Assessing the Transformative Potential of a Sociocracy-Informed Climate Change Adaptation Lab in Lund, Sweden

Abstract

Effective climate change adaptation necessitates enhanced public participation as there is a need for the voice of people to be meaningfully incorporated to facilitate transformational adaptation, contend with complexity, and avoid maladaptation. Despite this, widespread participation in climate change adaptation governance in Global North countries like Sweden is currently restricted by rigid power dynamics, even in spaces that purport to be transformationally participatory. In essence, there is an apparent gap between the needs identified in the literature and how practitioners actually carry out participation. This thesis aims to address this gap by developing a methodology for facilitating a climate change adaptation lab that can open these closed and invited spaces to challenge all forms of power from the bottom-up and thereby contribute to transformational change in the context of climate change adaptation. The transformational potential of the proposed lab is evaluated through the establishment and facilitation of two labs in the municipality of Lund in Sweden, utilizing the methodology of sociocracy. Interviews with experts in participatory climate change adaptation, sociocracy, and the Swedish context also supplement these findings. The conclusions of this thesis point towards the significant transformational potential of a sociocracy-informed climate change adaptation lab, while underscoring the need for further research into novel methodological approaches to participatory climate change adaptation.

Popular Abstract

A rise in dangerous weather events, such as floods and extreme heat, due to climate change is inevitable, even in Southern Sweden. Many researchers suggest that one of the most appropriate ways to deal with this challenge is to meaningfully incorporate more people into decision-making processes ensuring solutions come from the bottom-up. These same researchers stress that this could have transformational effects. Transformational change refers to change that initiates new systems rather than simple adjustments to existing ones. Many scholars also stress that this transformational change is required to successfully adapt to climate change.

However, the idea of better incorporating more public voice into the decision-making process is not new. Nonetheless, ineffective measures persist, which often means that public participation in Sweden is nothing more than a one-way passage of information, wherein the lay public maintains a limited ability to meaningfully affect outcomes. Even in spaces that purport to fix this problem, the outcomes of these processes have thus far been insufficiently transformational. Accordingly, this thesis intends to learn from these past miscalculations to develop a novel climate change adaptation lab that utilizes the organizing principle of sociocracy.

Inspired by past research on urban living labs, a climate change adaptation lab is an experimental space that brings together experts, the lay public, and municipal workers to test and implement climate change adaptation policies. The question of whether this novel, created, space, of a climate change adaptation lab could act as a point for transformational change guided this thesis, as well as the question of what effect sociocracy had on this potential. The inclusion of sociocracy is consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of the thesis. Sociocracy is a method for distributing decision-making and power horizontally, limiting processes that previously hindered transformational spaces. Some of these past hindrances include a lack of co-creation, the ability for certain interests to take over, and agenda-setting decisions such as an inability to provide sufficient time for deliberation, amongst others. The researchers also link these processes with complex systems theory, ultimately arguing that the processes of the proposed lab are more in line with the various aspects of this conceptualization.

The idea is that these sociocracy-informed climate change adaptation labs could be a permanent participatory space. However, due to limited resources and time, the thesis attempted to exemplify these spaces using two impermanent labs, in Lund, Sweden, which the researchers analyzed through an after-survey distributed to participants. Additionally, along with the surveys, the researchers conducted a series of interviews with experts on participatory climate change adaptation, sociocracy, and the Swedish context to supplement the findings from the labs.

Ultimately, utilizing Gaventa’s (2006) prescription for transformative change—and the findings from the various methodologies—this thesis concludes that a sociocracy-informed climate change adaptation lab can contribute to transformational change and that sociocracy motivates this. Moreover, this transformational possibility connects to the lab’s ability to systemically challenge hidden and invisible power structures that have limited participatory spaces in the past, which opens a previously closed space that can provide the opportunity to challenge power through securing proper deliberation and voice. While the limited scope of this research equally limits its applicability, it nonetheless can serve as a starting point for further discussion on unorthodox solutions to participatory climate change adaptation, including the necessity of the inclusion of horizontal structures like sociocracy.

• author: Antoniuk, Rory Daniel and Iliopoulos, Spilios
• supervisor: Mo Hamza
• organization: Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
• course: VBRM15 20231
• year: 2023
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Social Sciences
• keywords: Climate change, climate change adaptation, sociocracy, transformational change, transformative change, power, power cube, ladder of participation, complexity, systems, public participation, climate change adaptation lab
• language: English
• id: 9139444
• date added to LUP: 2023-10-05 16:30:31
• date last changed: 2023-10-05 16:30:31