What is a sustainable transition?

The climate crisis and environmental change highlight the urgent need for a drastic shift away from the unsustainable systems of production and consumption prevalent today. Policy discussions increasingly mention various transitions, such as the energy transition and just transition. The sustainability transition is an overarching concept that emphasizes the growing recognition that achieving sustainability requires more than technical fixes.

In May and June 2024, SEI’s BiH SuTra programme (Sustainable Transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina) organized two webinars dedicated to megatrends and foresight. The webinar participants associated sustainable transitions with terms such as “justice”, “green”, “transformation” and “policy”, and these concepts are integral to planning and executing transition plans. Achieving sustainability requires profound changes in technology, infrastructure, legislation, markets, behaviour, and underlying institutions and values. Megatrends and foresight can be important tools to understand potential sustainable futures and bring these necessary changes to fruition.

Megatrends relevant for Europe 

Megatrends are long-term, slowly evolving trends that affect large numbers of people and sometimes the entire world. The focus of discussion was on megatrends that have a particular impact on Europe, and especially Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) these megatrends are: climate change, demography, urbanization, economic growth, energy consumption, geopolitics and connectivity. Other classifications and sources were also mentioned in the megatrends webinar, such as the European Commission’s Megatrends Hub.

Today, a great deal of effort goes into observing, measuring and interpreting megatrends. The trends are not necessarily inherently good or bad, and some aspects could be viewed as either threats or opportunities. Careful monitoring and analysis can help to harness benefits and mitigate risks.

Speaking at the megatrends webinar, Marcus Carson, Senior Research Fellow at SEI, said, “Working with megatrends is a little like checking the weather forecast ahead of a weekend outing. You know it provides no guarantees, and unexpected changes can come out of nowhere. Despite those shortcomings, the forecasts give you a sense of what’s coming your way, what to prepare for and a stronger basis for making decisions.”

Foresight: future studies that help shape public policy

Sara Talebian, Research Associate at SEI, said at the foresight webinar that while we cannot perfectly predict the future, it is essential to understand and navigate change for making informed, strategic decisions that effectively address both present and future challenges. Foresight and adaptability can help navigate uncertainties, keeping in mind that the decisions we take today will affect the future.

Talebian said, “We should embed future-oriented approaches in strategic planning and decision-making. That way the decisions we make are more robust against future uncertainty and aligned with long-term goals and objectives. And it is not a one-off exercise, but ideally, they should be part of regular practices. We need to cultivate this culture of using strategic foresight when planning for sustainable transitions.”

Talebian explained foresight as a systematic approach that involves structured processes, frameworks and methodologies. It is participatory and collaborative, and serves as a toolbox for decision-makers to set context-specific sustainability goals, adaptive targets and milestones, and to shape alternative pathways for just transitions and sustainable development. “It is not far out to acknowledge that future thinking and foresight are as essential for sustainability transitions as appropriate funding or safeguarding social cohesion or trust in governments,” she said.

In general, a structured foresight exercise includes a stepwise process and multiple stages. It starts with framing the issue, identifying key stakeholders, and exploring signals of change and emerging developments. The next steps involve imagining and exploring alternative futures and developing shared visions of desirable future states and conditions. Finally, there is the planning and action stage, where plans, pathways and strategies for accelerating change and achieving future visions are designed and operationalized by adding detail and concrete actions and measures.

Foresight has a comprehensive and diverse toolbox for operationalizing each stage of the process. Key methods include:

• horizon scanning: monitoring external environments and contextual challenges
• trend analysis: identifying significant trends, patterns and emerging issues
• scenario planning: creating and evaluating possible future scenarios to understand potential outcomes.
• vision building: co-developing positive and preferable imaginaries of the future
• transformational planning: formulating adaptive and resilient strategies for system-wide change

We can imagine and explore a variety of alternative futures. Some are possible or plausible; some are perceived as probable, because we think they are more likely to materialize; and some futures are preferable or desirable and depict the future state we want to achieve. In the context of a sustainability transition, we want to achieve a sustainable future where the needs of every generation are met without compromising the ability of next generations to meet their own needs. However, a sustainable future could be achieved through multiple pathways, and within each are different steps, policies, actions and measures that are essential to steer and accelerate transformation.

Foresight helps navigate alternative visions of sustainable futures and explore what these mean for different sectors and communities. It helps us to understand who benefits from a given vision of a sustainable future, and who might be left behind and need more help to join the transition. Foresight approaches also help us to anticipate challenges and opportunities in different pathways and design them to fit different socioeconomic contexts, as well as help foster synergies and minimize trade-offs between systems and sectors. Finally, foresight approaches are useful for formulating effective measures that operationalize sustainable transition pathways and are robust against future uncertainties and disruptions.

How does change happen in society?

Steering change is unpredictable. While roadmaps are a popular tool used in discussions about change, a more proper metaphor might be a chessboard, because there are many opponents and allies, and we need to play our pieces together to move forward.

Carson explained that, for transitions to succeed, we need to influence and change prevailing belief systems, as well as relevant structures and actors. Our belief systems – the way we think about or define problems – have a big influence on steering activities. Ideas and perceptions of problems and solutions, when successful, can become institutionalized, bringing new rules, laws, policies and funding streams.

It is also important to scan the horizon and identify allies (both individuals and organizations) because different actors have power and influence over whether new rules can be adopted or blocked. As Carson said in the foresight event: “We tend to associate with people who share not only a common set of values and assumptions, but also a common and fairly consistent set of ideas of how the world works and what constitutes fairness and what things would look like if they were better.”

Scale is also important, but ultimately whatever scale is targeted will in the end involve people at a local level, which is the most important level for working with change processes. Mitar Perušić, a panellist at the foresight seminar and Professor at the University of Eastern Sarajevo, highlighted the importance of local engagement for global results.

“Networking should be used to share good practices and changes so that everyone has the opportunity to see them. A consensus on key issues and the widest possible involvement of stakeholders are needed to improve the current situation. We must work on small goals and different local ‘zero’ targets for different areas, and through these local activities, we will undoubtedly achieve net-zero results on a global level,” said Perušić.

Relevance for Bosnia and Herzegovina

The audience in the webinars voted that climate change, demography and energy consumption are the most important megatrends for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Foresight can support policymakers to plan better how something will be achieved, but some challenges in BiH are simply related to the scope of activities that need to be implemented to become a member of the EU, as well as other international objectives that BiH has accepted.

Azra Hadžiahmetović, Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Sarajevo, said at the foresight webinar, “Bosnia and Herzegovina has a fragile economy, susceptible to both external and internal challenges, and the country should seize opportunities, such as the new Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, with reform and financial support. This could accelerate socio-economic convergence with the EU as well as strengthen regional ties. Strengths that Bosnia and Herzegovina has and that should be utilized are the valuable human capital and the private sector, and they can help in confronting future challenges, but there is a need for innovation in how we confront these challenges”.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is not isolated from events in other countries and regions, either in terms of economic impacts or climate change. Climate change itself has a serious and long-lasting impact on BiH. The damage caused during the 2014 floods, which lasted around 10 to 15 days, set the country back by around five years in terms capital investment.

In the megatrends webinar, Tarik Hubana, Chief Operating Officer for ARTI Analytics, reflected on how connectivity and artificial intelligence impact on BiH.

“It is predominantly positive trends contributing to a better economy and opening new opportunities. On the other hand, increased connectivity impacts cybersecurity, which automatically increases the risk of cyber-attacks. This is very important, especially when considering critical infrastructure, such as the energy sector, which can be a target for such attacks. The digital gap exists, and it is increasing, and we are all witnessing the loss of privacy. Although there are more positive impacts than negative ones, it is necessary to invest in regulations, knowledge, and education to mitigate the risk of negative impacts,” said Hubana.

Foresight is utilized to some extent in planning for a sustainable transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but numerous barriers remain. Designing a future that suits the country, and taking a proactive role in the process, is a common concern. While visioning exercises are regularly used in BiH, the quality of input data needs significant improvement because currently many decisions are based on inaccurate data. Often, data deemed accurate at the local level prove to be flawed, resulting in plans based on faulty information. Careful planning for future activities is essential to achieve desirable results. As Perušić concluded, “A plan is nothing, but planning is everything.”

Sanjin Avdic, Senior Programme Coordinator for BiH SuTra, during the foresight webinar, discussed SEI’s extensive experience in preparing strategic and planning documents in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and identified prioritization as the most challenging aspect of this process. The Green Agenda for the Western Balkans sets objectives and identifies key areas of focus, each of which includes numerous measures and activities that need to be implemented. The primary challenge lies in setting priorities for the next three to four years, given the extensive amount of work required. For instance, the environmental strategy for BiH encompasses around 660 different measures, demanding substantial human and financial resources. It’s not merely a matter of understanding the context; the sheer volume of necessary actions makes implementation daunting. In addition, the complexity is compounded by the involvement of various layers of government.