The Science of Structural Transformation Across Complex Systems: Understanding the levers of change in economic, social, technological and political systems to address the climate crisis

Abstract: It is widely recognized that addressing climate change will require a fundamental reconfiguration of our economic, social, and technological systems to reduce emissions and improve resilience to climate impacts. However, the science of how such structural transformation takes place across these multi-linked complex systems has received comparably less attention. Even less is known about the efficacy of specific interventions or strategies for inducing structural change within a given system towards specific goals. This interdisciplinary workshop will take stock of historical and more recent approaches to induce structural change within socio-economic systems, and discuss methodologies to analyze the impacts of specific interventions. A key focus of the workshop will be on assessing how specific interventions could be strategically implemented to accelerate progress on addressing climate change. This meeting was supported under SFI's Emergent Political Economies grant provided by the Omidyar Network.