Experimental environmental governance: coproduction and orchestration of transformative change (EE-GOCO) (2023–2027)

Experimental governance seeks to produce policy relevant learning and policy change as a response to the post-normal nature of environmental concerns, often without formal integration into policy processes. This has meant widening participation in policy processes beyond scientists and policy elites and thus experimental governance and knowledge coproduction within it have predominantly been studied in aspirational and instrumental terms. Yet their de facto realization has great bearing on both theory and practice and thus merits focused research attention. EE-GoCo consortium does this through its exceptional access to one of the most widespread experimental environmental governance approaches, transition management and transition arenas. The complementary competencies in the consortium allow it to study the phenomena as governance experiments, as participative arrangements; in terms of how outputs and impacts come into being; and as sites for further experiments.

Funding: Research Council of Finland

Publications: 
Marttila, T., Lukkarinen, J., Hyysalo, S., Lazarevic, D., & Valve, H. (2023). Mid-Range Transition Arenas as Catalysts in a Circular Economy. In The Routledge Handbook of Catalysts for a Sustainable Circular Economy (pp. 339-358). Routledge. 
 
Valve, H., Lazarevic, D., Hyysalo, S., Lukkarinen, J., & Marttila, T. (2023). The interrupting capacities of knowledge co-production experiments: A sociology of testing approach. Environmental Science & Policy, 147, 255-264. 

Lähteenoja, S., Marttila, T., Gaziulusoy, İ., & Hyysalo, S. (2023). Transition co-design dynamics in high level policy processes. Design Studies, 88, 101207.  

Lähteenoja, S. (2024). Advancing Sustainability Transformations-Co-design for Sustainable Development Policies [Doctoral dissertation, Aalto University]. Aalto Publication Platform. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-64-1865-0
 
People:  

Sampsa Hyysalo is professor of codesign at Aalto University and the consortium PI. His research examines designer-user relations in sociotechnical change, with a particular focus on new forms by which diverse people can better collaborate in shaping more sustainable futures. To do this he draws from design research, science & technology studies, and innovation research. In EE-GoCo he works across the subprojects with particular emphasis on how transition arenas work as orchestrated collaborative forms, the nature of design objects that are formed for, in and from these processes as well as their outcomes and impacts. 

Idil Gaziulusoy is Professor of Sustainable Design at the Department of Design, Aalto University. She’s a sustainability scientist and a design researcher, developing a teaching and research portfolio for imagining sustainable, equitable and resilient future systems through various approaches in design research and developing interventions to achieve these proposals. Her work is concerned with socio-technical and socio-ecological systems with a particular focus on production-consumption systems and cities. She is a global pioneer in the emerging area of design for sustainability transitions, developing theories and methods/tools for design practice dealing with sustainability transitions.

Tatu Marttila is a design professional currently working as a Senior Lecturer in Design for Sustainability at Aalto University. With several years of experience in multidisciplinary projects involving collaborative knowledge-building and design, his current research focus is on managing transitions in sustainable energy, environmental governance, and climate-related services. 

Satu Lähteenoja is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University. She studies and experiments sustainability transformations and the possibilities to advance them by widening participation. In the EE-Go-Co project, she analyses the results of policy-related transition arenas, in many of which she has led or participated as a facilitator.  

Sonja Nielsen is a doctoral researcher at Aalto University. In her dissertation, she critically explores and further develops knowledge co-production instruments for advancing sustainability transformations in the context of environmental governance. Empirically, the dissertation focuses on the Transition Arena method as a governance instrument in the Finnish political context. 

Jani Lukkarinen is a Leading Researcher of policy analysis and knowledge co-production at the Societal Change Unit of Finnish Environment Institute and sub-project lead. He is a social scientist and environmental policy researcher specialist in transformative evaluation approaches in complex – and oftentimes wicked – governance challenges. In EE-GoCo, Jani’s role is to conduct methodological training and provide policy support as well as focus on analyses regarding policy outcomes and impact. 

Helena Valve is a Leading Researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute. She studies environmental governance and policymaking by drawing from human geography, policy studies and science and technology studies (STS). She engages with policymaking also as a policy analyst and knowledge broker. In the EE-GoCo project, she analyses transition arenas as experiments that challenge prevailing modes of collaborative governance and knowledge production.

Read more: http://murrosareena.fi/