Innovating thermal treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW): Socio-technical change linking expectations and representations

This paper combines two theoretical perspectives: future technological expectations mobilising resources; and social representations assimilating new ideas through anchoring onto familiar frames of reference. The combination is applied to the controversial case of thermal-treatment options for municipal solid waste (MSW), especially via gasification technology. Stakeholders’ social representations set criteria for technological expectations and their demonstration requirements, whose fulfilment in turn has helped gasification to gain more favourable representations. Through a differential ‘anchoring’, gasification is represented as matching incineration’s positive features while avoiding its negative ones. Despite their limitations, current two-stage combustion gasifiers are promoted as a crucial transition towards a truly ‘advanced’ form producing a clean syngas; R&D investment reinforces expectations for advancing the technology. Such linkages between technological expectations and social representations may have broader relevance to socio-technical change, especially where public controversy arises over the wider systemic role of an innovation trajectory

Precautionary Expertise for GM Crops (PEG): EU Workshop Report

This policy workshop was organised as part of the research project, ‘Precautionary Expertise for GM Crops’ (PEG), funded by the European Commission. The project includes research partners in seven member states (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and UK) and is co-ordinated by the Open University (UK). For regulating GM crops and their food uses, the precautionary principle has been widely accepted in Europe, but its meaning can be contentious. Indeed, it can have diverse meanings. The PEG project is analysing how current European practices – regulatory measures, expert bodies and stakeholder roles – compare with different accounts of the precautionary principle. How do these accounts inform policies and practices regarding GM crops? And how do they facilitate (or impede) efforts to mediate conflicts? From the findings of the research, we will suggest: • how to clarify EU guidelines, so that they better reflect national regulatory measures, and so that decision-making procedures can be publicly accountable and scientifically defensible • how expert bodies could better accommodate public-scientific controversy within their judgements • how national practices could contribute to an EU-level precautionary expertise • how to enhance policy learning about these issues among users of the research findings. To achieve these aims, the project has involved stakeholders and policy-makers at an early stage of the research, in order to ensure that it is policy-relevant and incorporates emerging issues. EU-level advisory panel meetings were held in Brussels in March and September 2002, to consult on the research plan and preliminary results. Advisors were also consulted about how best to structure scenario-analysis exercises for the policy workshops. These workshops were held by national partners in their countries in early 2003. Drawing upon those experiences, the project coordinator organised an EU-level workshop in July 2003. This report discusses the context, background, method, results and implications of that workshop

Effect of venting and leakage torques on attitude control of the Skylab orbital assembly by CMGs

Venting and leakage torque effects on attitude control of Skylab orbital assembly by control moment gyro

Normalizing Novelty: Regulating Biotechnological Risk at the U.S. EPA

Drs. Levidow and Carr examine EPA\u27s regulation of biotechnology in the field of genetically modified organisms

What Green Economy? Diverse agendas, their tensions and potential futures

The 'green economy' has become a prominent global concept for debating desirable futures, while recasting or marginalising ‘sustainable development’. The dominant agenda promotes state incentives for private-sector solutions through two parallel approaches: A techno-environmental Keynesian agenda attempts to stimulate eco-innovation which can become more resource-efficient and economically competitive. And a green markets agenda seeks to make natural resources more economically visible, as a basis to alleviate poverty. Like sustainable development, green economy agendas claim to redress the socially unequal access to natural resources. These claims have been widely questioned, thus generating extra remedial proposals, opposition and alternative frameworks. The debate features diverse agendas for co-constructing ‘green’ with ‘economy’, especially for assigning economic value to natural resources or environmental burdens. Struggles over potential futures take the form of disputes over defining, allocating and valuing resources – i.e. what counts for a ‘green economy’

Contending European agendas for agricultural innovation

Amid expectations for a European ‘transition to sustainable agriculture’, there are competing transitional processes. Given the widely acknowledged harm from agro-industrial systems, ‘unsustainable agriculture’ has divergent diagnoses and innovative solutions. This rivalry can be analysed as contending innovation agendas; the analysis here combines theoretical paradigms of agricultural innovation. In an EU policy context of a Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE), there are divergent accounts of its key terms: biological resources, economy, relevant knowledge and knowledge-producers. Likewise, divergent accounts are found of innovation, intensification, resource efficiency, resilience, bio-energy, horizontal integration, etc. These divergent agendas are promoted by distinct stakeholder networks. The dominant agenda favours laboratory-based techno-scientific innovation as a source of ‘efficient’ inputs, which can use renewable resources more efficiently for competitive advantage in global value chains. By contrast, other agendas promote farmers’ knowledge of natural resources, especially via agro-ecological methods which can reduce energy inputs, increase productivity and add value through quality. With those contending agendas, rival stakeholder networks seek to influence R&D priorities. From the standpoint of multifunctional agriculture, such contending agendas can play complementary roles in different rural spaces. Some agro-food practices may combine aspects of different paradigms. As a concept, Agricultural Knowledge Systems may provide a common space for interchanges between divergent agendas and their research priorities. However, these innovation agendas promote conflicting visions of the future

Neoliberalising technoscience and environment: EU policy for competitive, sustainable biofuels

This chapter discusses how EU biofuels policy: stimulates new markets for knowledge as well as resources; assumes that markets drive beneficent innovation; and thus deepens links between markets, technoscience and environment. The theoretical concept ‘neoliberalising the environment’ is extended to links between technoscience and natural resources

Use of magnetic torque for CMG momentum management

Magnetic torque for control moment gyroscope momentum management with AAP workshop

Towards Understanding the Politics of Flex Crops and Commodities: Implications for Research and Policy Advocacy

This discussion paper offers a preliminary exploration of the concept and phenomenon of “flex crops and commodities”, building on an earlier and initial analysis and abbreviated idea put forward by some of the authors of this paper. We discuss the dual concepts of the “multiple-ness” and “flexible-ness” of crops and commodities as two distinct but intertwined dimensions of some key crops and commodities. These key crops and commodities are shaped by the changing global context that is itself (re)moulded in large part by the convergence of multiple crises and the various responses to those crises. Building on these dual concepts, we will identify and explain the minimum requirements for crop and commodity flexing. We will also try to typologize the various types of crop and commodity flexing, namely, “real flexing”, “anticipated/speculated flexing”, and “imagined flexing”—to allow for a deeper examination of these interrelated processes. The boundaries between these categories (multiple/flexible, real, anticipated and imagined) are not always clearly demarcated, requiring us to examine the issue of flex crops and commodities in a more interlinked manner. We will focus our initial exploration on the political dynamics of such interactions and intersections, looking into the factors that encourage or discourage, facilitate or hinder maximization of the “multiple-ness” and/or “flexible-ness” of particular crops and commodities. Finally, and as a way of closing, we will outline the implications of these dynamics for how we think of engaged research, public actions and policy advocacy, including a brief discussion of what we call “flex policy narratives” by governments and corporations.

Feeding the People: Agroecology for Nourishing the World and Transforming the Agri-Food System

Agroecology is an idea inspiring more and more people, but it means different things to different people. Altieri (1983) defined it as the application of ecological principles to agriculture. This definition of agroecology includes farmers and farmers’ knowledge, and it sees farmers as stewards of the landscape, of biodiversity and of the diversity of foods. In 2002, Altieri developed his concept further when he proposed that agroecological systems should be based on five ecological principles: 1) recycling biomass and balancing nutrient flows and availability; 2) securing favourable soil conditions for plant growth by enhancing the organic matter; 3) minimizing losses of solar radiation, water and nutrients by managing the microclimate and soil cover, and practising water harvesting; 4) enhancing biological and genetic diversification on cropland; and 5) enhancing beneficial biological interactions and minimizing the use of pesticides