The geography of eco-innovations and sustainability transitions: a systematic comparison

Abstract

The need to address environmental challenges through innovation-based transformative change has become more urgent than ever and the spatial dimension of pathways towards sustainability has attracted increasing scholarly interest. Over the last decade, research on environmentally oriented innovation has entered the geographical discourse from different directions. This paper starts with the premise that, among other contributions, two main directions of research can be identified within the current geographical discourse that do not yet interface much – a broad, yet conceptually more traditional debate on eco-innovation and a newer discourse around socio-technical transitions that adds a further perspective. Having justified this assumption by a short literature review, we perform a keyword-based literature search, which confirms that there are indeed two distinct bodies of literature and few studies to date that integrate features from both fields. Following this, an in-depth review of the sources clarifies the differences in perspective and the common object of analysis of the basic systemic elements of actors, institutions and technologies. While this juxtaposition illustrates why the two fields of research have hardly cross-fertilised each other so far, it also shows that they are in substance far from irreconcilable. On the contrary, the nuanced synthesis of research findings reveals numerous complementarities that constitute promising avenues for future geographical research. These are considered necessary to improve the understanding of the geography of innovation-based transitions towards sustainability.