An exploratory study of the contributions to low carbon policy making in Bristol using WEF Nexus as a heuristic device

Cities around the world have taken up the challenge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by designing policies to bring about low carbon futures. Research on climate change suggests that we are not only facing an issue of increased emissions but in fact, an array of interconnected planetary crises. Extreme weather events, resource scarcity, environmental deterioration and social inequalities could potentially reinforce each other and lead to an undesirable future.Both academics and practitioners argue that we need to attend to interactions, trade-offs and unforeseen consequences. As a result, “Water-Energy-Food Nexus” has recently risen in popularity echoing this sentiment. The concept promises a low carbon future while ensuring water, energy and food security for all. Although the term has been increasingly prominent in the international policy circles, it has also been subject to a critique from the social sciences. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the lens of Water-Energy-Food Nexus would be applicable to urban scale challenges. This research seeks to learn how urban sustainability practitioners discuss complexity and interconnections in sustainability issues. By illuminating the links between nexus-type considerations, climate justice and specific sustainability policy issues, the research aims to co-design policy recommendations for a just and low carbon future of Bristol.Using action research methodology, the research engaged local sustainability practitioners to collaborate on the research design, preliminary results and dissemination. The thesis applied an innovative mix of methods (discourse analysis, focus groups, qualitative survey, spatial analysis and self-reflection) to co-create policy recommendations in the themes of food waste management and energy/water metering.The main practical contribution of this thesis lies in creating space for transdisciplinary research where the stakeholders from the public, private, charity and academic sectors are participating not only in theory formation but also in improving their practice. Meanwhile, the main theoretical contribution of the thesis is highlighting the relevance of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus and climate justice at the urban scale

Contrasting global approaches for identifying and managing cybersecurity risks in supply chains

Supply chains are increasingly targeted by threat actors. Using a recent taxonomy, we contrast the diverse levels of detail given by national authorities. The threat is commonly acknowledged, but guidance is disjointed. NIST SP 800-161 aligns closely with the taxonomy and offers a potential pathway towards a common set of principles.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Capabilities for transdisciplinary research

Problems framed as societal challenges have provided fresh impetus for transdisciplinary research. In response, funders have started programmes aimed at increasing transdisciplinary research capacity. However, current programme evaluations do not adequately measure the skills and characteristics of individuals and collectives doing this research. Addressing this gap, we propose a systematic framework for evaluating transdisciplinary research based on the Capability Approach, a set of concepts designed to assess practices, institutions, and people based on public values. The framework is operationalized through a mixed-method procedure which evaluates capabilities as they are valued and experienced by researchers themselves. The procedure is tested on a portfolio of ‘pump-priming’ research projects in the UK. We find these projects are sites of capability development in three ways: through convening cognitive capabilities required for academic practice; cultivating informal tacit capabilities; and maintaining often unacknowledged backstage capabilities over durations that extend beyond the lifetime of individual projects. Directing greater attention to these different modes of capability development in transdisciplinary research programmes may be useful formatively in identifying areas for ongoing project support, and also in steering research system capacity towards societal needs

Resocializing digital water transformations : outlining social science perspectives on the digital water journey

Funding information: National Cyber Security Centre; Scottish Government, Grant/Award Number: Hydro Nation Scholars; University of Manchester, Grant/Award Number: Presidential fellowship; University of Manchester, Grant/Award Number: SEED PGR scholarship (Amankwaa).Digital water transformation is often written about as though universally desirable and inevitable, capable of addressing the multifaceted socioecological challenges that water systems face. However, there is not widespread reflection on the complexities, tensions and unintended consequences of digital transformation, its social and political dimensions are often neglected. This article introduces case studies of digital water development, bringing examples of technological innovation into dialogue with literature and empirical research from across the social sciences. We examine how Big Data affects our observations of water in society to shape water management, how the Internet of Things becomes involved in reproducing unjust water politics, how digital platforms are entangled in the varied sociocultural landscape of everyday water use, and how opensource technologies provide new possibilities for participatory water governance. We also reflect on regulatory developments and the possible trajectories of innovation resulting from public‐private sector interactions. A socially and politically informed view of digital water is essential for just and sustainable development, and the gap between industry visions of digital water and research within the social sciences is inhibitive. Thus, the analysis presented in this article provides a novel, pluralistic perspective on digital water development and outlines what is required for more inclusive future scholarship, policy and practice.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Co-creating a Transdisciplinary Map of Technology-mediated Harms, Risks and Vulnerabilities: Challenges, Ambivalences and Opportunities

The phrase "online harms" has emerged in recent years out of a growing political willingness to address the ethical and social issues associated with the use of the Internet and digital technology at large. The broad landscape that surrounds online harms gathers a multitude of disciplinary, sectoral and organizational efforts while raising myriad challenges and opportunities for the crossing entrenched boundaries. In this paper we draw lessons from a journey of co-creating a transdisciplinary knowledge infrastructure within a large research initiative animated by the online harms agenda. We begin with a reflection of the implications of mapping, taxonomizing and constructing knowledge infrastructures and a brief review of how online harm and adjacent themes have been theorized and classified in the literature to date. Grounded on our own experience of co-creating a map of online harms, we then argue that the map -- and the process of mapping -- perform three mutually constitutive functions, acting simultaneously as method, medium and provocation. We draw lessons from how an open-ended approach to mapping, despite not guaranteeing consensus, can foster productive debate and collaboration in ethically and politically fraught areas of research. We end with a call for CSCW research to surface and engage with the multiple temporalities, social lives and political sensibilities of knowledge infrastructures.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, to appear in The 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing. October 13-18, 2023. Minneapolis, MN US

Bristol advisory committee on climate change: One City climate strategy progress review - February 2023

This report from the Bristol Advisory Committee on Climate Change (BACCC) reviews citywide progress on tackling the climate crisis and concludes that, although there is some positive progress, the city is still way off meeting its 2030 carbon neutral and climate resilient targets.BACCC is an independent committee which provides expert advice on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of a changing climate. Their latest report is an assessment of progress against the One City Climate Strategy which was launched by the Environment Board in March 2020, setting out the pathway for the city to reduce carbon emissions and build resilience to a changing climate by 2030