With the European Green Deal, Europe strives to be the first climate neutral continent and change the way we organise industries, the energy system, agriculture, transportation, nature protection, the built environment, etc. For instance, the European Commission’s (2020) ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’ aims to take action for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system. The EU also wants to create an ‘Energy Union’ to provide households and businesses with secure, sustainable, competitive and affordable energy (European Commission 2015). This involves a fundamental transformation of the energy system. The Critical Raw Materials Act (EU 2024) was adopted to ensure the supply of urgently needed resources required for, amongst other things, renewable energy technologies. In such policy documents, we find many references to changes in habits and practices that will be required to realise the envisioned transitions: implementing emission reduction measures, developing and working with new economic models, creating technological innovation, developing new infrastructures and routines of using these, renovating buildings, adopting energy saving habits, etc.

Sustainability transitions and the associated transformation of habits and practices are often depicted as a matter of ‘learning by doing’ and ‘doing by learning’ (Van Poeck et al. 2020). This symposium explores the role of learning in such changes in habits and practices in three cases that are each in their own way affected by Europe’s sustainability transition ambitions. Thus, we address two topics that have so far been insufficiently studied. First, changes in everyday practices are under-researchers in sustainability transition studies (Baatz 2024). Whether technical and social innovation does or does not result in societal transformation largely depends on the extent to which actors incorporate these innovations in their everyday lives, into their practices (Shove and Walker 2010). More insight is needed into the conditions for enabling and facilitating this. Second, while learning has been put forward as a crucial factor to achieve a more sustainable world, the complex relationship between learning processes and sustainability transitions is not deeply analysed (Stam et al. 2023). What is particularly needed, is empirical research that distinguishes more precisely between learning processes and transition outcomes (Ibid., Van Poeck et al. 2020).

The papers in this symposium address both research challenges simultaneously. They do so in an integrated way by using a transactional theory that approaches learning as being triggered by the disruption of habitual ways of doing, thinking, noticing, and feeling which elicits an inquiry (reflection, imagination, experimentation) that can lead to the transformation of habits (Van Poeck & Östman 2021). While sharing this theoretical perspective, the presented case studies vary in their empirical focus and the methodologies used. Paper 1 addresses learning processes in relation to achieving more sustainable farming practices and focuses on robotic weed control in sugar beet cultivation in northeastern Germany. Drawing on interview data and field notes, it zooms in on farmers’ inquiries about and experimentation with the use of field robots. The authors of paper 2 present a case study about a grassroots initiative that strives to develop a district heating network in a Belgian city. Drawing on detailed analyses of recordings of observed activities, they focus on how the design of the setting and the interventions of facilitators affect learning processes and the change of habits and practices. The third paper sheds light on how transition-related decisions in Europe can also affect the habits of people elsewhere. Drawing on a case study of a Quilombo community in Brazil, the authors investigate how the devastating consequences of the extraction of raw materials force the people living in these affected places to re-learn to inhabit their environment.

Baatz, A., 2024. Learning to foster sustainability transitions: disruption and change of everyday practices in socio-spatial configurations. PhD dissertation, Technische Universität Dresden. European Commission, 2015. A Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy. Brussels. European Commission, 2020. A Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system. Brussels. European Union, 2024. Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 of the European Parliament and of the Council. Official Journal of the European Union. Shove, E., Walker, G., 2010. Governing transitions in the sustainability of everyday life. Research Policy, 39, 471-476. Stam, K., van Ewijk, E., Chan, P.W., 2023. How does learning drive sustainability transitions? Perspectives, problems and prospects from a systematic literature review. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 48. Van Poeck, K., Östman, L., Block, T., 2020. Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 34, 298-310. Van Poeck, K., Östman, L., 2021. Learning to find a way out of non-sustainable systems. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 39, 155-172.