Synergy of Disciplines for Sustainability

Transition is a process of societal change and the consequence of shifting from an unsustainable to a more sustainable state by tackling persistent problems. Transition management is a framework concerned with long term and sustainability-oriented approaches focusing on conceptual learning, reframing and transformative outcomes. In this context, transition models are useful tools to represent the complexity of adaptive systems, and they can be used as learning tools to convey information between agents with different background in stakeholder meetings, and to enhance agents’ collaboration. By observing and participating in the implementation of the transition management framework in this case study, it is shown that there is a gap between idealized transition management and the implementation phase. This research analyzes the implication of applying the transition management cycle to the case of the Ebro River Basin, about the water management issues. In this respect, an agentbased modeling approach is employed to build a meta-model depicting the conflict arising from agents’ interactions in tackling the water shortage problem. Accordingly, the agents’ behaviors at the micro (individual) level, based on different paradigms regarding the water saving strategy, are analyzed and the challenges and the potential solutions are investigated. One of the main challenges of implementing transition management is the lack of an interdisciplinary framework to capture the agent interactions at an individual level. This requires considering both weak and strong sustainability in the conceptual models. Stressing the importance of validating the outcomes of the transition model through diverse data collection methods, the developed conceptual model can contribute to bridging the transition management theories to the real world implementation phase.