This Open access book brings a cultural lens, and a distinctive analytical framework, to the problem of transitioning to a sustainable, low-carbon future. The world faces a seemingly impossible ...hurdle – to radically alter long-established social, economic and technological systems in order to live within the biophysical limits of the globe, while ensuring a just and enduring transition. The overarching premise of this book is that this cannot be achieved without widespread cultural change. ‘We need a change in culture’ is often used rhetorically, but what does this really mean? Stephenson starts by exploring culture’s elusiveness, describing its divergent interpretations before identifying core features of culture that are common across most definitions. These characteristics form the core of the cultures framework, an extensively tested approach to studying the links between culture and sustainability outcomes. The framework makes culture an accessible concept which can be analytically applied to almost any sustainability problem. Using many examples from around the world, Stephenson illustrates how cultural stability, cultural flexibility and cultural transformation all have a part to play in the sustainability transition. She guides the reader in the use of the cultures framework for policy development and to underpin research undertaken by individuals or by multi-disciplinary teams. Clearly and engagingly written, Culture and Sustainability is essential reading for academics, students, policy makers and indeed anyone interested in a sustainable future.
In this paper, we examine the factors that contribute to the replication or reduction of automobility amongst young adults. Semi-structured interviews conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand, with 51 ...drivers and non-drivers, aged 18–35years old, form the empirical material. The findings build upon previous research and extend understandings of how seven explanatory factors; perceptual, value and preference, social, built environment, economic, legal/policy and technological, work both to continue the current automobility paradigm, and to challenge it by adopting alternative mobilities. We use the Energy Cultures Framework as an analytical tool to explore the ways through which materialites, norms, practices, and external context can replicate or reduce participation in the hegemonic mobility paradigm. This approach offers useful insights into the interactions between what the research participants think, have and do, and how this is resulting in a reduction in automobility norms amongst some younger people. It also identifies and highlights potential opportunities to leverage upon current change trends to assist a systemic transition away from automobility towards a culture of multi-mobilities.
•We empirically examine the factors that replicate or reduce automobility.•We find evidence of an emergent mobility culture of reduced car dependence.•New conceptualisations of independence and freedom contribute to this culture.
The prevalence of widespread, human-caused ecological degradation suggests that fundamental change is needed in how societies interact with the environment. In this paper we argue that durable models ...of environmental relationships already exist in approaches of place-based peoples, whose values connect people to their environments, provide guidance on appropriate behaviors, and structure sustained people-place relationships. To illustrate, we identify and discuss concordant values of indigenous peoples at opposite ends of the Pacific Ocean: the Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and First Nations of the West Coast of Canada. We find that values of relatedness to, respect of, and reciprocity with other species and places correspond with sustained long-term relationships between people and places, and illustrate with examples from both regions. We propose that by integrating a values-led foundation into management broadly, values-led management could enable similar sustained relationships in places where they have been recently disrupted or where they are altogether lacking. We characterize values-led management as being founded on values that underpin stewardship-like relationships between people and place and that in turn guide related objectives, policies, and practices. We examine two contemporary values-led management plans that follow this structure, and provide additional examples of emergent values-led approaches elsewhere. From these we compile a set of questions that might guide the conception of place-based values-led management in decolonizing contexts, in contexts where people have a desire for place-based approaches but have not yet distilled foundational values for guidance, or in contexts where people have a united set of values but have not yet translated them into specific management approaches. We conclude by discussing both the challenges and learning opportunities that the resumption, or commencement, of values-led management might entail.
How is cultural resilience achieved in the face of significant social and ecological change? Is resilience compatible with changed structures, functions, and feedbacks as long as identity is ...maintained? The concept of cultural resilience has been less explored than its older siblings ecological resilience, social resilience, and social-ecological resilience. We seek to redress the balance, drawing from resilience thinking to examine how a New Zealand Māori tribal group of landowners retained strong cultural identity and connectedness to their land despite enduring significant changes in land use, economy, tenure, and governance. The landowners negotiated radical transformations in the ecology and land use of their home lands on terms that supported matters of cultural importance. The key resilience concepts of adaptation and transformation were helpful in analyzing the trajectory of change, but fell short of representing the elements of stability that supported the cultural resilience of the landowners. The concept of resilience pivots was designed to address this conceptual gap, and to offer another heuristic to resilience thinking by focusing on stability rather than change. Resilience pivots are those elements of a resilient system that remain stable despite adaptation or even transformation of other elements of that system, and in doing so support the maintenance of the system’s distinctive identity.
Although the public generally hold positive attitudes towards wind energy, proposals for the construction of new wind farms are often met with strong resistance. In New Zealand, where the government ...has recently introduced ambitious policy targets for renewable energy generation, negative perceptions of wind farms are increasingly evident and have the potential to prevent the achievement of these targets. This research sets out to examine what influences social resistance to wind farms in New Zealand. Drawing from public submissions on three wind farm proposals, a framework developed by Devine-Wright Devine-Wright, P., 2005a. Beyond NIMBYism: towards an integrated Framework for Understanding Public Perceptions of Wind Energy. Wind Energy 8, 125–139. was used as the basis for identification of factors affecting public perceptions of wind farms. The research found firstly that there was no apparent relationship between the proximity of submitters to a proposed wind farm and their likelihood of having a negative perception of the proposal. A wide range of factors written in submissions appeared to have affected the submitter's decision to support or oppose the wind farm proposal. Some of these were consistent with Devine-Wright's findings, but ten further factors were added to the framework to adequately cover the aspects raised in submissions. The findings have implications for the achievement of New Zealand's energy policy aspirations.
•Participatory modeling supports social learning amongst stakeholders.•Policy tensions and trade-offs arise between competing adaptation and health priorities.•Holistic, systems thinking approaches ...can support health and equity in adaptation.
Climate change-related flooding and sea-level rise have important direct and indirect health effects. In order to support health and equity, adaptation responses require collaborative, transdisciplinary learning and consensus-building, across a wide range of local-level stakeholders. We aimed to co-develop a shared understanding of the complex interplay between health, health determinants, flooding, and sea-level rise in a low-income urban area of Aotearoa New Zealand, to inform action.
We used qualitative participatory system dynamics modeling, involving interviews and group workshops with transdisciplinary stakeholders. We developed a shared set of wellbeing outcomes and triangulated participants’ knowledge with published evidence to develop a set of causal loop diagrams (CLDs). These capture the system feedback behavior between flooding and sea-level rise, and local health and wellbeing.
Thirty-three participants were involved across the project, identifying 22 wellbeing outcomes. The CLDs covered six intersecting themes: community-led development and participation in decision-making; quality of housing; the housing market; the insurance market; economic effects of flooding and sea-level rise; and access issues arising from flooding. Intervention points were identified, with the potential to inform health equity-focused adaptation policy. The process supported shifts in participants’ mental models towards consensus and effective intervention points, and transdisciplinary relationship-building.
Participatory systems modeling approaches may support cross-sector collaborative learning about the complex, dynamic influences on health and wellbeing in the context of local climate change adaptation. These shared, holistic understandings are essential to inform decision-making that promotes positive health and social equity outcomes.
Cultural identity is strongly associated with the ways in which people interact with their landscapes. A few special landscapes may have ‘universal’ or ‘outstanding’ values, but almost all landscapes ...will be valued in multiple ways by those people who are closely associated with them. It is important that those making decisions affecting landscapes are aware of the potential nature and range of cultural values, particularly where these values are not accounted for using standardised landscape assessment techniques. This article describes the development of the Cultural Values Model, which offers an integrated conceptual framework for understanding the potential range of values that might be present within a landscape, and the potential dynamics between these values. The model emerged out of community-based research undertaken in two landscapes in New Zealand, and is discussed in the context of the contribution that landscapes can make to cultural identity and sustainability.
New Zealand (NZ) aims to expand the deployment of wind energy as one means to achieve 90% of electricity generation from renewables by 2025 and in addition to reduce green house gas (GHG) emissions. ...Due to electricity market regulations that inhibit market entry for independent developers, New Zealand's wind energy development has been limited to primarily large wind farms developed by a handful of electricity utilities. In contrast to many other countries, NZ lacks policy support for entry of smaller investors into the wind generation sector.
In order to gage the acceptability of a feed in tariff (FIT) for wind energy in New Zealand, a survey questionnaire (366 respondents) with land owning farmers and semi structured interviews with wind energy stakeholders was conducted. Although international literature suggests that a FIT would be the most suitable policy support scheme to accelerate wind energy deployment, this conclusion was not reached by many influential stakeholders in NZ. However, a majority of the surveyed farmers supported the introduction of a FIT for wind energy. The study also revealed that farmers' acceptance of wind energy in their local area increases with their awareness about climate change issues.
► Of countries in the world with a good wind regime, NZ has a low level of policy support for wind energy. ► A survey of landowning farmers in NZ (366 respondents) indicated support for a feed in tariff for wind energy. ► The major electricity generators, however, did not indicate support for a feed in tariff. ► A low level of recognition of climate change being anthropogenic was found among landowning farmers.
Environmental valuation provides a way of soliciting and organising information about how people relate to their environments. By canvassing a broad spectrum of human–nature relationships, valuation ...practice seeks to make environmental decision‐making more inclusive of diverse human concerns and aspirations.
When valuation is undertaken in real‐world decision‐making settings, choices must be made about how to adapt valuation into context. Generic guidance illuminates choices of theory and method, as well as practical issues such as cost and complexity; however, little guidance exists on how to understand and respond to the political implications of valuation in places.
To address this, we develop four propositions on how valuation intervenes into conflicted environmental decision‐making contexts, drawing on interviews with government officials and marine values‐holders from Aotearoa New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds.
Valuation intervenes in politics by (i) vesting certain scales and actors with authority, (ii) aligning with or contesting existing regulatory categories, (iii) reallocating expertise about the environment and (iv) reproducing or reworking the uneven playing field of decision‐making. Understanding these implications can support valuation practitioners to situate their work within locally relevant contexts and objectives.
These propositions provide a way of grasping the mechanisms through which valuation intervenes in local political struggles for environmental authority. Using these prompts, and developing others, can help valuation practitioners to ‘do good’ through seeking place‐based environmental justice and sustainability.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electricity generation are generally assessed using a yearly average carbon intensity (in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per unit of energy). This masks the ...variability of emissions associated with different forms of generation over different timescales. Variability is a characteristic of electricity systems with high levels of renewable generation, where fossil fuels are typically used to meet any shortfall in supply. In this paper we argue that quantification of the time variability of carbon intensity is necessary to understand the detailed patterns of carbon emissions in electricity systems, particularly as future systems are likely to increasingly rely on a mix of time-variable generation types such as wind, hydro and solar. We analysed the time-varying carbon intensity of New Zealand's electricity sector, which has approximately 80% renewable generation. In contrast to many other nations, we found that carbon intensity did not consistently follow daily peak demand, and was only weakly correlated with demand. This result, and the finding that carbon intensity has significant seasonal variation, stems from the dominance of hydro (albeit with limited storage capacity) in New Zealand's generation mix. Further investigation of the operating regimes of the fossil fuel generators, using time-varying analysis, indicates that New Zealand's electricity system is sub-optimal from a GHG emission perspective, with more coal generation than would seem to be required. Two policy measures, which also generalize to other countries, are proposed to address this issue: (i) the creation of an electricity capacity market – providing revenue for standby fossil fuel generation capacity without the need for continual generation; (ii) use of time-varying carbon intensity to inform demand-side measures and decisions about new renewable generation.
•Time-varying carbon intensity; a tool for detailed analysis of GHG emissions.•Assists with optimizing the electricity generation system (consists of fossil fuel and renewable).•Supports demand side management of GHG emissions.•Suggests fuel-optimization-related policy.
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