Towards Sustainability - I: Exploring Paths for Transformative Innovation Through Renewable Energy and Waste Management

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century is sustainability: how to satisfy basic needs without deepening the negative effects of climate change or the depletion of resources. Among the main alternatives promoted to face these challenges is the development of renewable energies and waste management systems.
This session aims to discuss the articulation of public policies, knowledge production, cooperative relations and dynamics of participation in the development of sustainable transition processes. How do these transitions towards sustainability differ across countries, economic dynamics, regulations and innovation systems? How are different interests, social groups and public policies are combined together in these processes of socio-technical change?

Through empirical cases on the development and use of photovoltaic solar energy and post-consumer recycling systems, this session explores different challenges posed by transitions towards sustainability in the global north and the global south.

Chair

• Gabriela Bortz, IESCT-UNQ (Institute of Science and Technology Studies - Universidad Nacional de Quilmes) / CONICET

Individual Presentations

• European Research Politics, Techno-Scientific Networks and a North-South Comparison in the Case of Photovoltaics - Efi Nakopoulou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Stathis Arapostathis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

• Toward Just Energy Transition: Alternative Models of Distributed Generation Systems with Renewable Energy in Argentina - Santiago Manuel Garrido, CONICET/Universidad Nacional de Quilmes

• There Is Non-Human Life after Death, but It’s Also Different, Depending on Where It Occurs - Marcos Fialho Carvalho, UFRJ - HCTE; José Antonio Borges, NCE/UFRJ; Eduardo Nazareth Paiva, EDUARDO NAZARETH PAIVA

• Sustainable Intensification in Uruguay and Eco-localization in Germany: Making a Case for Harnessing Difference - Ruzana Liburkina, Goethe-University Frankfurt

Session Organizer

• Santiago Manuel Garrido, CONICET/Universidad Nacional de Quilmes