Remaking participation in science and democracy

Over the past few decades, significant advances have been made in public engagement with, and the democratization of, science and technology. Despite notable successes, such developments have often struggled to enhance public trust, avert crises of expertise and democracy, and build more socially responsive and responsible science and innovation. A central reason for this is that mainstream approaches to public engagement harbor what we call “residual realist” assumptions about participation and publics. Recent coproductionist accounts in science and technology studies (STS) offer an alternative way of seeing participation as coproduced, relational, diverse, and emergent but have been somewhat reluctant to articulate what this means in practice. In this paper, we make this move by setting out a new framework of interrelating paths and associated criteria for remaking public participation with science and democracy in more experimental, reflexive, anticipatory, and responsible ways. This framework comprises four paths to: forge reflexive participatory practices that attend to their framings, emergence, uncertainties, and effects; ecologize participation through attending to the interrelations between diverse public engagements in wider systems; catalyze practices of anticipatory reflection to bring about responsible democratic innovations; and reconstitute participation as constitutive of (not separate from) systems of technoscience and democracy

Energy Democracies and Publics in the Making: A Relational Agenda for Research and Practice

Mainstream approaches to energy democracy and public engagement with energy transitions tend to adopt specific, pre-given meanings of both “democracy” and “publics.” Different approaches impose prescriptive assumptions about the model of participation, the identity of public participants, and what it means to participate well. The rigidity of many existing approaches to energy participation is increasingly being challenged by the ever-multiplying diversity of ways in which citizens participate in energy systems, as consumers in energy markets, protesters against new infrastructures and technologies, as initiators of community energy projects, and as subjects of behavior change interventions, amongst others. This paper is concerned with growing areas of scholarship which seek to understand and explore these emerging energy publics and forms of energy democracy from a relational perspective. Such work, grounded in constructivist and relational ontologies, views forms of participatory democracy and publics as being co-produced, constructed, and emergent through the performance of collective practices. It pays closer attention to power relations, politics, materiality, exclusions, and effects in both understanding and intervening in the making of energy democracy. This in turn shifts the focus from studying discrete unitary forms of “energy democracy” to one of understanding interrelations between multiple diverse energy democracies in wider systems. In this paper, we chart these developments and explore the significant challenges and potential contributions of relational approaches to furthering the theories, methods, and practices of energy democracy and energy public engagement. The paper draws on an expert workshop, and an accompanying review, which brought together leading proponents of contending relational approaches to energy participation in direct conversation for the first time. We use this as a basis to explore tensions between these approaches and set out a relational agenda for energy democracy research in terms of: developing concepts and theories; methodological and empirical challenges; and implications for practices of governance and democratic engagement with energy transitions

Mapping diverse visions of energy transitions: co-producing sociotechnical imaginaries

The need to rapidly decarbonise energy systems is widely accepted, yet there is growing criticism of ‘top–down’, technocentric transition visions. Transitions are, such critics claim, unpredictable, contested, and comprise of multiple and competing perspectives. This paper opens up to diverse visions of energy transitions by studying a corpus of 12 visions produced across different ‘institutional settings’ of the state, business, science and technology, and civil society in the UK. We introduce a new analytical framework grounded in relational co-productionist perspectives in science and technology studies (STS) to comparatively analyse the similarities and differences of the visions in relation to four dimensions of sociotechnical transformation: meanings, knowings, doings, and organisings. Whilst research on energy transitions often focuses on dominant imaginaries within political cultures, regimes and centres of power, it is an explicit intention of this paper to also comparatively map the distributed, diverse and counter-hegemonic visions. The paper reveals that what is often presented as a primarily ‘technical’ transition is always normative in bringing forward particular forms of social and political order. Our analysis reveals important distinctions between more ‘centred’ and more decentred or ‘alternative’ imaginaries of the energy transition, differences which reveal the inherently political nature of energy futures. Visions which emerge from civil society settings are shown to be a key locus of diversity in sociotechnical imaginaries and tend to open up to alternative models of progress, social change, and the roles of publics. This emphasises the significant role played by the settings and the make-up of collective practices through which energy visions are co-produced. We suggest that mapping diverse visions to reveal their respective partialities, exclusions and sociopolitical dimensions in this way, can offer a more humble, reflexive, and responsible foundation for practices of future-making and sociotechnical transformations

Participation in Transition(s):Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time. In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and ‘the public’. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected ‘ecologies of participation’, and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions

Mapping feasibilities of Greenhouse Gas Removal: Key issues, gaps and opening up assessments

Greenhouse gas removal technologies and practices are essential to bring emissions to net zero and limit global warming to 1.5°C. To achieve this, the majority of integrated assessment models (IAMs), that generate future emissions scenarios and inform the international policy process, use large-scale afforestation and biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). The feasibility of these technologies and practices has only so far been considered from a relatively narrow techno-economic or biophysical perspective. Here, we present one of the first studies to elicit perspectives through an expert mapping process to open up and broaden the discussion around feasibility of afforestation and BECCS. Our stakeholders included business and industry, non-governmental organisations and policy makers, spanning expertise in bioenergy, forestry, CCS and climate change. Perspectives were elicited on 1) issues relating to BECCS with large-scale afforestation, and 2) specific criteria for assessing feasibility. Participants identified 12 main themes with 61 sub-themes around issues, and 11 main themes with 33 sub-themes around feasibility criteria. Our findings show important societal and governance aspects of feasibility that are currently under-represented, specifically issues around real-world complexity, competing human needs, justice and ethics. Unique to the use of these technologies for greenhouse gas removal are issues around temporal and spatial scale, and greenhouse gas accounting. Using these expert insights, we highlight where IAMs currently poorly capture these concerns. These broader, often more qualitative perspectives, issues and uncertainties must be recognised and accounted for, in order to understand the real-world feasibility of large-scale afforestation and BECCS and the role they play in limiting climate change. These considerations enable widening the scope to broader and deeper discussions about possible and desirable futures, beyond a focus on achieving net-zero emissions, attentive to the effects such decisions may have. We outline approaches that can be used to attend to the complex social and political dimensions that IAMs do not render. By complementing IAMs in this way opportunities can be created to open up considerations of future options and alternatives beyond those framings proposed by IAMs, creating opportunities for inclusion of knowledges, reflexivity and responsibility

Searching for a Public in Controversies over Carbon Dioxide Removal: An Issue Mapping Study on BECCS and Afforestation

The roles digital media-technologies play in raising public issues relating to emerging technologies and their potential for engaging publics with science and policy assessments is a lively field of inquiry in Science and Technology Studies (STS). This paper presents an analysis of controversies over proposals for the large-scale removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CDR). The study combines a digital method (web-querying) with document analysis to map debates about two CDR approaches: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation. In the first step, we locate actors using the web to engage with BECCS and afforestation and map their alignments in relation to competing framings of CDR. In a second step, we examine the devices deployed by UK-based actors to evidence and contest the feasibility of BECCS and afforestation. Our analysis shows that policy distinctions between “natural” and “engineered” CDR are used flexibly in practice and do not map neatly onto actor engagement with BECCS and afforestation. We highlight the predominance of cross-cutting techno-economic expertise and argue that framings of CDR as a solution to governing climate change may contribute to public disengagement from climate policy processes. The paper reflects on methods for studying controversies, publics, and issues emerging around processes of technoscientific assessment

Contested framings of greenhouse gas removal and its feasibility: social and political dimensions

Prospective approaches for large‐scale greenhouse gas removal (GGR) are now central to the post‐2020 international commitment to pursue efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C. However, the feasibility of large‐scale GGR has been repeatedly questioned. Most systematic analyses focus only on the physical, technical, and economic challenges of deploying it at scale. However, social and political dimensions will be just as important, if not more so, to how possible futures play out. We conduct one of the first reviews of the international peer‐reviewed literature pertaining to the social and political dimensions of large‐scale GGR, with a specific focus on two predominant approaches: Biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation/reforestation (AR). Our analysis of 78 studies proposes two important insights. First, it shows how six key social and political dimensions of GGR feasibility–namely economics and incentives; innovation; societal engagement; governance; complexity and uncertainty; and ethics, equity, and justice–are identifiable and are emphasized to varying degrees in the literature. Second, there are three contested ways in which BECCS and AR and their feasibility are being framed in the literature: (a) a techno‐economic framing; (b) a social and political acceptability framing; and (c) a responsible development framing. We suggest this third frame will, and indeed should, become increasingly pertinent to the assessment, innovation, and governance of climate futures

Appraising sociotechnical visions of sustainable energy futures: A distributed deliberative mapping approach

Meeting international targets to limit climate change requires countries around the world to decarbonise whole energy systems. It is increasingly recognised that low-carbon energy transitions will need to focus as much on social transformations and the meaningful engagement of society as they do technical aspects. Most existing studies to engage society with energy system change focus on discrete forms of participation around specific technologies or particular parts of the energy system, with very few exploring distributed engagements with energy in terms of ‘whole system’ change. We set out to address this research gap in two important ways. First, we report on an innovative approach to opening up diverse issue framings and participant perspectives about energy futures in the UK, called distributed deliberative mapping (DDM), that examines how alternative formats and models of public participation shape appraisal outcomes. In this way, we experimentally broaden out beyond conventional deliberative formats of participation, in terms of ‘representative’ mini-publics and expert elicitation, to also engage with activist, grassroots innovator and consumer-based models of participation and their associated publics. Second, in doing so we develop an explicitly sociotechnical approach, emphasising the often-unacknowledged social arrangements that are co-produced with the technical elements of energy systems. Six diverse sociotechnical visions were developed and appraised: business as usual, large-scale technologies, deliberative energy society, smart tech society, local energy partnerships and off-grid energy communities. Across the five groups, we find a variety of problem framings that go far beyond the energy ‘trilemma’ and a greater diversity and range of technical and social criteria with which low-carbon energy futures are appraised. Our DDM study involving citizens and specialists shows that incumbent visions of centralised energy systems, such as business as usual and large-scale technologies, perform much lower than decentralised alternatives, such as a smart-tech society and local energy partnerships. Rather than a dominant focus on eliciting the views of ‘representative’ mini-publics to inform centralised decisions made by those managing ‘the transition’, DDM reveals and can support much more distributed modes of governing and democratising sustainable energy futures, across spaces and scales

Global Mapping of Citizen Science Projects for Disaster Risk Reduction

Citizen science for disaster risk reduction (DRR) holds huge promise and has demonstrated success in advancing scientific knowledge, providing early warning of hazards, and contributed to the assessment and management of impacts. While many existing studies focus on the performance of specific citizen science examples, this paper goes beyond this approach to present a systematic global mapping of citizen science used for DRR in order to draw out broader insights across diverse methods, initiatives, hazards and country contexts. The systematic mapping analyzed a total of 106 cases of citizen science applied to DRR across all continents. Unlike many existing reviews of citizen science initiatives, relevance to the disaster risk context led us to ‘open up’ our mapping to a broader definition of what might constitute citizen science, including participatory research and narrative-based approaches. By taking a wider view of citizen science and opening up to other disciplinary practices as valid ways of knowing risks and hazards, we also capture these alternative examples and discuss their relevance for aiding effective decision-making around risk reduction. Based on this analysis we draw out lessons for future research and practice of citizen science for DRR including the need to: build interconnections between disparate citizen science methods and practitioners; address multi-dimensionality within and across hazard cycles; and develop principles and frameworks for evaluating citizen science initiatives that not only ensure scientific competence but also attend to questions of equity, responsibility and the empowerment of those most vulnerable to disaster risk