Below is the abstract for my presentation at the International Sustainability Transition 2025 Conference (June 24-26, Lisbon, Portugal):

Climate assemblies have emerged as a key mechanism for public participation in climate policymaking. National governments and municipalities, particularly in Europe, have increasingly adopted this deliberative model to incorporate citizen voices into climate strategies (Elstub et al., 2021). These assemblies convene randomly selected citizens to discuss and propose recommendations for climate action. While they represent a step toward participatory governance, they often overlook how to engage citizens in broader socio-technical transitions. Climate policy requires not only policy shifts but also changes in public attitudes and behaviors. Strategies that facilitate such shifts are crucial for ensuring that climate assemblies contribute meaningfully to sustainability transitions.

Despite the importance of transition-oriented approaches, strategies rooted in “transition management” (TM) have been largely absent from climate assemblies. Transition management, as conceptualized by Loorbach (2010), provides a governance framework that steers societal transitions through participatory and reflexive processes. One of its key tools, the X-curve, visualizes phases of decline and emergence in socio-technical systems (Loorbach et al., 2017). Although widely applied in sustainability governance, TM has not been systematically incorporated into climate assemblies, presenting an opportunity for experimentation and innovation.

In response, an experimental application of TM was undertaken in municipal climate assemblies in Matsudo and Setagaya, Japan. These initiatives represent one of the first known efforts to integrate TM principles into climate assemblies. This study explores the motives, implementation, and outcomes of these experiments, drawing on the author’s direct involvement. The objectives were: (1) to assess whether TM tools could enhance citizen deliberation on long-term climate strategies, (2) to examine their impact on the outputs generated, and (3) to evaluate whether they foster more profound engagement with transformative climate governance.

Transition management elements were embedded in the assemblies as part of a half-day-long session on transition thinking. The X-curve was introduced to help participants conceptualize societal shifts needed for climate action. Instead of focusing solely on current policy gaps, participants envisioned declining and emerging elements of a sustainable future. Participants were asked to deliberate on the kinds of transition strategies, including identifying existing niches in their townships and exploring the ways of scaling them up.

The integration of TM yielded several insights. The X-curve provided a structured yet flexible framework for participants to navigate the complexity of climate transitions. Discussions moved beyond policy recommendations to consider systemic change, trade-offs with incumbents, and long-term feasibility. Additionally, incorporating behavioral and attitudinal change discussions increased participants’ sense of agency in shaping climate futures beyond government actions. The iterative TM approach also led to more nuanced recommendations as participants refined their proposals in response to evolving discussions.

However, challenges emerged. One difficulty was the absence of frontrunners among the participants. They were randomly selected citizens in order to form the arena as “mini-publics.” Thus, the guiding principle of TM, which selectively invites future-oriented innovators to its transition arena, was somewhat incongruent with the setup of climate assemblies. Also, ensuring that TM-integrated assemblies effectively influence policymaking remains an ongoing challenge. While being enthusiastic about emerging practices, these randomly selected participants were reluctant to depict the incumbents with negative connotations.

Overall, the experimental application of transition management in Matsudo and Setagaya suggests that transition-oriented tools can enrich deliberative processes and enhance citizen engagement in climate governance. Findings indicate that a more explicit TM perspective in climate assemblies can help shape societal transitions toward sustainability. As climate assemblies evolve, embedding transition-oriented strategies may provide a crucial mechanism for fostering more profound and transformative engagement in climate action.

References:

– Elstub, S., Carrick, J., Farrell, D. M., & Mockler, P. (2021). “The scope of climate assemblies: lessons from the Climate Assembly UK,” Sustainability, 13(20), 11272.

– Loorbach, D. (2010). “Transition management for sustainable development: A prescriptive, complexity-based governance framework,” Governance, 23(1), 161-183.

– Loorbach, D., Frantzeskaki, N., & Avelino, F. (2017). “Sustainability transitions research: Transforming science and practice for societal change,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 42(1), 599-626.

I contributed an original Japanese version of this piece to my school’s special short article series on COVID-19: https://www.meiji.ac.jp/mugs2/journal/serial-article-covid19/article07.html

1. About transition studies

I have been focusing on “transition” as a study of policy processes. In the Japanese language, it is sometimes translated as henkaku or ikou. Transition is a concept developed by researchers and practitioners mostly in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, and it begins with depicting the society using a three-layer structure.

Long-term trends (e.g., global warming, population decline, and aging population) are placed in the top layer, various social systems (e.g., legal system, culture/norm, and infrastructure) are placed in the middle, and individual persons are placed in the bottom layer. Individuals act by being constrained by social systems, and social systems cannot be sustainable unless they fit with the long-term trends. On the other hand, individuals collaborate for improving the social systems, and the social systems may influence the long-term trends.

If this “interaction” between these layers is occurring continuously, a balanced society in equilibrium can be achieved. 

In reality, however, because the social structures in the middle layer often resist change, a number of social problems emerge. For example, even if we know that it is necessary to deal with global warming (for example, the “decarbonization” of the Paris Agreement), our institutions that depend on fossil fuels, which has evolved since the time of the Industrial Revolution, are having difficulties in transforming themselves.

A “transition” is a change in social structure that goes along with the long-term trends. The focus of transition (management) research is the ways of accelerating societal transition in the right direction, especially in the context of global warming. In the past few years, I have also been conducting a few action research projects on transitions, such as the ones for promoting bicycle usage and sustainable city.

Nevertheless, societal structures do not change so quickly. There have been no visible transitions in my few years of practice. However, due to the current COVID-19 spread, we have experienced a few societal transitions in just a month or two.

2. COVID-19 spread and transition

1) COVID-19 as a trigger for a sudden, massive transition

In January, the news stories about local outbreaks in the People’s Republic of China was already there. However, in Japan, it was quite difficult to imagine that the infectious disease would make such a huge impact on us. When I was on a recreational fishing boat in Yokohama in the mid-February (BTW, caught 50 mackerels that day!) and saw the cruise ship, Diamond Princess, anchored to Daikoku Pier, I felt like that the threat was at the opposite side of the sea. However, in late February, the number of infected people started to rise, school closure was ordered out of the blue, and measures were rapidly expanded to “80% reduction in human contact.” In a blink of an eye, the structure of our society has changed.

This is a kind of transition. Our economy and “normal” social life all changed drastically. If the spread of COVID-19 is entirely temporary and our lifestyles will be completely restored in half a year or a year later, these changes may not be a real transition. But this COVID-19 spread may have brought about permanent changes to our society, rather than temporary effects.

2) Unexpected acceleration of our work style reform

For example, one of them is the so-called telework (remote work) introduction. Telework has been promoted in the last few years in order to release us from the “commuting hell” and to enhance productivity, but most businesses did not adopt it. Various reasons hindered telework‘s introduction, such as the management of employees based on the physical attendance in the office and the psychological discomfort with online communication. After the COVID-19 spread, however, almost all business entities in Tokyo were forced to adopt telework because the typical Japanese cramped office environment and the crowded commuter trains were identified as a potential cluster of infections.

With the introduction of telework, the way we work has changed dramatically over the past month. If you’re at home, it’s a waste of time just to sit in front of the PC without doing anything. It’s better to do something else to improve your productivity. In addition, since it is impossible to make decisions by using traditional Japanese stamps hanko, the demand for electronic signature systems is increasing rapidly. Furthermore, it seems that business meetings through video conferencing systems have become our new normal, and the ways of moderating the meetings and the conventional hierarchical relationships inside the companies are beginning to transform slowly.

Will these changes disappear when the COVID-19 subsides? For example, once the electronic signature mechanism has been adopted by a company, there is no need for it to return to the previous hanko-based system. Telework will probably be adopted by some companies several days a week, or for the whole week. In the face of the recession, it is also expected that everyone’s awareness of productivity will rise significantly. I don’t have a time machine, so I can’t say for sure about the future, but I suspect that our way of working in the post COVID-19 world is quite different from before February 2020. In other words, a certain degree of irreversibility is embedded in the suddenly accelerated work style transition.

3) The world after the COVID-19

In addition to the way of working, it seems that some areas experienced major transitions as a result of this COVID-19 spread. For example, in the medical field, the scope of online doctor’s visit using smartphones will likely be significantly expanded. In the field of education, in addition to improving the ICT infrastructures, legal instruments for using copyrighted materials in online lectures were implemented as a emergency response, and also most teachers have overcome the discomfort of giving lectures online and acquired ICT operation skills. Furthermore, in the near future, the tourism and transportation industries will have to face major transitions. Of course, in some areas, it is hoped that these impacts are temporary, and our “normal life” will be restored. However, if you can identify the transitions that were suddenly accelerated by the COVID-19, you should be able to envision a post COVID-19 world and be prepared for it

3. Conclusion

Although the COVID-19 spread has accelerated societal transitions, it is definitely better not to have the COVID-19 at all. There is no “good side” of COVID-19. Instead, the governance study researchers must identify the governance mechanisms that can identify much-needed sustainable transitions and accelerate these transitions during the regular times. In addition to pandemic risks, our societies have to respond to many other kinds of long-term trends, such as climate change and population decline. As a researcher, I intend to continue exploring such governance mechanisms through a number of field experiments.