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Assessing opportunities for scaling out, up and deep of win-win solutions for a sustainable world

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Abstract

Win-win solutions (WWSs) that reconcile climate with economic goals offer a new suite of opportunities to build the necessary economic conditions for achieving a good life for all and reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. However, a systematic assessment of such solutions is still missing. Addressing this gap, a Global Dialogue on win-win solutions was implemented within the GREEN-WIN project to (1) co-develop a vision about ‘which kind of economy do we want for which kind of world?’, (2) identify exemplary WWSs in diverse domains of action and (3) evaluate the possibilities to scale win-win solutions and thus contribute to changing current core economic practices. Our assessment focuses on the potential of ‘scaling out, up and deep’ of solutions to attain a vision of a sustainable world. We find that critical factors for scaling such experiences across the globe are initiating and facilitating opportunities for sharing information and knowledge, boosting multi-stakeholder collaboration and co-creating and building transformative capacities, while ensuring financial support for niche experimentation.

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Notes

  1. https://www.green-win-project.eu/about

  2. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld

  3. Niches can be understood as “constellation of culture, practices and structure that deviates from the regime [and] can meet quite specific societal needs, often in unorthodox ways” (Van Den Bosch and Rotmans 2008, p. 31).

  4. We understand transitions as changes within systems or of partial systems, whereas a transformation can be called a fundamental change of socio-economic, political systems. A transition can be understood as contribution to a great transformation (Polanyi 1990; WBGU 2011)

  5. The Return on Investment (ROI) is a bit tricky to calculate as it is produced in Austria as a premium product under very strict safety conditions in an attractive design and rather high labour costs. It is further dependent on the future energy cost rates and the particular user energy behaviour. The simplest module costs 600 Euro with an energy saving of 30 Euro/year—so an amortisation is achieved after 20 years at the latest.

  6. http://www.taramachines.com/Tara-fly-ash.aspx

  7. https://www.illovosugarafrica.com/UserContent/Documents/Illovo-Impact-Report-Group-Dec17.pdf

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Acknowledgements

We thank our project partners and all participants in the Global Dialogue process for their invaluable contributions to the identification of WWSs.

Funding

This work has been carried out with financial support for the GREEN-WIN project (https://www.green-win-project.eu/) from the European Commission (Grant number 642018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jaeger International, Arbeiterstrandbadstrasse 61, 1210, Vienna, Austria

    Ines Omann, Moritz Kammerlander & Jill Jäger

  2. Global Climate Forum, Berlin, Germany

    Alexander Bisaro

  3. UAB, Barcelona, Spain

    J. David Tàbara

Authors
  1. Ines Omann
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  2. Moritz Kammerlander
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  3. Jill Jäger
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  4. Alexander Bisaro
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  5. J. David Tàbara
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Correspondence to Ines Omann.

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This article is part of a Special Issue on Win-Win Solutions to Climatic Change edited by Diana Mangalagiu, Alexander Bisaro, Jochen Hinkel, and Joan David Tàbara

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Omann, I., Kammerlander, M., Jäger, J. et al. Assessing opportunities for scaling out, up and deep of win-win solutions for a sustainable world. Climatic Change 160, 753–767 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02503-9

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