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Home Industrial Transformation (IT) is a core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). It was launched in 1999 together with publication of the IT Science Plan (Vellinga and Herb, 1999) with the challenging goal of improving the understanding of the ways in which society could combine economic and social development with the reduction of pressure on the environment. The scientific agenda of the IHDP IT has been built around a number of research questions in the fields of: energy and material flows; food; cities with focus of water and transportation; information and communication; governance and transformation processes. Industrial Transformation research starts with the notion that changes in technologies ? put differently, changes in the ways in which humans use environmental resources and services ? are embedded in the socio-economic realm and modify the natural environment. This embraces processes and products, production and consumption chains and distribution and disposal activities. IT research is also interested in the institutions and incentives that shape these systems (i.e. property, liability, regulations), and how these situate and influence social actors (government, producers, and consumers). In thinking about how these systems might change, IT is concerned with the interaction of innovation by economic and social actors with processes of change at a higher level in socio-technical systems of provision (energy systems, mobility systems, food and nutrition systems and so on). IT is interested not only in identifying alternatives, but also in seeking to understand how broad-scale change in systems that are relevant for global environment may occur and be influenced over the longer-term future (Olsthoorn and Wieczorek, 2006). IT seeks to integrate and stimulate co-operation among international and interdisciplinary scientists by establishing both a research framework and a network which can be useful for exchanging information and identifying priority research questions. |
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mail: Anna.Wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl
phone: +31 20 598 9504
mail: Anna.Wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl
phone: +31 20 598 9504