Fostering energy efficiency dynamics through ex-ante strategic niche management: the UK perspective

The United Kingdom building sector has been challenged to retrofit a huge stock of existing buildings in order to increase its adaptive capacity for climate change impacts. Addressing such challenges will require systematic structural changes in both, socio-technical and socio-political infrastructure. A numbers of studies have suggested the approach of strategic niche management of transition for sustainable technological regimes. Accordingly, any such transition would follow processes: early stages of niche formation; creation of policy mechanism required to harness the niches; niche expansion into incumbent regime; and the regime transition into more sustainable technological regime. Following this, the UK Government has introduced a raft of initiatives; one of which is “Green Deal” to enable buildings to become energy efficient through retrofit technologies, ultimately contributing towards the national goal of achieving 80% reduction in carbon emission by 2050. This paper serves three purposes. First, the paper introduces multi-level socio-technical system for construction/retrofitting in building industry. Second, the ex-ante strategic niche management approach has been used to analyse the dynamic of “Green Deal” initiative. Thereby the paper would critically assess technological, organisational and institutional reforms undertaken for the initiative in the processes for sustainable socio-technical transition. Third, the paper would contribute towards strategic niche management literature which lacks in practical examples of using it as an ex-ante tool for niche building and regime transition

Barriers to English housing energy efficiency: stakeholders' perspectives

Sustainable transformation to energy efficient housing remains very challenging. While implementing effective governance remains specific to local and global contexts, more encompassing interrelated essential conditions have emerged which serve as prerequisite to varying degrees in implementing strategies for energy efficient housing in Europe. Notably, the existing English housing system has incorporated these critical drivers to leverage effective governance for energy efficient housing environments. Whilst these are important, there is a paucity of work on the understanding of 'barriers' against the backdrop of these prerequisite essential conditions from the whole system-wide stakeholders' perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues and identify a list of correlated and commonly agreed barriers from the stakeholders' perspectives. From the initial set of 40 barriers, this research identifies ten, as prioritised by online survey respondents. The paper, therefore, directs future research to investigate strategies that can overcome these key barrier

Enabling factors for sustainable menstrual hygiene management practices: a rapid review

This paper highlights the crucial enabling factors in menstrual hygiene management. The use of products depends on various factors such as access to water, privacy, social, cultural and econmic. Gender equality and women’s empowerment are integral parts of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Half of the world’s population are women, and women have specific needs to manage the menstrual cycle during their lifetime. To manage the bleeding during the menstrual cycle, girls and women use different products, depending on their accessibility and affordability. They are (a) disposable—one-time use products such as disposable pads, tampons, and (b) reusable products—reusable products such as cloth, washable and reusable cloth pads, menstrual cups, and period panties. The literature search revealed that there are limited studies related to the use of menstrual products and the impacts of these products on women’s health and the environment. A rapid review of the literature identified factors responsible for choosing a particular type of menstrual product, the perceptions of women using the products, and their implications on health and the environment. The study concluded with the need to study the type of menstrual products preferred by women using appropriate variables, address the issues of disposal systems, provide adolescent girls with adequate infrastructure, provide access to affordable sanitary products and gender equity to manage their periods with dignity, and increasing awareness regarding sustainable/ reusable menstrual products, suggesting further investigation in menstrual hygiene management

The Barriers to Research and Innovation in Disaster Resilience in Higher Education Institutions in Asia

This paper reports the findings of a research study investigating the barriers to Research and Innovation (R&I) in Disaster Resilience (DR) in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Asia. The scope of the study is limited to three Asian countries, i.e. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand, due to their role in the international collaboration entitled ASCENT (Advancing Skills Creation to Enhance Transformation), which contributes to the development of research capacity building in disaster resilience ensuring sustainable and inclusive socio-economic growth in these Partner Country HEIs. Responses received from 213 semi-structured interviews and 530 survey questionnaires are used to examine and prioritize the aforementioned barriers in R&I in HEIs in Asia. Findings reveal, amongst others, that there is a crucial need for R&I skills enhancement through implementation of clear and adequate policies. Having a strong policy support, in turn, could play an important role in providing incentives to staff (academic and research staff), increasing awareness on R&I initiatives, and motivation to carry out R&I activities. Lack of training and development on R&I was surprisingly one of the lowest ranked barriers from the survey analysis, although it was the most frequently mentioned barrier during the interviews. Although this is a mixed result, training and development should be considered a priority for promoting and improving R&I in HEIs as such initiatives could help overcome many other barriers such as lack of staff R&I skills, motivation, awareness, and lack of research related performance

Strengthening Skills in Research Methods in Higher Education Institutions to Improve Societal Resilience to Disasters

This paper provides a strategic approach to strengthening research methods skills in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to improve disaster resilience (DR). The findings are based on an initial assessment of the nature, scale and beneficiaries of the research methods training program developed as a part of an ERAMUS+ project called ASCENT (Advancing Skill Creation to ENhance Transformation). This project aims at addressing Research and Innovation (R&I) capacity strengthening for the societal DR. The paper examines what research methods skills are needed to be improved in HEIs in three countries, i.e. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand. This was examined mainly with the use of an online survey questionnaire that was sent to 08 HEIs from these three countries. Altogether 530 responses were received from both the academic and research staff in these institutions. The responses were analysed using version SPSS 23.0 with several analysis techniques such as Mann-Witney U-test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Principal Component Analysis. The research findings revealed that both academic and research staff lack capacity in research methods such as elite interviews, observations, document studies (e.g. secondary data analysis), probabilistic method, interdisciplinary thinking, field experiments, sampling techniques and Delphi studies. The strategic approach to strengthening research methods skills, therefore, focuses on developing a comprehensive and structured research methods training programme encompassing the aforementioned research methods. In addition, several modes of training such as face-to-face, and online training were incorporated in this strategic approach to suit the nature, scale and beneficiaries of the research method training program