Bridging science with application for sustainability: Private-public partnerships in the novatlantis pilot-region of Basel

This Paper discusses experiences from the novatlantis pilot-region Basel in the light of concepts developed by the international Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability (ISTS). It aims to improve the understanding of novatlantis’ role as a bridging organization and a platform for public-private partnerships. ‘novatlantis – sustainability at the ETH-domain’ is a program initiated by one of the leading European technology research institutions, the domain of the Swiss Federal Institutes for Science and Technology (ETH-domain). novatlantis’ mandate is to translate technology research relevant for sustainability into practical applications. For this, novatlantis has found it very helpful to institutionally anchor its bridging work between science and application by collaborating closely with the local governments of two Swiss cantons. Together with the cantons of Basel Stadt and Basel Land, as well as two local universities, novatlantis has developed the ‘pilot-region Basel’ to demonstrate the feasibility of innovative energy and mobility technologies. To steer this pilot and demonstration work, a two-step bridging organization with dual accountability towards the ETH-domain on the one side, and local authorities as well as private sector partners on the other side, has been developed. This paper discusses experiences from our work in the pilot-region Basel, specifically on sustainable mobility and the role of natural gas and biogas as fuels for cars, in the light of findings by the ISTS on which factors made other ‘bridging organizations’ between science and application for sustainability more effective. The ISTS, an international network managed jointly by Harvard University and the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), has studied bridging organizations in the field of ‘science and technology for sustainability’. The ISTS team has found that in most cases, the effectiveness of such organizations depends on how much their goals and procedures are seen as scientifically credible, salient (or relevant), and legitimate from the point of view of all relevant stakeholders. And they found that most effective bridging organizations fulfill one or more of the three functions of communication, translation, and mediation. Our experiences in the pilot-region Basel suggest that the ISTS concepts, especially the three criteria credibility, saliency and legitimacy, as well as the two functions of translation and communication, are indeed useful for managing a bridging organization like novatlantis. Our experiences also suggest that further extending the ISTS concepts, especially by explicitly adding the function of implementation to mediation in the ‘checklist’ of bridging functions, would make the ISTS work even more useful for us and others engaged in bridging science and application for sustainability. This paper may be cited as: Lienin, Stephan F. , Bernd Kasemir, and Roland Stulz, 2004, “Bridging science with application for sustainability: Private-public partnerships in the novatlantis pilot-region of Basel. ” novatlantis – sustainability at the ETH domain. Duebendorf, Switzerland.