To be successful, transitions toward sustainability must be guided by a sound understanding of the architecture of the policy and institutional designs.
In this paper, a team led by Pablo F. Mendez explores the institutional conditions necessary for successful transitions toward sustainability in the social-ecological systems of the Doñana region (Guadalquivir estuary, southwest Spain). First, they provide an historical explanation of the reasons whereby Doñana's social-ecological system is stuck in a maladaptive rigidity trap. Second, they explore how (i) political-economic interests, prevailing discourses and power; and (ii) institutional entrepreneurship, have shaped Doñana's maladaptive outcome.
The authors argue that contingency can be modulated away from randomness and better characterized as unpredictability, through the systematic inclusion of these factors into analysis. This would, in turn, increase the capacity to inform future policy and institutional transitional designs toward sustainability.
