The smart meets the conventional : Media storylines and societal frames on the energy action of housing cooperatives

In the acceleration phase of energy transitions, the role of community and citizen action is emphasised. The role of active, smart and experimental communities and individuals adopting novel practices and technologies is often contrasted with more conventional and mundane everyday practices, which change only slowly. In this context, the role of news media is central in disseminating information, mediating confrontations, and offering a space for shared societal frames on transition. This article examines Finnish media storylines on emerging energy technologies and practices in housing cooperatives, which manage most of the apartment buildings in Finland and thus have a key role in energy transition. Focusing on 17 years of development in three mainstream media, we first identify three main phases in media discourse intensity, focus and level of detail. Next, we analyse the ten main storylines on stabilising and reconfiguring the role of housing cooperatives in energy system change. Finally, we combine these storylines with cross-cutting societal frames on governmentalizing energy communities from the perspectives of technological anticipation, saving potentials and governance interventions.Peer reviewe

Energy transition looming behind the headlines? Newspaper coverage of biogas production in Finland

Background: Media coverage can play an important part in energy transitions. It creates awareness of landscape-level megatrends affecting energy systems. It influences and is influenced by public and policy agendas on a regime level. On a niche level, it can spread or screen out information and motivate or discourage actors to adopt new technologies and practices. However, relatively few studies have specifically addressed the role of media in energy transitions. Newspaper coverage of biogas is studied here as a case of media framing of a potential renewable energy solution.Methods: This article examines the long-term development of newspaper coverage of biogas in Finland. The aim of the quantitative content analysis is to draw an overall picture of the main phases of biogas coverage of a widely read newspaper focusing on agriculture and forestry, actors using discursive power in this coverage and key framings of the discussion. The results are discussed from the perspective of energy transition studies. In particular, future expectations created by the media are explored.Results: The results show a lack of newspaper coverage on biogas in the early 2000s, followed by a rapid increase and stabilisation of the volume of newspaper coverage. Biogas was most often mentioned as a secondary topic of broader discussions related to renewable energy. The core discussion focusing on biogas was characterised by very positive framings of biogas as a preferable energy solution fully compatible with the principle of circular economy. The news stories often had a strong future orientation, and examples of enthusiastic forerunners were frequently presented. However, the coverage also emphasised the poor economic profitability of biogas technologies and a need for considerable public subsidies that are inherently unpredictable.Conclusions: The future of niche-level energy technologies such as biogas can be strongly shaped by information flows, public perceptions and expectations created in part by media coverage. The analysed newspaper coverage in Finland was ambivalent from the perspective of energy transition. On the one hand, biogas production was represented as a preferable, environmentally friendly niche-level energy technology that should be encouraged. On the other hand, by emphasising the economic unviability of biogas technologies, the analysed newspaper coverage did not promote the adoption of biogas

Sustainable drainage system site assessment method using urban ecosystem services

The United Kingdom's recently updated approach to sustainable drainage enhanced biodiversity and amenity objectives by incorporating the ecosystem approach and the ecosystem services concept. However, cost-effective and reliable methods to appraise the biodiversity and amenity values of potential sustainable drainage system (SuDS)sites and their surrounding areas are still lacking, as is a method to enable designers to distinguish and link the amenity and biodiversity benefits that SuDS schemes can offer. In this paper, therefore, the authors propose two ecosystem services- and disservices-based methods (i.e. vegetation structure cover-abundance examination and cultural ecosystem services and disservices variables appraisal) to aid SuDS designers to distinguish and link amenity and biodiversity benefits, and allow initial site assessments to be performed in a cost-effective and reliable fashion. Forty-nine representative sites within Greater Manchester were selected to test the two methods. Amenity and biodiversity were successfully assessed and habitat for species, carbon sequestration, recreation and education ecosystem services scores were produced,which will support SuDS retrofit design decision-making. Large vegetated SuDS sites with permanent aquatic features were found to be most capable of enhancing biodiversity- and amenity-related ecosystem services. Habitat for species and recreation ecosystem services were also found to be positively linked to each other. Finally, waste bins on site were found to help reduce dog faeces and litter coverage. Overall, the findings presented here enable future SuDS retrofit designs to be more wildlife friendly and socially inclusive

Mental health in the slums of Dhaka - a geoepidemiological study

Gruebner O, Khan MH, Lautenbach S, et al. Mental health in the slums of Dhaka - a geoepidemiological study. BMC Public Health. 2012;12(1): 177.Background: Urban health is of global concern because the majority of the world's population lives in urban areas. Although mental health problems (e.g. depression) in developing countries are highly prevalent, such issues are not yet adequately addressed in the rapidly urbanising megacities of these countries, where a growing number of residents live in slums. Little is known about the spectrum of mental well-being in urban slums and only poor knowledge exists on health promotive socio-physical environments in these areas. Using a geo-epidemiological approach, the present study identified factors that contribute to the mental well-being in the slums of Dhaka, which currently accommodates an estimated population of more than 14 million, including 3.4 million slum dwellers. Methods: The baseline data of a cohort study conducted in early 2009 in nine slums of Dhaka were used. Data were collected from 1,938 adults (>= 15 years). All respondents were geographically marked based on their households using global positioning systems (GPS). Very high-resolution land cover information was processed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to obtain additional exposure information. We used a factor analysis to reduce the socio-physical explanatory variables to a fewer set of uncorrelated linear combinations of variables. We then regressed these factors on the WHO-5 Well-being Index that was used as a proxy for self-rated mental wellbeing. Results: Mental well-being was significantly associated with various factors such as selected features of the natural environment, flood risk, sanitation, housing quality, sufficiency and durability. We further identified associations with population density, job satisfaction, and income generation while controlling for individual factors such as age, gender, and diseases. Conclusions: Factors determining mental well-being were related to the socio-physical environment and individual level characteristics. Given that mental well-being is associated with physiological well-being, our study may provide crucial information for developing better health care and disease prevention programmes in slums of Dhaka and other comparable settings

The role of socio-economic factors in planning and managing urban ecosystem services

How green spaces in cities benefit urban residents depends critically on the interaction between biophysical and socio-economic factors. Urban ecosystem services are affected by both ecosystem characteristics and the social and economic attributes of city dwellers. Yet, there remains little synthesis of the interactions between ecosystem services, urban green spaces, and socio-economic factors. Articulating these linkages is key to their incorporation into ecosystem service planning and management in cities and to ensuring equitable outcomes for city inhabitants. We present a conceptual model of these linkages, describe three major interaction pathways, and explore how to operationalize the model. First, socio-economic factors shape the quantity and quality of green spaces and their ability to supply services by influencing management and planning decisions. Second, variation in socio-economic factors across a city alters people’s desires and needs and thus demands for different ecosystem services. Third, socio-economic factors alter the type and amount of benefit for human wellbeing that a service provides. Integrating these concepts into green space policy, planning, and management would be a considerable improvement on ‘standards-based’ urban green space planning. We highlight the implications of this for facilitating tailored planning solutions to improve ecosystem service benefits across the socio-economic spectrum in cities

Untangling the interactions of sustainability targets : synergies and trade-offs in the Northern European context

Agenda 2030 and sustainable development goals (SDG) are key formulations of sustainability policies, consisting of 17 general-level goals and 169 more detailed targets. The target setting is based on tedious international policy negotiations and compromises addressing myriad of different and sometimes incompatible interests. Identification of key trade-offs and synergies between the targets can help the efficient implementation of SDGs by improving the opportunities to focus policy attention and actions on the most relevant issues. This article focuses on trade-offs and synergies of nationally relevant targets in the context of an industrialised and affluent nation state. Results from a cross-matrix examination of targets in Finland show that most of the selected targets are characterised by synergistic interactions with other nationally relevant targets. However, policies aimed at advancing economic growth and the use of renewable energy risk a number of serious trade-offs. Methodological advances are required to make the assessment of interactions more transparent and reliable, manageable within the limited resources and capable of producing results relevant to decision-making. A recommendation for the use of cross-matrix examination as a tool of collaborative ex ante sustainability assessment is put forward, also acknowledging the risk of "paralysis by analysis" related to the wide-ranging SDG framework.peerReviewe

Groups and indicators in post-industrial society

Indicators define our world. We are constantly measured and assessed. Perhaps the most important indicator in current use is Gross Domestic Product or GDP. It is the measure of a nation's success and can be key to its ability to borrow money and appear internationally credible. This paper is set against the current debate ‘Beyond GDP’ begun in November 2007 with the conference hosted by the European Commission, European Parliament, Club of Rome, OECD and WWF. The initiative, with its five actions, recognizes weaknesses in the ways in which indicators of all kinds are collected and presented, and attempts to improve the indicator world, but is the answer to effective information for policy formulation hidden in the articulation of indicators? Maybe indicator use is a function of the ways in which stakeholders are engaged in their use? Our conjecture is that indicator use is little understood and that this use dynamic can be better understood. In this paper, the authors write from the perspective of their work undertaken in the European Union funded Framework 7 project ‘Policy Influence of Indicators’ (POINT; contract no 217207), which began in 2008. A major element of the project involved a number of group workshops designed to elicit viewpoints regarding the use of indicators (including sustainable development indicators) in sustainable development policy at EU and member-state levels. The paper outlines some emergent hypotheses and hints at how group approaches to indicators can be foreseen and some challenges for indicator use policy for the future

Mapping Lightscapes: Spatial Patterning of Artificial Lighting in an Urban Landscape

Artificial lighting is strongly associated with urbanisation and is increasing in its extent, brightness and spectral range. Changes in urban lighting have both positive and negative effects on city performance, yet little is known about how its character and magnitude vary across the urban landscape. A major barrier to related research, planning and governance has been the lack of lighting data at the city extent, particularly at a fine spatial resolution. Our aims were therefore to capture such data using aerial night photography and to undertake a case study of urban lighting. We present the finest scale multi-spectral lighting dataset available for an entire city and explore how lighting metrics vary with built density and land-use. We found positive relationships between artificial lighting indicators and built density at coarse spatial scales, whilst at a local level lighting varied with land-use. Manufacturing and housing are the primary land-use zones responsible for the city’s brightly lit areas, yet manufacturing sites are relatively rare within the city. Our data suggests that efforts to address light pollution should broaden their focus from residential street lighting to include security lighting within manufacturing areas