Governance Agenda organizing Structural Reforms and Initiatives for the Socio Ecological Transition Blanca MIEDES UGARTE miedes@uhu.es http://inti.hypotheses.org/

1. Governance Agenda Organizing Structural
Reforms and Initiatives for the Socio-Ecological
Transition
Blanca Miedes Ugarte
Universidad de Huelva, Huelva, Spain
C3IT
Coordinator axis Governance in GDRI INTI
13th Annual International Conference of Territorial Intelligence
Progress and Prospects of Territorial Intelligence
Paris, CNAM, 2014, December 11-12

2. 2
G. [governance]
Axis G. [governance] Governance agenda
organizing structural reforms and initiatives for
the socio-ecological transition.

3. Axis Governance
• The work of the axis “Governance” in the framework of GDRI
-INTI has been mainly raised by contributions from the teams
of the University of Salerno (Italy) and the University of
Huelva (Spain), as well as by participants’ inputs in different
seminars, thematic workshops and plenary sessions in the
framework international conferences that have been held
since January 2011, especially the meeting in Huelva 21st
and 22nd November 2013 "Social Innovation and new ways of
governance for the socio-ecological transition".
2014, December 12-13 GDRI INTI Paris 2014 3

4. 4
Teams Axis Governance
2014, December 12-13 GDRI INTI Paris 2014

5. 5
Activities
Initial topics for discussion (activities) in this Axis are:
•Structural reforms that help maintain and develop the welfare
society to improve the any- and everybody well being. <GR
reforms>
•Organizational employment and innovation reforms promoting
cooperation, copetition and participation . <GC coopetition>
•Governance initiatives in coordination and concertation,
cooperation and participation promoting territorial sustainable
development <GI initiatives>
Preparation to the FP7 proposal: Project LinkCity. It passed the
thresholds but it didn't get any funding.

6. 6
General Overview of work done
1.A synthesis on socioeconomic, political and ecological megatrends and a
critical discussion of the agendas that are being proposed by different institutions
and social groups (Europe).
1.A discussion about the emergence of new lateral and multilevel ways of
governance in deliberating and implementing different alternative agendas as
well as the role of States, regions, communities and individuals in this new
framework.
1.The role, advantages and risks of new technologies in these new governance
processes. The “smart” trend.
1.A discussion about how to reconcile the old and new ways of governance.

7. 7
1. Agendas
- Revision of the agendas for socio-ecological transition that are being
discussed or established by international institutions, think-tanks, thinking-networks
and ONG’S (for example, the European 2020 Strategy, the reports
on socio-ecological transitions of several FP7 research projects, the reports
of the New Economics Foundation, the proposal of the New Green Deal,
among others).
- All these agendas have in common the aim of fostering big structural
changes, among others:
- efficient energy use and productive reorientations,
- redefinition of local-global relationships,
- income distribution and time policies
- They deal as well with individual behavioral changes:
- Towards more sustainable stiles of life,
- the reconstruction of collective links and people empowerment through
knowledge production and sharing.
- All these transformations on the basis of new, participative, horizontal
decision making processes and citizens political empowerment.

8. 8
1. Agendas (cont.)
Current situation is that there are irreconcilable differences
regarding the aims of these agendas,
-while western liberal governmental agendas look for keeping the
system under control in order to facilitate the continuity of capital
accumulation and fostering economic growth as main drivers for life
quality, (ecological matters a driver for growth).
-more non-liberal governments, alternative research think
tanks and civil organization agendas seek a transition to a more
radical and permanent transformation of the model of development
(“degrowth”).

9. 2. The emergence of new lateral multilevel ways of
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governance and the role of
different actors.
In the meanwhile people make their own agenda: rising of collaborative
economy.
With a more political approach a wide arrange of social
movements and organized groups (such as “indignados”, occupy
everywhere, transition towns, “degrowhth” networks and communities…) are
becoming more active alternative political actors.
On the other hand, a threefold system of tensions (global-local, public-private
and State-citizenship) is affecting the ability of the existing systems of
territorial governance to deal with their specific social-ecological tensions.
The complex management of this tensions on the ground often brings about a
cooptation of the term “participation”

10. 3. Role, advantages, risks of new technologies in
The effects of technology are directly linked to their use;
They can promote democracy but help dictatorships in the same way.
They can enhance individuals’ enlighten but surveillance as well.
The mass media can enhance social innovation but social hysteria as well…
They can mobilize a lot of people but they can exclude most disfavored at the
same time.
One of the most important challenges of governance systems in the future is
how to use new technologies to enhance territorial intelligence.
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governance processes.

11. Fuente Fisher-Tics, scenarii: 2025 Kowalasky et al. (2012), p. 301.

12. TI: “Smart cities/regions 
Territorial Intelligence”
12/12/14
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Who has to be intelligent,
the city or the people?
“Smart”: Narrowly focused on the
"efficiency" (energy, mobility…) and on
specific devices…
It is assumed that the feedback of "big
data" will guide us in an unconscious
decision-making process.
But is it not precisely an aware/shared
responsibility what we need?

13. TI: “Smart cities/Regions 
Territorial Intelligence”
12/12/14
13
Fuente: http://www.qtorb.com
Recover the
meaning of “link”
and working
together:
•Spaces for
interaction.
•Tools.
•Training.

14. Principles
Open decision making
Sustainable Life stiles
Participation
Collaboration- competition
Resources access
Cooperation
Wellbeing and empowerment of all and everyone
Co-building Learning Solidarity Coordination
Rationality Transparency Forecast Precaution
Privacy
Accessibility
To avoid negative effects of ICT, to bring
back the intelligence to people
2014, December 12-13 GDRI INTI Paris 2014 14

15. -Active citizens need more active governance. Wee need to overcome the
social engineering approach towards more reflexive, deliberative, and
participative decision making and instrumental planning processes.
-How do we reconcile the old and new modes of governance? how do we
encourage the capacity building for the creation or regeneration of the
links between territorial public structures and communitarian, citizen’s
movements?
-The conclusion is a research agenda for producing new knowledge and
new participatory tools for supporting all these processes and for contributing
to build up actors and governments capabilities to deal with main
governance challenges.
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4. How to reconcile the old and new ways of
governance.

16. New research agenda
1. Scenarii facing the crisis and the restructuration of regional
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and local administrations.
2. New modes of self-management, lateral governance:
citizens' initiatives, « commons », collaborative economy,
p2p…
3. Role, advantages, risks of new technologies in governance
processes.
4. Building capacity for new modes of governance: Linking local
public agents and emerging initiatives.

17. 1. Scenarios facing the crisis and the restructuration of regional and
local administrations.
•Analyse récentes réformes (axe juridique).
•Rationalité économique ou recentrage dans un
contexte de délégitimation?

18. 2. New modes of self-management, lateral governance: citizens'
initiatives, « commons », collaborative economy, p2p…
•Visibilisation des nouvelles initiatives dans des
domaines communs, non marché, non publics.
•Analyse des nouveaux modèles d'autogestion et des
règles de fonctionnement (E. Ostrom)

19. 2. New modes of self-management, lateral governance: citizens'
initiatives, « commons », collaborative economy, p2p…
• Taking into account different scenarios on employment and
market and non-market activities, which kind of social
innovation is emerging in market and non market economic
activities?
• How to identify more promising practices, how to scale them,
how to inscribe them in institutional frameworks?
• How to conceptualize an axiology about participation and
commons as drivers of social, economic, cultural life
instead/complementing the current single driver competition?
• How to create and recreate social and communitarian
proactive links?
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20. 3. Role, advantages, risks of new technologies in governance
processes.
• Analysing different scenarios
• Ethical principles (privacy, inclusiveness…)

21. 4. Building capacity for new modes of governance: Linking
local public agents and emerging initiatives.
• Comment concilier les anciens et les nouveaux modes de gouvernance?
• Construction de capacités pour la création régénération de liens
– Dans les structures publiques dans le territoire.
The traditional rules of good governance (openness, participation,
accountability, effectiveness and coherence) are necessary conditions
but not sufficient ones.
• There is an important demand of a lot of participatory tools to
manage all these kind of tensions .
– Dans les mouvements d'autogestion.
• There is an important demand of a lot of new interactive tools to
produce shared knowledge for common actions.

22. Thank you for your attention
Merci pour votre attention
Gracias por su atención
Grazie per la vostra attenzione
شكرا لهتمامك
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Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit
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2014, December 12-13 GDRI INTI Paris 2014 22