transitions.
About the notion of place and scale in this geography: when you talk about the specificities of these places, are you mainly referring to actors' networks, or is there also something about the materiality of these spaces?
It's also a lot about that. It's also even down to things like infrastructures and natural resources and these kinds of things. They matter a lot. But immaterial characteristics of specific areas, like institutions, for example, are also central. And we know a lot about going back to more institutional perspectives and economic geography. Also, we know a lot about how they matter for development. And obviously these are extremely important also when we talk about transitions.
During the International Sustainability Transitions (IST) conference, we have noticed that the “nature” issues are not really tackled within the community. How do you see things?
- 1 Ulrich Hansen, de la Technical University of Denmark.
I think that's unfortunately one of the issues, one of the places, where there is still more work to be done. That is also linked to another question about what geography of sustainability transitions can be. Like what can it do? What are promising ways forward? And I think that one of the really promising ways forward – or one of the ways forward, that geographers maybe are better positioned than many others at pursuing –, is to engage in maybe more transdisciplinary research. I'm not in a geography department anymore. But I've been there for a long time, and I know that these are very heterogeneous places. You cover everything from natural science to social geography, political geography, these kinds of things. So, I think at least in principle, geographers should have the possibilities for engaging in more transdisciplinary research, which is quite essential for future work on transitions. And one of the things or one of the places, where it's clearly, really relevant, is to address things around the more natural dimensions of sustainability transitions. And in particular, engaging, maybe, with the environmental geographers around the actual environmental sustainability of the transition processes that are happening. Because that's quite paradoxical in a way. I think a lot of transition studies research tends to black box sustainability. So, we assume that certain solutions, that are labeled as green or sustainable, are actually green and sustainable, without really going into actually addressing that. Perhaps also acknowledging some of the sustainability trade-offs, that are important when we talk about transition processes. And I think that we start to see some work on that. Looking, for example, a colleague at DTU1, who's been looking at the end of life, when it comes to some of the green technologies. What happens to the waste? What are the dark side to this transition in terms of both environmental, but of course also working condition, these kinds of things? And I think that's really an important work. Building bridges toward environmental geography, maybe also more development studies are something that has substantial potential in addressing this.
How can the current geography of sustainability transitions integrate more social justice issues that seems not well defined?
Well, at least you can make an argument that geography and economic geography, which is where I come from traditionally, have really been all about centre-periphery relations, essentially. And those centre-periphery relations are, of course, now being modified by the transition. And so, you could say that there's a long tradition in geography that maybe makes geographers give them a somewhat unique position to try to analyze in depth the distributional consequences of the transition. I guess at different scales, both on the global scale, but also, of course, between different regions and maybe even within regions. A lot of the work in economic geography in recent years has been focused on this, the geography of discontent. Which is something that is increasingly influenced by the transition. We see that the transition is not for free, right, even though it brings much greater benefits than the cost further down the line, then there are some upfront costs of the transition. And if those are not distributed fairly, then, as you know very well in France … then, things might happen. So, of course, that's one perspective. There's also a lot of work on resource peripheries in economic geography, resource geography, talking about how peripheral regions are simply becoming exports hubs for resources that are then capitalized upon, and the added values going elsewhere, goes to more metropolitan regions and leave little traces behind in the regions where the resources are actually found. There's a lot of work on that and traditionally around mining and these kinds of things, but also considering wind energy etc., where we find that there's also a very important work on resource peripheries in the context of the energy transition. And I think taking these kinds of insights on board, crucially pushing that forward for impact, is something that geographers could very well contribute with.
We are witnessing the rise of nationalism and environmental regression in Europe. How should these challenges be addressed?
I think what all this really highlights is the importance of not stopping at the publications but making sure that your research has impact. So, achieving impact through research. And given the multiple crisis that we are facing at the moment, I think that it highlights just the importance of doing that. And, how to do that. I think it's important to recognize that there are different ways of doing that. So, the different approaches to achieving this impact; some approaches might be more activist, and some might be more like conform, traditional, using more standard channels to achieving impact. In a way, you can maybe think about this as trying to change the system from the outside or whether to change it more from the inside. Very often when you hear debates about impact and research, these different ways of achieving impact are put up in opposition to each other. And personally, I very much disagree to that. I think that both of these approaches are important and valid. Actually, I see them more as complements to each other than as alternatives. And the reason for that, is that if you really want to do something about climate change, in the long run, we need many different actor groups to change. I mean, of course, we need the politicians to understand all the ministries, the agencies to change the policies. We also need the labor union to change its approach to a green transition. There's a broad spectrum of actors that need to change, that are today, I would say, predominantly preserving status quo. And what is then the point is that we need to speak to all of them. And we probably speak to these different actor groups in different ways. From this perspective, I think it very much makes sense that researchers are trying to achieve impact through the research in different ways. So, at the bottom line, I think it's about not just the traditional metaphor of the ivory tower. Of course, we need to get out of that. And I think everybody agrees to that. Many do, at least. It is about the way of doing it; I think we need to be open to different approaches to actually achieve that impact.
What critical gaps exist in our scholarly understanding of the drivers behind rising nationalism and environmental degradation in Europe? What research directions should we prioritize to better comprehend these developments?
- 2 London School of Economics.
To be honest, of course, we need more research. We always need to keep doing research. I do think that the main gap today is not about our knowledge about these processes and what makes them happen. I think it's actually more about bringing that knowledge forward for impact in a way. If you look about nationalism, and the drivers of that, the work of Andres Rodriguez-Pose from the LSE2, over the last decade or so on the geography of discontent, is extremely powerful in providing explanations for what is happening and why it's happening in different places. The last decades of research on sustainability transitions clearly demonstrate why we are not doing enough in tackling the different environmental crisis that we are in. Or why that change is happening slowly. We know that today. I think we know the main sources of that. We know why there's inertia in the system and the causes of lock-in, et cetera. So maybe what we then really need more research on, is how to actually bring these insights forward in a way. Because when I look at what's happening among decision makers, I think we could inform them much better based on what we know today. And I think that is the main bottleneck, more than those things like big areas that are completely undiscovered. It doesn't mean that we should stop doing research, of course. But if we really want to do something about these crises, I don't think it's the main bottleneck, to be honest.
Drawing from your research experience, could you identify this gap between knowledge and impact?
Today a lot of the work that I do is on policy and policy for sustainability transitions. Today we know a lot about what needs to change, how policies need to change in order to make an impact. We need broad portfolios of policy instruments. We need to support the new solutions. We also need to limit the room for maneuver of the existing ones. It's not enough to just give some support to the new emerging technologies and solutions if we are at the same time not actively phasing out the old ones. Because the old ones, they've been around for decades and they have built up so many advantages that just a little bit of R&D support for green technologies is not going to change things. We need active phase-out policies. Is that happening? Well, it's happening in isolated places. It's happening in some sectors and in some countries.
Last week, there was a big agreement here in Denmark, not decided yet in Parliament, but a decision made between the government, industry, agriculture organizations and then nature protection organizations on the CO2 tax on agriculture. Ongoing, starting in a few years from now. If it gets implemented, it will be unique at the moment to the world. So, that is an example of something that we know. We've known for a long time that we need that. It hasn't happened because of vested interests and lobbying and farmers' protests, etc. And now we see it for the first time here in Denmark, maybe. Is it ambitious enough? No, it's not, in terms of the cost levels. But at least it is a first step. We've known for such a long time that this actually needs to happen and it's only now, that it happens in a small country like Denmark, and in a format that could be more ambitious. So, I think that maybe there's one way of demonstrating that while we've known for a very long time that some things need to change, and it just happens way too slow. And we will pay the price at some point. We are already paying it now, probably.
Beyond the established discourse on environmental and social justice, what additional dimensions warrant scholarly attention in this context?
- 3 Environmental innovation & societal transition Journal.
- 4 Planning roles in infrastructure system transitions: A review of research bridging socio-technical (...)
Well, we talked about policy. That's part of what I work on. And I would say that one thing, that really has been missing is research on policies for sustainability transitions in a spatial way. I think that's irrespectively of whether you talk about mission-oriented innovation policies, – so the Mazzucato School –, whether you talk about transformative innovation policy, whether you talk about more challenge-driven innovation policy. It hasn't really taken geography into consideration so far. I mean, now there are different special issues underway that has a focus on this, at the moment. There's one coming out in EIST3 and there's a new one in regional studies that's currently online. So, I think things are starting to happen on this. But still, I think we need to learn a lot more about the geography of policy for transitions. And then maybe a second topic … I think planning is something that could really benefit from... or that the transitions community could benefit a lot from engaging more with. There's been decades of research in planning studies, on how to steer, how to engage, how to mobilize. And I think all that is super relevant to the more action-focused part of the transition strategy. So, for example, in the tradition of transition management. But still, I see quite limited engagement with this. There was a paper some years ago by an Australian researcher, Linda Carroli4, on different planning roles in transition processes that was published in EIST. It's not that there has been nothing trying to connect planning and sustainability transitions. But I think a lot more could be done on this, as well. So, maybe these are two additional areas where I see that geographers could both contribute and that there would really have good conditions or good preconditions for making an impact in the transition community.
How do you envision the evolution of the Geography of Sustainability Transitions community within the broader International Sustainability Transitions community over the next decade? What strategic approaches might enhance its influence and contribution?
I always think more can be done. But maybe a first step is to try to broaden. And that connects to what I've been talking about so far, try to broaden a bit the engagement on the geography side. Because you have to be honest, a lot of the people that's been involved in geography of sustainability transitions, they come from economic geography. And geography is, of course, a much richer field than just that. So, I don't want to say that we should have less economic geographers interested in transitions. But I think maybe it would be nice if it was more balanced across the different sort of main fields in geography. That maybe we should try to push the transitions agenda towards some of the other parts of geography, that so far has had a bit more limited engagement with the field of sustainability transitions. I think that would be welcomed. I don't know how to do that the best, if we should do an advertisement campaign around different geography departments. But at least I think that would be very good.
Which geographical subdisciplines should be prioritized for integration within sustainability transitions research?
What we talked about here: environmental geography, really important. Then, there are some differences across different countries, where the development studies are seen as independent or part of geography. And they are already quite engaged, some of them, in transitions. But I think that this could also be something that would benefit transitions to have even more engagement from people from development studies than what we see today. Important to say that there is some already, some people and there's this specialty group also in Global South in STRN. There's definitely engagement on that. But I think that could also be even stronger. Today, I come from transition studies more than geography. So, I think that transitions are super important. I don't understand why people are not engaging more with it. People have the disciplinary focus, very often. But maybe geographers are more open than other disciplines. I think so. We have a tradition for importing concepts from other fields. Whether it's been sociology or economics, etc. At least in economic geography. We've been doing that a lot. So probably there's hope for better engagement in the future.
Notes
1 Ulrich Hansen, de la Technical University of Denmark.
2 London School of Economics.
3 Environmental innovation & societal transition Journal.
4 Planning roles in infrastructure system transitions: A review of research bridging socio-technical transitions and planning, Environmental Innovation & Societal Transitions, Volume 29, 2018, p. 81-89.
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Teis Hansen, Salma Loudiyi et Sabine Girard, « Interview of Teis Hansen, Full Professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen », Géocarrefour [En ligne], 98/3-4 | 2024, mis en ligne le 28 avril 2025, consulté le 16 mai 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/geocarrefour/24424 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13tpp
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