Leveraging the COVID-19 crisis for policy change towards sustainability?

Combatting global environmental unsustainability requires effective policies and governance systems, but more sustainable alternatives are often met with deep resistance. While transformative policy change is dif- ficult under normal conditions, it may go easier in times of crisis. The Covid-19 crisis has been stirring governance initiatives to institutionalize more sustainable work patterns, to learn from ubiquitous failure, or to harness industrial decline to foster more sustainable policies. News media are replete with suggestions of how the pandemic will unleash potentials for innovation and more sustainable planning, transportation or energy systems; and in the short time since the onset of the pandemic, academic publications have mush- roomed, putting forth numerous suggestions on how, e.g., the “disruptive forces” of the Covid-19 crisis may be harnessed and leveraged for carbon neutral policy solutions. In the short time since the onset of the pandemic, academic publications have bourgeoned on how to leverage the “disruptive forces” of the Covid crisis for more sustainable policy solutions. Clearly, most contributions discuss a less energy-intensive economy as leveraged by the pandemic. Others observe a boost in recycling due to pandemic-related shortages in raw materials, or envision a more sustainable tourism or a sustainable built environment. This paper provides a first systematic review of conceptual, normative, and empirical contributions address- ing the question of how governance systems on various levels are leveraging the Covid-19 crisis towards policy change towards environmental sustainability. To organize inquiry, the analysis draws on historical institutionalism (Streeck and Thelen), multiple-streams theory (Kingdon), policy failure and learning (How- lett; Newig; ‘t Hart) and systems approaches to institutional change (Newig, Derwort and Jager), including work on sustainability transitions (Geels). In particular, I build on earlier conceptual work that identified strategies by which governance systems can leverage the productive potentials of crisis – for example, by constituting a focusing event (Birkland), by opening windows of opportunity, by offering potentials for learn- ing and for purposeful destabilization of unsustainable institutions, or by harnessing the potential of inevita- ble decline (Newig et al. 2019). Doing so, this paper aims to (1) contribute to theorizing the productive potentials of crisis for sustainability governance, taking the current pandemic as an example; and (2) to provide a first empirical “test” of whether and through which mechanisms governance initiatives worldwide are actually taken – and whether they are contributing to lasting and potentially effective policy change towards environmental sustainability.