A systems approach to risk and resilience analysis in the woody-biomass sector: A case study of the failure of the South African wood pellet industry

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Currently more than 600 million of the 800 million people in SSA are without electricity, and it is estimated that an additional 2500 GW of power is required by 2030. Although the woody-biomass market in the developed world is relatively mature, only four woody-biomass plants in SSA have been established, all of which were closed by 2013. With its affordable labour, favourable climate and well-established forestry and agricultural sectors, South Africa appears to have the potential for a successful woody-biomass industry. This paper documents a first attempt at analysing why these plants failed. It aims to contextualise the potential role of a sustainable woody-biomass sector in South Africa, through firstly developing a SES-based analytical framework and secondly, using this to undertake a retrospective resilience-based risk assessment of the four former woody-biomass pellet plants in order to identify strategies for increasing the resilience of the industry. The SES-based framework advances previous theory, which usually focuses on natural resources and their supply, by introducing a production process (with inputs and outputs), internal business dynamics and ecological variable interactions. The risk assessment can be used at a broad level to highlight important aspects which should be considered during feasibility assessments for new plants. Further work is proposed to focus on splitting the social-ecological system at different scales for further analysis, and to investigate the long-term ecological impacts of woody-biomass utilisation

Is adaptation reducing vulnerability or redistributing it?

As globalization and other pressures intensify the economic, social and biophysical connections between people and places, it seems likely that adaptation responses intended to ameliorate the impacts of climate change might end up shifting risks and vulnerability between people and places. Building on earlier conceptual work in maladaptation and other literature, this article explores the extent to which concerns about vulnerability redistribution have influenced different realms of adaptation practice. The review leads us to conclude that the potential for adaptation to redistribute risk or vulnerability is being given only sparse—and typically superficial—attention by practitioners. Concerns about ‘maladaptation’, and occasionally vulnerability redistribution specifically, are mentioned on the margins but do not significantly influence the way adaptation choices are made or evaluated by policy makers, project planners or international funds. In research, the conceptual work on maladaptation is yet to translate into a significant body of empirical literature on the distributional impacts of real-world adaptation activities, which we argue calls into question our current knowledge base about adaptation. These gaps are troubling, because a process of cascading adaptation endeavors globally seems likely to eventually re-distribute risks or vulnerabilities to communities that are already marginalized and vulnerable. We conclude by discussing the implications that the potential for vulnerability redistribution might have for the governance of adaptation processes, and offer some reflections on how research might contribute to addressing gaps in knowledge and in practice. WIREs Clim Change 2018, 9:e500. doi: 10.1002/wcc.500. This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change &gt; Values-Based Approach to Vulnerability and Adaptation.</p

Towards a new index for environmental sustainability based on a DALY weighting approach

International audienceComposite indicators are synthetic indices that are used to rank country performances in specific policy areas. Many do, however, suffer from methodological difficulties. Specific difficulties linked to indices for environmental sustainability are analyzed through the illustration of several sets. The most critical issues are linked with a poor analytical framework and a lack of common unit for the aggregation. Some measure directly the state of the environment while other use proxies such as pressure or response indicators or even a mix of these. A new composite index for environmental sustainability was developed in the EU project EPSILON, which aimed at assessing European regional sustainability for policy decision making related to the improvement of regional sustainability. Indicators are expressed according to a coherent framework issuing from the ‘driving force–pressure–state–impact–response' approach with an innovative weighting scheme derived from human health impact assessment based on disability adjusted life years (DALYs). Results are compared with a more conventional aggregation technique based on an equal weighting coupled to various normalization technique