Special issue on experimentation for climate change solutions editorial: The search for climate change and sustainability solutions - The promise and the pitfalls of experimentation

This editorial highlights the diversity in studies of experimentation that aims for solutions to climate change and wider sustainability challenges. The diversity is reflected in the theoretical underpinnings, the agency behind experiments, the niches in which experimentation occurs, in the governance of the experiments and in experiments with governance, in the way experiments contribute to learning and sharing of knowledge across levels and scales. This implies that experimentation and experiments can contribute to transitions in very different ways and that experimentation also runs the risks of merely becoming a distraction that maintains status quo instead of contributing to transformative change. In moving forward research should explore the diversity even more, and critically evaluate and discuss the possible contributions to policy and polycentric governance.