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Despite many efforts and policy initiatives to strengthen sustainability in business and society the efforts taken so far do not seem to be sufficient to address current sustainability challenges and environmental degradation.

However, there are numerous local initiatives, companies and social innovators that have successfully established sustainable practices. They often operate in a niche but provide innovative ideas and alternatives that have the potential to improve sustainability at a greater scale.

In order to better understand the mainstreaming process and help policy makers and others to make informed decisions to spread support these practices, the project will:

1. Provide a definition and systematic overview of the emerging transformation research field and its objectives, foci and methodologies, focusing on niche mainstreaming as a particular issue in transformation research. This work package will also draft recommendations how to further develop existing transition research methodologies. (Lead: DRIFT)
2. Develop a criteria catalogue to assess sustainability initiatives’ transformative potential for the federal, state and local governments, as well as for scientific institutions, foundations and for sustainability initiatives themselves. The guidance should help policy makers to understand the benefits of social innovations and highlight key variables of their sustainability performance. The work package will conclude with policy recommendations on how to support sustainable practices. (Lead: Ecologic Institute)
3. Analyse dynamics of mainstreaming process. A focus will be to understand if and how qualities change within the mainstreaming process. For example, this work package explores if environmental benefits decrease within mainstreaming processes compared to their performance in the niche and what countermeasures policy makers can undertake to avoid this. SDGs that are relevant to civil society initiatives and cities/towns will be integrated in the criteria catalogue. This will provide an up-to-date and practical approach for the implementation of the SDGs on the local level (Lead: Ecologic Institute)

The project is funded by the German Federal Environment Agency and German Federal Environment Ministry and led by the Ecologic Institute with DRIFT as partner institution. It runs from March 2015 until November 2017.