Katharina Hölscher

• PhD
• Assistant Professor at Utrecht University

Climate change actions in cities worldwide are driving deep changes in urban governance. We ask whether new capacities for transformative climate governance are emerging in two cities that have experimented with urban climate governance: Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and New York City (NYC), United States. Transformative climate governance creates th...

Climate change actions in cities worldwide are driving deep changes in urban governance. However, to date, urban climate governance fails to deliver the radical and effective actions necessary to reduce emissions and protect from climate impacts. This thesis contributes to explaining and evaluating how urban climate governance is being developed an...

In this chapter, we systematically review our knowledge about climate governance capacities, capacity gaps, lock-ins and opportunities, and link this to the state-of-the art of climate science and climate governance. We formulate a forward-looking research agenda that signposts key themes to advance the transformation of climate governance. The res...

How to progress climate science to be policy-relevant and actionable? This book presents a novel framework to give a positive vision and structuring approach to guide research and practice on transformative climate governance, to shift the narrative from apathy and stalemate to action and transformation. Our vision contrasts existing climate govern...

This article shows opportunities and intricacies of transition management as a facilitated empowerment process that seeks to empower ‘frontrunners’ to (re-)define and take up roles in contributing to sustainability transitions. In the context of ‘retreating’ welfare states there is an increasing focus on ‘empowering’ civil society actors to take ov...

Addressing water challenges in resource-constrained ‘Southern’ cities requires ‘reparation’, a transformative governance approach rooted in restorative justice. In India, formal governance often struggles to tackle social stratification and colonial legacies effectively, sometimes even reinforcing them. This study compares how informality can foste...

Addressing the persistent challenges of water management in India necessitates innovative approaches that transcend traditional methods. The concept of the Water Sensitive City (WSC), hereinafter referred to as water sensitivity, is advanced as an approach to combat these enduring issues. To facilitate the transition to water sensitivity, we emplo...

Transformative research is a broad and loosely connected family of research disciplines and approaches, with the explicit normative ambition to fundamentally question the status quo, change the dominant structures, and support just sustainability transitions by working collaboratively with society. When engaging in such science-practice collaborati...

This paper explores the institutional mainstreaming of nature-based solutions (NBS) to advance a process-based understanding about how to strategically develop the governance capacities needed for systemic, localised and inclusive NBS. To this end, it reports how policy officers in ten European cities have started to mainstream NBS by interacting w...

Cities of India find it challenging to address the complex water crises in the form of scarcity, pollution, floods and unequal access. The current technology-heavy approach needs a multi-disciplinary perspective to read wicked problems. The prevalence of these problems has obstructed cross-agency cooperation, transparent implementation and maintena...

This paper identifies and examines the strategies and governance conditions by which ten European cities have started mainstreaming nature-based solutions (NBS) as innovative systemic solutions in urban planning. The three sets of mainstreaming strategies focus on how teams of policy entrepreneurs within the cities experimented with innovative gove...

We present a practice-oriented analytical framework that supports the generation of actionable knowledge for practice and policy actors to facilitate sustainable niche innovations to emerge and mature. Originating from an applied research context, the framework combines and operationalises existing transition-related concepts and frameworks to buil...

Achieving sustainability and resilience transformations under climate change requires transformative and multi-scale visions to stimulate coherent thinking and action towards radically alternative futures. We present our approach to co-produce transformative visions contextualised in different regions across Europe, while exploring emergent ‘pan-Eu...

This paper presents a multidimensional methodology for assessing the scientific, social, economic, political and environmental impacts of citizens science (CS) projects. Besides these five areas of impact, the methodology considers also the transformative potential of the CS projects, i.e. the degree to which a CS project can help to change, alter,...

Urban transitions and transformations research fosters a dialogue between sustainability transitions theory an inter- and transdisciplinary research on urban change. As a field, urban transitions and transformations research encompasses plural analytical and conceptual perspectives. In doing so, this field opens up sustainability transitions resear...

A fast transformation towards coupled infrastructures is apparent across the sectors. Challenges of Climate Change (CC) mitigation and adaptation drive numerous innovations propelled by new technologies and interconnections enabled by information and communication technologies (ICT). The resilience of systems is challenged by an increasing frequenc...

This chapter introduces 12 categories of societal challenges that NBS can address (Section 4.1). These are conceptually mapped against the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For each of the 12 societal challenge areas, Section 4.2 outlines and lists indicators to evaluate the performance and impact of NBS. It reviews the different types of NBS, give...

In this chapter, we outline a step-by-step approach to developing and implementing an impact assessment plan that covers all stages from planning and implementing to achieving policy impact. Understanding the specific steps to consider and follow when planning and implementing evaluation, will help practitioners make appropriate on-the-ground decis...

Transformation research has in the past years emerged as a shared lens to study and support radical societal change towards sustainability. Given the nascent and exploratory—yet highly normative and ambitious—character of transformation research, we aim to enhance the understanding of transformation research: when do research designs qualify as tra...

The narrative of ‘urban transformations’ epitomises the hope that cities provide rich opportunities for contributing to local and global sustainability and resilience. Urban transformation research is developing a rich yet consistent research agenda, offering opportunities for integrating multiple perspectives and disciplines concerned with radical...

This chapter describes how entrepreneurial policy makers, researcher and professionals in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, support the transition to a water resilient city. It identifies the capacities needed to work systematically on transformative change: stewarding, unlocking, transforming and orchestrating. This framework of transformative governanc...

With growing awareness of the adverse impacts of anthropogenic climate change, it is essential to understand whether and how societal transformation can be achieved. Future society’s ability to transform depends on how human agency can develop within evolving socioeconomic contexts. Scenarios, therefore, provide different enabling conditions and ch...

This chapter presents a conceptual framework to explain, evaluate and eventually to support, the capacities by which multiple governance actors accomplish transformative climate governance. The framework builds on an understanding of governance capacity as emergent and agency-driven property and is grounded in a review and synthesis of scientific l...

In this chapter, we present how climate action that fosters transformations to sustainability and resilience in European societies can be developed in the context of high-end climate change. The chapter builds from the IMPRESSIONS inter- and transdisciplinary research project work on high-end climate change. It brings a unique perspective on long-t...

This chapter introduces the robust transition pathways developed in four case studies at different scales in Europe and analyses what capacities they create. Implementing transition pathways to respond to high-end scenarios and contribute to sustainability and resilience transformations requires new agency capacities that are able to deal with comp...

The reality of water-related challenges has led to calls to adapt urban water governance to integrated, inclusive and adaptive approaches that facilitate learning and innovation for sustainable and resilient cities. However, there is a gap in knowledge about the conditions that manifest in such water governance, and how to create such conditions to...

Significant changes of climate governance have to accompany, or, even precede effective climate action. We introduce our transformative perspective on climate change as a new entry point to understand and formulate implications for climate governance, to underscore the transformative role and transformative impact of governance in dealing with driv...

The scale of cities has become an epicentre of scientific and policy attention for tackling climate change and sustainability challenges. Local governments worldwide have already demonstrated how to harness opportunities for developing innovative and integrated solutions to better tend to the systemic and uncertain nature of urban transformations....

This chapter presents the case study of how transformative climate governance capacities emerge in New York City. NYC represents a highly complex governance setting with multiple agencies, actors and jurisdictions involved in the development and implementation of climate policy and projects. Over the past years, NYC has substantially innovated its...

The notion of transformative climate governance in cities epitomises the urgency and opportunity for delivering bold action to address climate change and sustainability challenges. There is a risk to give into a somewhat naïve narrative of urban opportunities for delivering effective and transformative climate action when it is unclear how these op...

Transition management has been applied in different governance contexts over the past 15 years, showing its modularity and also its ability to facilitate participatory strategic planning and agenda setting. This book chapter presents the operational framework of transition management as developed to guide the design of a three-series workshop in fo...

english versin see below Im Rahmen des UBA-Vorhabens Transformation hin zu nachhaltigen, gekoppelten Infrastruktu-ren (TRAFIS) wurden Wirkungen, Prozesse und Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten bei der Umset-zung innovativer Infrastrukturkopplungen betrachtet. Im Fokus stehen die Sektoren Wasser, Abwasser, Energie, Verkehr, Abfall und IKT. Der vorliegende...

This study identified the factors and activities influencing the implementation and diffusion of innovative coupled infrastructures. The primary objective was to derive effective action and support options for the federal government as well as for local and regional infrastructure planners. We analysed the development pathways of nine examples of i...

Infrastrukturkopplungen zwischen verschiedenen Sektoren sowie zwischen Teilsektoren, wie z.B. Strom- und Gaserzeugung, bieten das Potential, die Daseinsvorsorge der Menschen auf kommunaler und regionaler Ebene langfristig nachhaltiger zu gestalten sowie das Klima und natürliche Ressourcen zu schonen. Als komplexe sozio-technische Systeme unterliege...

Im Vorhaben wurden Wirkungen, Prozesse und Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten bei der Umsetzung innovativer Infrastrukturkopplungen betrachtet. Es wurden aktuelle Entwicklungen, die verbundenen Transformationsprozesse einschließlich unterstützender und hindernder Einflussfaktoren sowie potentielle Nachhaltigkeitswirkungen von gekoppelten Infrastrukturlösu...

Infrastructure systems undergo profound change in order to meet the changing societal demands for climate protection and resource conservation, the changing expectations and behavioral patterns of users and new technologies. In addition to many challenges, this goes along with the opportunity for more sustainability in infrastructure systems. Our r...

Urban infrastructures are vital for the distribution and the exchange of energy, matters and information as a basis for the well-being of societies. How infrastructures are designed and managed has strong impacts on their sustainability, including performance, resilience, social justice, economic viability, resource consumption and climate mitigati...

The complex interactions of drivers represented in scenarios and climate change impacts across scales have led to the development of multiscale scenarios. Since the recent development of global shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), which have started being downscaled to lower scales, the potential of scenarios to be relevant for decision making and...

Physical infrastructures are vital for the distribution and the exchange of energy, maters and information as a basis for social and economic well-being of a society. However, infrastructures also consume raw materials, energy and land, are a source of emissions and thus affect environmental quality and climate change. Currently, infrastructural s...

The narrative of urban sustainability transformations epitomises the hope that urban governance can create the conditions to plan and govern cities in a way that they contribute to local and global sustainability and resilience. So far, urban governance is not delivering: novel governance approaches are emerging in cities worldwide , yet are unable...

With a range of potential pathways to a sustainable future compatible with the Paris Agreement 1.5 °C target, scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool in studies of climate change mitigation and adaptation. A wide range of alternative scenarios have been created, and core amongst these are five socioeconomic scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathw...

In light of the persistent failure to reduce emissions decisively, facilitate long-term resilience against climate change and account for the connectedness of climate change with other social, environmental and economic concerns, we present a conceptual framework of capacities for transformative climate governance. Transformative climate governance...

The complex challenges arising from climate change that exceeds the +2 °C target (termed ‘high-end climate change’) in Europe require new integrative responses to support transformations to a more sustainable future. We present a novel methodology that combines transition management and high-end climate and socioeconomic change scenarios to identif...

The innovation of coupled infrastructure can potentially support transformations towards sustainability and resilience. We reconstructed and analysed the development pathways of nine case studies of coupled infrastructure innovations in Germany to understand the development of coupled infrastructure innovations and to derive concrete guidelines for...

The challenge of meeting the UNFCCC CoP21 goal of keeping global warming ‘well below 2 °C and to pursue efforts towards 1.5 °C’ (‘the 2–1.5 °C target’) calls for research efforts to better understand the opportunities and constraints for fundamental transformations in global systems dynamics which currently drive the unsustainable and inequitable u...

Urban climate experimentation is a deliberate process of knowledge production for new approaches and solutions to contribute to climate-resilient sustainability transitions. Whether and how cities succeed in ‘moving beyond experimentation’ is determined by the extent to which experimentation provides impulses to radical change that are embedded in...

In den letzten Jahren wurde vermehrt der Ruf nach einer Transformationsforschung laut, welche sich dem wachsenden globalen Problemdruck stellt und sich mit der Unterstützung von Nachhaltigkeitstransformationen beschäftigt. Im Laufe der letzten Jahre haben sich verschiedene analytische und the-oretische Schwerpunkte und Rahmenwerke sowie Methoden en...

The last years, calls surged for a transformation research, which addresses the increasing global environmental and social challenges and supports transformations towards sustainability. As transformation research developed rapidly in relation to various societal domains and established research strands, there is currently a need for self-reflectio...

Transformation research develops rapidly – it combines multiple research fields and approaches, converges theoretical concepts and frameworks, pursues the ambitious goal of contributing to societal sustainability transformations and advocates transdisciplinary research methods. There are some fervent debates about the legitimacy, societal impact an...

Either meeting the UNFCCC Paris agreement to limit global average warming below the 2–1.5 °C threshold, or going beyond it entails huge challenges in terms of institutional innovation and transformation. This research describes a participatory integrated assessment process aimed at exploring the options, opportunities, necessary capacities and impl...

This chapter synthesises the insights from the various book contributions to critically reflect on what transition management offers when applied in and for cities. In this book, transition management has been suggested as a transformative governance approach in and for cities. Transition management seeks to provide impulses for systemic change by...

When the city of Ludwigsburg in Germany experimented with the transition management approach, it had already formulated ambitious sustainability strategies and programmes, institutionalised sustainability in a cross-sectional city department and established a variety of participatory processes to collect citizen input for strategic planning. In thi...

The multi-actor nature of urban sustainability transitions challenges existing social fabrics and local governance settings, and raises questions about who takes decisions, with which agenda and to what end. It demands close attention to who are actors involved in transition processes and what are the implications for (changing) roles, responsibili...

This is a unique book that provides rich knowledge on how to understand and actively contribute to urban sustainability transitions. The book combines theoretical frameworks and tools with practical experiences on transition management as a framework that supports urban planning and governance towards sustainability. The book offers the opportunity...

‘Transition’ and ‘transformation’ have become buzzwords in political and scientific discourses. They signal the need for large-scale changes to achieve a sustainable society. We compare how they are applied and interpreted in scientific literatures to explore whether they are distinct concepts and provide complementary insights. Transition and tran...

In 2011, the city administration of Ghent started up the ‘climate arena’ based on transition management (TM) to develop a plan and implement actions to work towards its ambition of climate neutrality by 2050 and to involve actors from the city in doing so. This chapter analyses the empowerment of the involved actors to discern long-term commitment...