Beyond the regime: can Integrated Sustainability Assessment address the barriers to effective sustainable passenger mobility policy?

Abstract

Sustainability policy making is hampered by a tendency towards sector-based, short-term and often techno-fix perspectives. This paper describes a novel policy development and assessment framework – Integrated Sustainability Assessment (ISA) – that may help address problems of unsustainability in a more integrated and strategic manner. ISA involves two primary methods: transition analysis and stakeholder engagement. The ISA case study on sustainable passenger mobility suggests ISA is well equipped to produce a holistic analysis of mobility systems, illustrate radical alternatives to the status quo and foster social learning. Further research should explore its potential to induce long-term behavioural or institutional change.

Keywords:

• sustainability assessment
• mobility
• transitions
• stakeholder engagement
• social learning

Notes

1. Sectoral fragmentation is due to government departments, or EU-level directorates, with remits for specific economic sectors or social functions, such as transport or justice, and few inter-department/directorate initiatives to adequately develop or assess policy across these institutions.

2. In part, such differences may arise because of the type of participants who participated in the workshops, i.e., primarily transport technology experts and more environmentally-aware citizens, and the variation in question format, pre-defined list versus open-ended, between the two groups.

3. Further details of the model are described in Köhler et al. 2009. It is worth noting that not all possible sustainable transport technologies were included in the model, but rather the most promising and policy-relevant. For example, although plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) may prove to be a successful transport technology in the future, it was not included because of the greater attention given to hydrogen and fuel cell (HFC) transport technologies by policy makers and manufacturers (CEC 2001b; van den Hoed and Vergragt 2004). Nevertheless, there are similar issues associated with PEV development as with HFC vehicle development (e.g. need for new infrastructure), which mean the conclusions relating to HFC technologies might also be relevant to PEVs.

4. Consistent with the focus of the analysis and of ISA, the selection of signals was limited to those that might, under certain conditions, support the development of sustainable mobility niches. This selection was based on a major review of the literature (see Nykvist and Whitmarsh 2008). While the regime represents several major aspects of unsustainability (e.g. oil-based transit, personal mobility), the development of new unsustainable technologies or practices are not explicitly resolved in the mobility model used here but could be included in future applications of the model.