Toward a polycentric low-carbon transition: the roles of community-based energy initiatives in enhancing the resilience of energy systems

An understanding of the resilience of energy systems is critical in order to tackle forthcoming challenges. This chapter proposes that the polycentric governance perspective, developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, may be highly relevant in formulating policies to enhance the resilience of future energy systems. Polycentric governance systems involve the coexistence of many self-organized centers of decision making at multiple levels that are formally independent of each other, but operate under an overarching set of rules. Given this polycentric approach, this chapter studies the roles of community-based energy initiatives and, in particular, of renewable energy cooperatives, in enhancing the institutional resilience of energy systems. In this perspective, the chapter identifies three major socio-institutional obstacles, which undermine this resilience capacity: the collective action problem arising from the diffusion of sustainable energy technologies and practices, the lack of public trust in established energy actors and the existence of strong vested interests in favor of the status quo. Then, it shows why the development of community-based energy initiatives and renewable energy cooperatives may offer effective responses to these obstacles, relying on many empirical illustrations. More specifically, it is argued that community-based energy initiatives present institutional features encouraging the activation of social norms and a high trust capital, therefore enabling them to offer effective solutions to avoid free riding and enhance trust in energy institutions and organizations. The creation of federated polycentric structures may also offer a partial response to the existence of vested interests in favor of the status quo. Finally, some recommendations for policymakers are derived from this analysis

Risk communication and the social amplification of risk

Risk communication is a novel concept in the scientific pursuit to understand and analyze risk related decisions and behavior in modem society. But the new term has only changed the focus of attention from a static description of what risk means for different communities to a dynamic analysis on how these communities exchange information about risk and adjust their behavior.The concept of social amplification of risk provides a framework for the analysis of communication as well as other social activities and constitutes a dynamic model which facilitates the systematic interpretation of empirical data and attempts to integrate the existing perspectives into a higher-order terminological model. The concept will certainly not encompass all perspectives,and it will not be capable of unifying different scientific camps

Regional Planning for Linking Parks and Landscape: Innovative Issues

Since 2000, the emerging international indications (new paradigms relating to the protected areas, the European Landscape Convention, the socio-ecological approach of resilience) have expanded the relationship between protected areas and landscape. The paper reflects on conceptual innovations with reference to the methodological approach of some countries: the assessment of the landscape in the United Kingdom as a tool for defining policies and plans capable of integrating and harmonizing the development of human societies with the conservation of ecological and landscape stability and the territorial enhancement policies in the Netherlands that promote territorial development starting from nature and the landscap