Making the most of community energies:Three perspectives on grassroots innovation

Grassroots innovations for sustainability are attracting increasing policy attention. Drawing upon a wide range of empirical research into community energy in the UK, and taking recent support from national government as a case study, we apply three distinct analytical perspectives: strategic niche management; niche policy advocacy; and critical niches. Whilst the first and second perspectives appear to explain policy influence in grassroots innovation adequately, each also shuts out more transformational possibilities. We therefore argue that, if grassroots innovation is to realise its full potential, then we need to also pursue a third, critical niches perspective, and open up debate about more socially transformative pathways to sustainability

EFSA BIOHAZ Panel (EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards), 2013. Scientific Opinion on the public health hazards to be covered by inspection of meat (bovine animals).

A risk ranking process identified Salmonella spp. and pathogenic verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC) as current high-priority biological hazards for meat inspection of bovine animals. As these hazards are not detected by traditional meat inspection, a meat safety assurance system for the farm-to-chilled carcass continuum using a risk-based approach was proposed. Key elements of the system are risk-categorisation of slaughter animals for high-priority biological hazards based on improved food chain information, as well as risk-categorisation of slaughterhouses according to their capability to control those hazards. Omission of palpation and incision during post-mortem inspection for animals subjected to routine slaughter may decrease spreading and cross-contamination with the high-priority biological hazards. For chemical hazards, dioxins and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls were ranked as being of high potential concern; all other substances were ranked as of medium or lower concern. Monitoring programmes for chemical hazards should be more flexible and based on the risk of occurrence, taking into account the completeness and quality of the food chain information supplied and the ranking of chemical substances, which should be regularly updated to include new hazards. Control programmes across the food chain, national residue control programmes, feed control and monitoring of environmental contaminants should be better integrated. Meat inspection is a valuable tool for surveillance and monitoring of animal health and welfare conditions. Omission of palpation and incision would reduce detection effectiveness for bovine tuberculosis and would have a negative impact on the overall surveillance system especially in officially tuberculosis free countries. The detection effectiveness for bovine cysticercosis, already low with the current meat inspection system, would result in a further decrease, if palpation and incision are removed. Extended use of food chain information could compensate for some, but not all, the information on animal health and welfare lost if only visual post-mortem inspection is applied

A socioecological fix to capitalist crisis and climate change? The possibilities and limits of renewable energy

Many have argued that the burning of fossil fuels is an essential component of the socionatural metabolism of capitalism as we know it, and that the anthropogenic climate change it is causing may finally bring about capitalism’s end. In this paper, I explore the potential for, instead, a societal shift towards renewable energy sources as the dominant components of global energy supplies to provide a socioecological ‘fix’ to current forms of crisis. In so doing, I develop a notion of an integrated socioecological fix that combines the central elements of Harvey’s ‘spatial fix’ and of neoliberal environmental ‘fixes’ that maintain accumulation by enrolling new elements of nonhuman nature into circuits of capital. I argue, first, that the capital intensiveness and spatial extensiveness of any such transition could provide a global-scale, if temporary, socioecological fix to capitalist crisis tendencies; and, second, that the creation of global scale geographies of renewable energy production, distribution, and consumption would necessarily involve powerful new rounds of investment in, and claims on, rural areas. These impacts would likely fall disproportionately on rural areas, where land values are lowest and existing users often have less power and fewer formal land rights

Satire and the Politics of Corruption in Kenya

Corruption in Kenya has been a matter of intense concern for foreign donors and the international financial institutions. External efforts to change the ‘governance culture’ in this regard are not simply instrumental, composed of material restrictions and incentives. They are also inherently rhetorical, seeking to establish the plausibility of a set of values rooted in political economy. This paper examines two widely reported speeches of a former British High Commissioner that can be read together as a highly figurative satire on political standards in Kenya. Having developed a reading of anti-corruption governance as satire, we extend it to the role of the legal profession in the illegal and irregular allocation of public land. We argue that, as well as demonstrating an application of the rhetorical analysis of neo-liberal governance, the case of land grabbing in Kenya also highlights the instability of many of the key binary oppositions underpinning dominant anti-corruption strategies. This instability can be understood in rhetorical terms by drawing on the work of post-colonial writers and critics on the category of excremental satire. Rather than a clear binary opposition, these suggest the interrelation, or more precisely the mutual contamination, of corruption and normal capitalist accumulation