This document summarizes a presentation by René Kemp on environment and sustainable development. It discusses Kemp's background and research interests, which include environmental policy, clean technology, societal transformations, and governance for sustainable development. It also summarizes some of the projects Kemp is involved in, including sustainable mobility, reflexive governance, environmental technology assessment, and transition management. Finally, it provides overviews of some of the key topics and frameworks in Kemp's research, such as the economy-environment relationship, three economic truths about the environment, debates around sustainable development, environment and poverty, and new thinking about how the environment is conceptualized.

1. Environment and Sustainable
Development
René Kemp
UNU-MERIT
Phd Programme
Innovation Studies and Development (2006-2007)

2. Who I am
I am a (Dutch) researcher at UNU-MERIT,
ICIS in Maastricht and DRIFT in Rotterdam
I studied econometrics but turned a social
scientist drawing on innovation studies, policy
analysis, social constructivism, system theory
and cognitive learning approaches
I am viewing the world from an evolutionary
institutionalist perspective

3. Research interests
o Environmental policy and technical change
(policy instruments, clean technology)
o Societal transformations in energy, mobility
and waste management
o Governance for sustainable development
o Policy learning
o Innovation in the public sector

4. Projects I am involved in
 Sustainable mobility (ICIS)
 Reflexive governance for sustainable
development
 Environmental technology assessment
(European Parliament)
 Transition management (DRIFT)
 Measuring eco-innovation (EU)

5. The economy-environment
relationship
Within the environment and economic flow diagram, raw
materials (R) are used as inputs into the production process (P)
that creates the goods consumed by households (C). The end
result of production and consumption is the creation of utility
(U) or satisfaction.

7. Three economic truths
A clean environment has economic value
(and calls for government action)
Environment is competing with other wants
(no free lunch)
“Everything worth doing is not necessary worth
doing well”: environmental protection is
warranted up to the point where marginal
benefits exceed marginal costs (neoclassical
welfare economics)

8. Sustainable development is an inherently indeterminate and
contested concept, which cannot be translated into a blueprint from
which criteria can be derived and unambiguous decisions can be
taken to get there.
From a governance perspective such disagreement is an essential part
of sustainable development, one that makes operationalisation and
implementation difficult simply because:
there are different ideas of what sustainable development amounts
to for actors in various sectors (e.g., energy, transport, agriculture,
food systems, waste management);
existing solutions tend to be sustainable within these sectors rather
than across the whole of society:
new developments bring new risks that cannot be anticipated;
it is a long-term, open-ended project that precedes and supersedes
limited term, democratically elected governments;
it involves trade-off decisions on highly contested issues that cause
dilemmas

9. Environment and poverty
Is poverty a source of environmental
degradation?
Does environmental degradation affect the
poor disproportionately?
Is there a downward spiral?
Are relevant environmental aspects
measured?
When does development constitute progress?
Environmental entitlements approach

10. The orthodox view: the
downward spiral
Poverty/vulnerability
Environmental change
Source: Forsyth and Leach

11. Source: Forsyth and Leach

12. The entitlements approach
Shows how particular components of the
environment become endowments and
entitlements for different people, affecting their
well-being
… with natural resource management activities of
different groups of people producing and shaping
particular kinds of environment
in which institutions at multiple scale levels
interact to shape the benefits that people derive
from environmental goods and services
Source: Forsyth and Leach

13. Source: Forsyth and Leach

14. PC = private consumption
CPR = common property resources
SPR = State provided commodities
Source: Forsyth and Leach

15. New thinking about “the environment”
forces new questions to be asked
which people see which components of variable
and dynamic environments as valuable or useful at
different times?
How do different people gain access to and control
over such environmental resources and services?
And how does environmental use by different
people transform different components of the
environment?
Source: Forsyth and Leach

16. g(L) = growth of population; g(W/L) = growth in per capita wealth; g(Y/L) = growth in
GDP per capita; dHDI = sign of change of Human Development Index

17. What are we to make about this?
Be critical towards statistics and methods of
analysis
Environment refers to something objective
and subjective
Macroscale change is experienced
differently at the local level
Institutional approaches should take the
local context into account in order to
contribute to wellbeing