Fracking the online: An exploration of the digital in shaping contention over shale gas

This thesis applies a post-political lens to online activity on shale gas, using Lancashire, England as its case study. Its focus is upon the ways in which online activity may both contribute to, and constrain, the expression of dissent. It argues there is a dual gap in the current literature: empirically, in considering how online activity may be influencing the development of the debate and theoretically, in how we conceive of conflict over shale gas. It seeks to address these gaps using a combination of 37 stakeholder interviews and social media postings from anti-shale gas groups. The first results chapter draws from post-political theory to build a framework through which to understand the conflict over shale gas in England. It identifies three main areas of dispute: over the legitimate modes for public participation in the debate; over the scope of the threat presented by development, and over the credibility of existing knowledge on shale gas. The second results chapter uses this framework to consider the role of online information in the developing dispute. It shows how a lack of technical information led to an online information divide which constrained how the dominant institutional actors engaged online. Anti-shale gas campaigners remained relatively unconstrained but the substantial burden of online activism contributed towards perceptions of disempowerment, spurring a move to direct action. The third results chapter applies a collective action frame analysis to social media postings aimed at mobilising supporters to take part in direct action. It argues that while mobilising on social media has significant advantages for campaigners, it also has the potential to dilute a movement’s messages amidst pressure to maintain local approbation. The apparent paradoxical effects of digitally mediated activism and the implications for practice and theory are discussed in the final chapter, alongside recommendations for future research.

Neoliberalisation of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park as a tourist region

Proponents of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) make a number of claims in favour of this relatively new conservation strategy, one of which is that it leads to an increase in tourism. Despite the growing body of literature on the subject of TFCAs, very little research has been conducted on whether or not this assumption is true. This study therefore draws on and situates itself within this literature on TFCAs and the neoliberalisation of nature and seeks to test this claim through the use of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (KTP) as a case study. This is achieved firstly by assessing the changes in tourism development that have taken place both within the Park and in the area surrounding it as a result of the KTP's formation, and secondly by comparing the KTP's tourist levels prior to becoming a TFCA with those from after the TFCA was established, in order to determine what trends and changes have taken place as a result of this development. In doing so, this paper challenges the claim that TFCAs automatically lead to an increase in tourism and tourist development by showing that the link between the two is tenuous at best. It also broadens the scope of enquiry on the subject of TFCAs by analysing the relationship between TFCAs and the small scale, nature-based economic activities that take place around them, a matter which is largely ignored in the literature and, in doing so, critiques the assumption that all nature-based economic activities are part of a wider neoliberal agenda

“Google fracking:” The online information ecology of the English shale gas debate

A strong online response has marked contention on shale gas from the outset, as campaign members link across borders to share information and inform themselves about the impacts of development. In this article, we apply a post-political lens to online activity in the English shale gas debate, to determine how this complex information ecology has shaped the dynamics of protest. Using shale gas development in Lancashire, North West England, as our case study we argue that the seismic events of 2011, in combination with the Government framing of public scepticism as a matter of information deficit led to an online information divide which constrained how effectively the dominant institutional actors could engage. Between 2011 and 2017, three challenges of online information: complexity, overload and loss of gatekeepers, served to perpetuate this division. Anti-shale gas campaigners were less constrained in their activity but the substantial burden of online activism contributed towards perceptions of disempowerment, as improved information access failed to deliver policy influence. The ultimate consequence was to contribute towards the turn to direct action. Applying a post-political analysis to online activity in information-intensive issues yields valuable insights into the varied ways in which internet use may influence the expression of dissent

Towards a paradigmatic shift in sustainability studies: a systematic review of peer reviewed literature and future agenda setting to consider environmental (un)sustainability of digital communication

The materiality of digital communication inflicts substantial environmental damage: the extraction of resources needed to produce digital devices; the toxicity of e-waste; and the rapidly increasing energy demands required to sustain data generated by digital communication. This damage, however, is paradoxically under-theorized in scholarship on environmental sustainability. Despite the existing critique of the “techno-fix” approach in sustainability studies, digitization – and digital communication in particular – continue to be celebrated as the tool for environmental sustainability; an approach we coin “digital solutionism.” The article presents the first systematic review of the literature to map the implicit assumptions about the relationships between digital communications and environmental sustainability, in order to examine how digital solutionism manifests, and why it persists. We propose a concept matrix that identifies the key blind spots with regards to environmental damages of the digital, and call for a paradigmatic shift in environmental sustainability studies. An agenda for future research is put forward that advocates for the following: (1) a systematic account of material damages of devices, platforms and data systems adopted into sustainability research and practice, resulting in changes in both research framing and methodological foundations; (2) a reconceptualization and denaturalization of the digital itself as a promising solution; (3) a theoretical dialogue between sustainability studies and environmental communication. (4) an expansion of environmental communication as a field, from focusing on the communication aspect of environmental change to include the environmental footprint of communication itself

Let's focus more on negative trends: A comment on the transitions research agenda

Much has been written on sustainability transitions, yet all around us unsustainable developments remain rife, and threaten to offset the progress made in other areas. This viewpoint argues that transitions scholarship should widen its scope to consider unsustainable trends, which it has tended to neglect to date. We argue that there is merit in applying the transitions lens to these developments, not least because of its systemic approach, which could help highlight the dynamic relationships between sustainable and unsustainable trends. We sketch some high-level questions for future transitions research including: how unsustainable trends emerge, who drives them, and how research could help to curtail harmful socio-technological changes before they become entrenched. We conclude by arguing that investigating unsustainable trends would benefit transitions research by making it more plural and more radical

Factors driving the decarbonisation of industrial clusters: A rapid evidence assessment of international experience

Reducing industrial emissions to achieve net-zero targets by the middle of the century will require profound and sustained changes to how energy intensive industries operate. Preliminary activity is now underway, with governments of several developed economies starting to implement policy and providing funding to support the deployment of low carbon infrastructure into high emitting industrial clusters. While clusters appear to offer the economies of scale and institutional capacity needed to kick-start the industrial transition, to date there has been little systematic assessment of the factors that may influence the success of these initiatives. Drawing from academic and grey literature, this paper presents a rapid evidence assessment of the approaches being used to drive the development of low carbon industrial clusters internationally. Many projects are still at the scoping stage, but it is apparent that current initiatives focus on the deployment of carbon capture technologies, alongside hydrogen as a future secondary revenue stream. This model of decarbonisation funnels investment into large coastal clusters with access to low carbon electricity and tends to obscure questions about the integration of these technologies with other decarbonisation interventions, such as material efficiency and electrification. The technology focus also omits the importance that a favourable location and shared history and culture appears to have played in helping progress the most advanced initiatives; factors that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere. If clusters are to kick-start the low-carbon industrial transition, then greater attention is needed to the social and political dimensions of this process and to a broader range of decarbonisation interventions and cluster types than represented by current projects

Decarbonisation strategies in industry: going beyond clusters

An effective and just industrial transition is necessary both to mitigate climate change and protect jobs, and as a precursor to enable other sectors to decarbonise. Activity is at an early stage and examples of successful sector-wide interventions to decarbonise industry do not yet exist. Governments of industrialised countries are beginning to develop policy and provide funding to support deployment of carbon capture and low-carbon hydrogen infrastructures into high-emitting industrial clusters, but options for sites outside of clusters, denoted here as ‘dispersed sites’, are also required. This paper takes a mixed methods approach to provide the first analysis of the issues facing dispersed industrial sites on their route to decarbonisation and to suggest solutions to the challenges they face. Using the UK as a case study, it first characterises dispersed sites in terms of location, emissions released, sectors involved, and size of companies affected. It then shows how these features mean that simply expanding the geographical scope of the present UK decarbonisation strategy, which focuses on the provision of carbon capture and low-carbon hydrogen, would face a number of challenges and so will need to be broadened to include a wider range of abatement options and other considerations to meet the needs of dispersed sites. While the solutions for each place will be different, these are likely to include some combination of the expansion of shared infrastructure, the development of local zero-carbon hubs, research into a wider range of novel abatement technologies and facilitating local participation in energy planning. The paper concludes with a discussion of remaining knowledge gaps before outlining how its findings might apply to industrial decarbonisation strategies in other countries

Constructing reparametrization invariant metrics on spaces of plane curves

Metrics on shape space are used to describe deformations that take one shape to another, and to determine a distance between them. We study a family of metrics on the space of curves, that includes several recently proposed metrics, for which the metrics are characterised by mappings into vector spaces where geodesics can be easily computed. This family consists of Sobolev-type Riemannian metrics of order one on the space $\text{Imm}(S^1,\mathbb R^2)$ of parametrized plane curves and the quotient space $\text{Imm}(S^1,\mathbb R^2)/\text{Diff}(S^1)$ of unparametrized curves. For the space of open parametrized curves we find an explicit formula for the geodesic distance and show that the sectional curvatures vanish on the space of parametrized and are non-negative on the space of unparametrized open curves. For the metric, which is induced by the "R-transform", we provide a numerical algorithm that computes geodesics between unparameterised, closed curves, making use of a constrained formulation that is implemented numerically using the RATTLE algorithm. We illustrate the algorithm with some numerical tests that demonstrate it's efficiency and robustness.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures. Extended versio

Using the underground to fight climate change

In this policy brief, we introduce a suite of technologies which use underground assets to store heat and energy, or provide a low carbon means of energy generation. These present regional authorities with an opportunity for low carbon economic regeneration which is sympathetic to local industrial heritage