Institutionalising environmental sustainability transitions in New Zealand and Australia: Introduction to the special issue

Politics is critical to understanding the pathways to a sustainable future. In recent years, a scholarly field has emerged, seeking to understand whether transitions towards more sustainable societies and economies occur and, if so, how they unfold. However, this field has not always fully incorporated the role of politics in shaping discourses, institutions and economic visions, or considered regions outside of Europe and North America. In this introduction to the special issue, we briefly review the field of sustainability transitions, highlighting the need to better capture the role played by political factors, institutions and (debates on) economic innovations in these transitions. We explain that sustainability is a contested concept, with two dominant conceptualisations: weak and strong sustainability. The framework of sustainability transitions allows us to position the contributions of the articles included in this special issue, which examine governance and institutions, media discourses, the role of industry and alternative economic models. The special issue focuses on two jurisdictions infrequently discussed in the literature on sustainability transitions: New Zealand and Australia. The special issue thus contributes new theoretical and empirical perspectives on the role of politics, political institutions and economic visions in sustainability transitions in the South Pacific.