Transitions towards sustainability are urgently needed to address the interconnected challenges of economic development, ecological integrity, and social justice, from local to global scales. Around the world, collaborative science-society initiatives are forming to conduct experiments in support of sustainability transitions. Such experiments, if carefully designed, provide significant learning opportunities for making progress on transition efforts. Yet, there is no broadly applicable evaluative scheme available to capture this critical information across a large number of cases, and to guide the design of transition experiments. To address this gap, the article develops such a scheme, in a tentative form, drawing on evaluative research and sustainability transitions scholarship, alongside insights from empirical cases. We critically discuss the scheme's key features of being generic, comprehensive, operational, and formative. Furthermore, we invite scholars and practitioners to apply, reflect and further develop the proposed tentative scheme -making evaluation and experiments objects of learning.

The principles of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and Agenda 21, the comprehensive plan of action for the 21st century, adopted 10 years ago by more than 170 governments, address the pressing problems of today and also aim at preparing the world for the challenges of this century. The conservation and management of resources for development are the main focus of interest, to which the sciences will have to make a considerable contribution. Natural, economic, and social sciences will have to be integrated in order to achieve this aim. In their future programs, the associations of the chemical industries in Europe, Japan, and the USA have explicitly accepted their obligation to foster a sustainable development.In this review we investigate innovations in chemistry exemplarily for such a development with regard to their ecological, economical, and social dimensions from an integrated and interdisciplinary perspective. Since base chemicals are produced in large quantities and important product lines are synthesized from them, their resource‐saving production is especially important for a sustainable development. This concept has been shown, amongst others, by the example of the syntheses of propylene oxide and adipic acid. In the long run, renewable resources that are catalytically processed could replace fossil raw materials. Separation methods existing today must be improved considerably to lower material and energy consumption. Chemistry might become the pioneer of an innovative energy technique.The design of chemical products should make possible a sustainable processing and recycling and should prevent their bio‐accumulation. Methods and criteria to assess their contribution to a sustainable development are necessary. The time taken to introduce the new more sustainable processes and products has to be diminished by linking their development with operational innovation management and with efficient environmental‐political control procedures.

Since the early years of environmentalism, the detergent industry has been under pressure from NGOs and consumers. While the path towards an integrated product policy has been set, further developments towards sustainability are necessary. In a project conducted by the University of Oldenburg in cooperation with the German Detergent Manufacturers Association (IKW), future potentials for sustainable development were investigated. From this, a set of indicators was developed. This paper will review the project methodology, where a stakeholder assessment plays a key role, and present some findings. Stakeholder interviews and two workshops allowed discovery of the central issues to be tackled by the German detergent industry. The environmental product life-cycle and stakeholder concept provide the theoretical basis for the so called sustainability matrices, one each for the environmental, economic and social dimensions. These matrices were used to facilitate discussions regarding relevant sustainability issues and indicators. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

In der Erklärung der Konferenz für Umwelt und Entwicklung der Vereinten Nationen in Rio de Janeiro 1992 und in der Agenda 21, dem vor nun zehn Jahren von mehr als 170 Staaten verabschiedeten Arbeitsprogramm für das 21. Jahrhundert, werden die dringlichsten Fragen von heute angesprochen, während gleichzeitig versucht wird, die Welt auf die Herausforderungen dieses Jahrhunderts vorzubereiten. Im Zentrum stehen die Erhaltung und Bewirtschaftung der Ressourcen für die Entwicklung. Einen wesentlichen Beitrag dazu müssen die Wissenschaften leisten, wobei es der Zusammenführung natur‐, wirtschafts‐ und sozialwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse bedarf. Die Verbände der chemischen Industrien Europas, Japans und der USA haben sich in ihren Zukunftsprogrammen explizit zu ihrer Verpflichtung zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung bekannt. Wir untersuchen in diesem Aufsatz beispielhaft Innovationen der Chemie für eine solche Entwicklung in ihrer ökologischen, ökonomischen und sozialen Dimension unter einer integrierten und interdisziplinären Perspektive. Die ressourcenschonende Produktion von Basischemikalien ist aufgrund der großen produzierten Mengen und der darauf aufbauenden Produktlinien für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung von besonderer Bedeutung. Dies wird unter anderem am Beispiel von Propylenoxid und Adipinsäure gezeigt. Langfristig könnten die nachwachsenden Rohstoffe, die katalytisch weiterverarbeitet werden, fossile Rohstoffe ersetzen. Die heute existierenden Trennmethoden müssen wesentlich verbessert werden, damit der Material‐ und Energieverbrauch gesenkt wird. Die Chemie könnte Wegbereiter einer innovativen Energietechnik werden. Die chemischen Produkte müssen so gestaltet werden, dass sie nachhaltig weiterverarbeitet, recycelt und nicht bioakkumuliert werden können. Methoden und Kriterien zur Bewertung ihres Beitrags zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung sind notwendig. Die Zeit zur Einführung der neuen Prozesse und Produkte muss durch die enge Verbindung ihrer Entwicklung mit dem betrieblichen Innovationsmanagement und effizienten umweltpolitischen Steuerungsverfahren verringert werden.

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