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As governments encourage circular economy (CE) initiatives, markets for waste recirculation are taking shape. But implementation is in its infancy and material circuits are emergent. Early food waste CEs shaped by commercial players emphasise capital investment, routinised forms of waged labour, processing sites distant from food waste sources, and transactional relationships. Less well understood is the potential for vernacular circularity beyond market-based, transactional frames. This paper reports from a collaborative research exercise with a non-profit community farm in nonmetropolitan Australia, seeking to connect with cafés to access food waste for composting. Cafés are a nexus of production and consumption, ubiquitous in the contemporary multicultural Australian context, and therefore ideal for grassroots CEs. Ten local cafes participated, reviewing existing food waste practices, motivations for circularity, and contextual factors including the regional setting. We found that food waste circularity emerges via divergent pathways related to enterprise type and scale, environmental values of actors, place embeddedness, and local relationships. These pathways reflect the place-based attributes and diverse sustainability values of residents and businesses in the coastal, industrial city of Wollongong, where the study is based. Contrasting distant, transactional circuits, are more-than-transactional food waste pathways, developed by microscale actors shaping vernacular material flows and "hacking" public provision of Food Organic and Garden Organic (FOGO) waste services to mobilise environmental values and community relationships. Overlooked by "big policy" more-than-transactional relationships bind producers, intermediaries and consumers in closer loops and, in so doing, enrich place and facilitate an ethic of care for soil and land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sea defence policy in England has proven contentious in the early twenty-first century, with government willing to defend the coast only where it is considered cost effective and not minded to compensate people for any resulting abandonment of homes. Additional focus is brought to this position by the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which reflect a growing emphasis on climate change effects and other environmental hazards, and the wellbeing of the current generation and those to come. This requires policy makers to seek to balance economic, social and environmental dimensions, and to tackle inequalities; with a central commitment of the goals to "leave no one behind". Subsequent to publication of the SDGs, England was promised a revolution in the government's approach to Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM). This paper seeks to understand the nature of this revolution with particular regard to extant issues around just governance. It finds that policy fails to deal with issues over the local acceptability of proposals for change and the bearing of risk, and instead lies principally in the elevation of the problematic concept of resilience and an accompanying ambivalence towards ideas of sustainability and sustainable development. International agreement that compensation should be paid to those countries suffering the worst effects of climate change, including sea level rise, suggests that adoption of a similar approach to vulnerable homeowners might be the more appropriate revolution and bring policy more into line with the aspirations of the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature-based solutions (NBS) is a relatively novel concept and real-world application has only started to proliferate in cities, which motivates addressing early attempts of cross-boundary collaboration for implementing NBS. The aim of this paper is to reflect about the process of transdisciplinary research-practice collaboration on NBS and its associated learnings, potentials and challenges. To do so, this paper reflects on one of the local urban-regional innovation partnerships within the Naturvation research project, which included urban planning practitioners, researchers and public and private organisations, and aimed to understand what NBS can achieve in cities and how to advance implementation through collaboration. This paper is based on embedded research and uses participant observation as methodological inspiration. It draws on two streams of literature to frame the reflections; (a) transdisciplinary research, to reflect on the collaborative process of research and practice engaging in learning and knowledge co-production and (b) boundary concepts, to capture the boundaryspanning nature of NBS. Observations, grey literature and the "network compass" [Schneider, F., T. Tribaldos, C. Adler, R. O. Biggs, A. de Bremond, T. Buser, C. Krug et al. 2021. "Co-Production of Knowledge and Sustainability Transformations: A Strategic Compass for Global Research Networks." Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 49: 127-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2021.04.007] were used expost to identify and map fields of action and associated potentials and challenges. The process included joint problem understanding and building relations, visioning and creation of roadmaps, targeted collaboration and horizontal learning. This paper suggests that future research-practice collaboration on NBS should focus on relational capacities and communicative skills, and integrating joint reflection and learning as central components for co-producing knowledge. Furthermore, transdisciplinary collaboration requires facilitation and management skills, which should be considered an area of expertise and not taken for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable food practices are increasingly of interest to scholars and practitioners concerned with the impacts of food production, consumption, and waste in an age of climate change. Attention has been paid to households as actors in addressing sustainability concerns. This paper draws on a national survey of Australian sustainable household practices to offer insights into the ways households are practicing sustainability across three everyday entanglements with food: (1) growing food, (2) consuming food and (3) wasting/disposing of food. The paper explores the types of practices enacted across the three entanglements and provides an understanding of the prevalence and barriers for households adopting sustainable food practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities play a central role in the circular economy (CE) as they are important centres of production and consumption, responsible for 80% of global GDP. European cities are particularly important due to their position of power in the global economy as major markets, and places of industrial and social innovation. Yet urban CE policies and discourses remain poorly researched and understood. This paper addresses this research gap by analysing and comparing the CE policies and discourses in different European cities to draw critical insights and recommendations. It does so by first reviewing academic literature on urban CE policies to develop a new conceptual framework to analyse CE discourses and policies. This framework is then used to analyse and compare the CE policies of three European cities: Glasgow, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen. Results show that technocentric approaches to CE are dominant in the three cities. Moreover, they have very limited social justice policies for a fair distribution of the costs and benefits of a CE transition. Key policy recommendations to address these shortcomings are thus proposed. The insights brought about by this paper are valuable for both practitioners and academics seeking to improve urban CE policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years, transportation and land use integration has been identified as important approaches for planners, engineers, and designers, but to understand more research is needed to understand how it affects people who live around stations. In response, this research builds on a multi-year analysis quantitative and qualitative study of 2323 transit stations in over 350 corridors throughout the U.S. – one of the largest federally funded studies on livability related to transportation. This effort yielded empirical links to transportation and land use integration and quality of life outcomes. This paper concludes that the intersection between successful transportation and land use integration (TLI) depends on people's ability to equitably access opportunities to improve and/or maintain their desired quality of life. Along these lines this paper (a) identifies important characteristics (metrics) of TLI in 2323 transit station areas in the United States, (b) applies these metrics toward the development of a typology of station types (TOD), and then (c) validates these metrics by geo-locating a variety of quality of life outcomes for station area residents. Put simply, this paper finds that opportunity access can be an organising principle for guiding transportation and land use integration strategies. In turn, providing individuals with equitable access to opportunities measurably shows significant potential for achieving many societal and individual quality of life benefits such as lowering auto-dependency, household budget burdens, greenhouse gas emissions, and even poverty and obesity rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The former neglect of social sustainability as an ideal for urban development has been exchanged with a newfound interest globally, nationally and locally. However, there is little systematic knowledge to support relevant priorities in urban governance. Motivated by this knowledge gap, this paper reviews new knowledge from a literature study seeking to identify context-situated definitions and operationalisations of community social sustainability. Two distinct research waves are identified: a first wave of categorisation defining conceptual ground structures of community social sustainability; a second wave of operationalisation highlighting how these ground structures contain competing concerns and dilemmas. This paper nuances and further distinguishes social sustainability at the community level by combining insights from these two contributions to research. Community social sustainability appears as a continually emergent and contested phenomenon. How to address and reconcile competing concerns baked into social sustainability as a concept and a policy still is a burning issue for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a collaborative effort between academic researchers and practitioners to consider the conditions under which global benchmarking may be used as a tool for supporting urban transformation. Reflecting on WWF's One Planet City Challenge and UN-Habitat's Guiding Principles for City Climate Action Planning, the paper suggests that the practice of global benchmarking can be transformative through encouraging organisational learning and reflection, building relationships between cities and global and trans-local organisations, and governing for structurally transformative qualities. However, the practice of benchmarking is not without potential tensions: they may reify existing practices rather than reforming them, be less usable for or accessible to cities in lower income countries, and may neglect issues of climate justice, which are not easily reduced to comparative measures of success or failure. This suggests that a wholesale reliance on benchmarking as a mode of governing climate change might risk marginalising certain issues and amplifying others. We conclude by recommending improved material and technical support for urban data collection and suggest that benchmarking should be combined with a broader suite of performance indicators and reflective practices in order to support urban transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past five years, there have been growing calls for transformative responses to sustainability challenges, supported by increased transformative action in the pursuit of environmental justice. In parallel to this development within the policy arena, the concept of transformation and its potential is also attracting more attention within the research community. This paper uses the example of the Urban Natural Assests for Africa (UNA) programme to explore what transformative change might mean for cities and how this might be achieved through enacting just processes. It explores in some more detail different approaches to transformative change to explain how and why an enabling perspective on transformation is considered to be fruitful in developing the understanding of transformative capacity for change. The paper then explores how the programme was able to foster this capacity, with what consequences for the African cities and what it implies for the nature of change for urban social and environmental justice in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coordination of transportation and land use (also known as "smart growth") has been a long-standing goal for planning and engineering professionals, but to this day remains an elusive concept to realise. In response, this paper dialogues literature and practices related to transportation and land use coordination (TLC), as well as sustainability, livability, and equity (SLE), finding that a comprehensive approach is to focus on the equitable access people have to opportunities to improve their quality of life (namely jobs and housing) which, in turn, can provide a pathway to lower amounts of vehicle travel. The primary goals of this paper are to highlight institutional gaps between transport and land-use planning, evaluate existing frameworks, develop new frameworks, and discuss the development of a new tool. Specifically, this paper reviews various performance measure and place typology frameworks used by transportation agencies, with an aim to synthesise insights from various sources for application in professional practice and to frame the idea of a new tool, the Smart Mobility Calculator, to help agencies (MPOs, DOTs, and local land use authorities) coordinate and achieve a balance between transportation and land use. This paper concludes that effective planning and evaluation frameworks must: (1) help understand current conditions and future scenarios; (2) help create context-sensitive and inclusive processes; and (3) screen, prioritise, and mediate strategies in support of TLC in order to achieve sustainability, livability, and equity goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper foregrounds the use of "Living Labs" as instruments for the delivery of just low carbon transformations. Living Labs are commonly understood as stakeholder-centred, iterative and open-innovation ecosystems that involve multiple forms of co-creation and engagement among different actors in a given territory. Over a period of three years, thanks to a unique pan-European action research study, three such Labs were set up in different locations in Europe -- a large North-western European city (Manchester, England), a mid-sized mountainous town in South-eastern Europe (Metsovo, Greece) and a series of rural settlements in Central Europe (Nyírbátor, Hungary). Working closely with local residents and relevant organisational stakeholders, the research teams that led the Labs undertook multiple low-carbon interventions in the homes of low-income residents, while continuously monitoring the broader impacts of intermediation practices on energy equity and sustainability across three consecutive cycles of activity. We present and discuss the results of these activities, so as to uncover the impacts of Living Labs on energy poverty both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how the planning system is (not) functioning remains a challenge for many urban planners in the developing world. This paper responds by conducting an analysis of the discourse between national and local planners. It seeks to unfold the challenges of informal settlement planning in Accra, Ghana. Through in-depth interviews, this paper suggests that: (I) Grounding sustainability must be conducted by implementing the plans rather than producing the plans. (II) Empowering local planners should be a primary task to incrementally remedy the challenging planning system in countries like Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social justice and environmental sustainability are often joint policy objectives, however, achieving the dual goal of just sustainability has proved difficult in both theory and practice. Scholars argue that a key challenge is balancing trade-offs between sustainability and justice objectives. This is evident within government-led housing, where there is little consensus regarding how to balance the housing needs within the context of existing unsustainable and unjust urban forms, resource constraints and high inequality. This paper explores this conundrum by examining how different logics and motivations influence justice and sustainability outcomes of two government housing projects in Johannesburg, South Africa – Pennyville and Lufhereng. We apply the concept of conflicting rationalities [Watson, Vanessa. 2003. "Conflicting Rationalities: Implications for Planning Theory and Ethics." Planning Theory & Practice 4 (4): 395–407] within a new context, thereby extending the theory and understanding of planning in the face of tensions and trade-offs. Three themes are used to surface different rationalities that influence just sustainability: (1) the assumption that justice and sustainability can be achieved simultaneously within government-led housing, (2) how power, influence and coordination within government contribute to disjunctures between justice and sustainability, and (3) assumptions around infill versus urban expansion for achieving just sustainability. The paper reveals how institutional dynamics, politics and conflicting rationalities diverted each project from their envisioned outcomes. The results show that disconnects between theory and practice are not necessarily driven by conflicts between justice and sustainability, but rather obscured rationalities. Focusing on conflicts between justice and sustainability can deviate attention away from the practical, and sometimes mundane, processes that cumulatively undermine progress towards justice and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Living labs are promoted as an effective open innovation approach that accelerates the adoption of innovations. However, there remain knowledge gaps about factors that influence their effectiveness, success, and application to sustainability transitions. Through a scoping review on the evaluation of living labs, we identified 43 enablers and 37 barriers to effectiveness and success of living labs organised around the themes of governance, processes, features of living labs, characteristics of participants, adaptability, social dimensions, training and research, technology, and elements beyond the living lab (e.g. conditions for transition to the real world). Key enablers included strong collaborative and iterative processes with networks and partnerships, while key barriers included issues with supporting technology, the time and cost of collaboration, and challenges ensuring the longevity of living labs. We also reviewed study objectives, knowledge gaps, and future considerations to identify priorities for future research about living lab effectiveness and provide recommendations for their implementation. We recommend the development of frameworks for measuring and monitoring the success of living labs, and explore other considerations to promote their effectiveness based on the enablers and barriers identified. Lastly, we discuss how our findings on living lab effectiveness and success related to this special issue. This paper contributes to the body of research by our team (Beaudoin et al. 2022; Bronson, Devkota, and Nguyen 2021) that aims to explore living labs in the context of conservation, environmental, and agricultural sustainability to facilitate transformative social-ecological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops a methodological approach that acts as a tool for active change agents working in community and just transition contexts to increase their capacity to engage a wider public in planning. An innovative contribution is made to the literature through the development of a participatory action research (PAR) based approach to social network analysis using a participatory mapping method with relation to sustainable transitions. The method comprises a participatory network mapping approach, adapted from the Net-Map toolkit, which is applied to a multi-stakeholder approach to realising a regional sustainability transition in the Republic of Ireland. Dingle Peninsula 2030 is an initiative aiming to transition a geographic region in the South West of Ireland to a low-carbon society by 2030 across the sectors of energy, agriculture, transport, education, employment, marine and tourism. Due to the scope of the overall project, a diverse range of stakeholders are involved. The method developed is used to undertake a qualitative collaborative social network analysis. The paper focuses on method, by analysing and reflecting upon the use of this participatory approach, in the initial stages of the overall project, in addressing complex sustainability and just transition challenges as they are revealed through a multi-stakeholder approach. Within this, the themes of participatory justice, social learning and visualising complexity are explored; and benefits and future improvements are outlined through reflections from both the researcher and the participant community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks how the pandemic has affected climate governance, with a specific focus on just transition in cities. We respond to Westman and Castán Broto's (2021) challenge that three assumptions are frequently reproduced in the urban climate governance literature and ask: (1) Are social justice and environmental sustainability separated? (2) Does a sectoral perspective on cities constrain conceptions of climate justice? and (3) Is there action rather than just plans? We address these questions by studying three cities in the South West of England (Bristol, Bath, and Exeter) that have expressed aspirations for rapid and just transition to net zero. There are promising signs of climate action, although the pandemic slowed it down somewhat. Climate justice is not sufficiently embedded in plans or actions. Commitment to just transition is present but partial and often unspecified. Social justice and ecological sustainability are too often treated as separate goals, more likely to come into conflict with each other, than addressed jointly. Too much climate work in cities takes place in silos around energy and transport but separate from other sectors. There is a notable failure to engage with civil society for a just transition. We conclude that for cities to truly implement a just transition, better engagement with grassroots actors from across sectors and parts of society is necessary. The development of tools which support cities to analyse the complex interplay of distributional, recognitional, participatory and restorative aspects of justice could be an important part of delivering this change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social sustainability has increasingly become a goal for urban policy and planning, and for local and regional developmental strategies. Neighbourhoods are a common spatial scale for studying social sustainability and there is a growing focus on social sustainability in urban neighbourhoods for both researchers and policymakers. This paper is based on a qualitative case study of a neighbourhood defined by the municipality as at-risk of negative social development in a municipality in northern Sweden. The aim is to describe the perceived threats and promoters for social sustainable development in a neighbourhood defined as at-risk, and to analyse these in relation to a perspective of spatial scale. The study is based on data from interviews with municipal representatives, local professionals and residents, representing different experiences and perspectives in the neighbourhood. Four themes illustrating threats to socially sustainable development were identified: crime, unrest and unsafety; segregation and social exclusion; reputation and stigmatisation; and low involvement in municipal processes. The promoters for socially sustainable development identified in the respondents' stories reflect four themes: strong community spirit; safety and low criminality; lively civic society and well-functioning public services. Our results show that neighbourhood social sustainability cannot be studied or acted upon without being put in a context of spatial scale and an understanding that processes occurring at a particular scale only can be adequately understood when considered in relation to other scales, i.e. the development in the neighbourhood can only be understood in relation to the development in the city and at national level. There is also a need for an awareness of how different aspects of socially sustainable development relate to each other, by strengthening or counteracting each other. Key policy highlights There are no "magic bullet solutions" to ensure social sustainable development at the local level. Rather, actions and interventions must embrace complexity. The risk for counteracting processes must be acknowledged in any actions to promote social sustainability. Social sustainability processes occurring at a particular scale can only be adequately understood and addressed when considered in relation to other scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the discourses of urban politics around the decision-making processes and the implementation of two sustainability projects in Seoul – the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project and the Remaking Sewoon Project. Using an archival analysis, it investigates how the recent rapid socio-economic transformations in Korea have affected the discourses around the urban politics of sustainable policies in Seoul. "Green" has become a new paradigm for urban redevelopment in Korea since the early 2000s, and the research finds that the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) uses sustainability plans as a "sustainability fix" heavily focused on "pro-growth" development to win support for its restoration projects among citizens and for global approval. However, with increased democratization and the growing role of civic groups in urban politics, we see a move towards more just sustainability in urban sustainability planning in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assessed the extent to which local government authorities have mainstreamed climate change adaptation strategies in their development policies in selected districts in Ghana, using a qualitative case study design within the phenomenological epistemology. Forty-four respondents participated in this study from the decentralised departments of local authorities key informant interviews (KIIs) were used for data collection in the study areas. The study findings revealed that climate policy integration at the study districts was done as a compliance measure rather than a response to real needs of the districts. A gaping chasm therefore exists between stated and actual climate change-related goals. Lack of collaboration, weak coordination of sector plans and weak community and private sector engagement were identified as the causal factors of the gap between the rhetoric and reality of integrating climate change concerns into district development plans in the study areas. Further, competing local priorities on the district agenda, institutional capacity constraints and information and technological constraints were identified as major barriers for the local authorities in adaptation to climate change. It is concluded that although climate change and its related policies have been integrated into the various national development policies, climate policy integration remains a challenge at the district level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community resilience policies continue to grow in popularity as a strategy to prepare for the local impact of forecasted environmental uncertainty, however, criticisms of community resilience discourse remain. This paper takes forward these criticisms, specifically addressing the issue of representative power over key natural resources, using Gaventa's [Gaventa, J. 2006. "Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis." IDS Bulletin 37 (6): 23–33] power cube as a conceptual framework to examine power relations. Our objective is to advance current critical community resilience literature from acknowledging local power relations as a component of any community resilience strategy to situating the devolvement of representative power over key natural resources as a mandatory pre-requisite before any community can be considered "resilient". The paper adopts a case study approach and draws on a grassroots-led resilience project in the Scottish Highlands that utilises traditional land practices and local cultural history to educate people on land sustainability. We explore the potential of the project to construct deeper cultural and historical understandings of local environments and whether projects like these can serve an additional purpose of motivating people to pursue greater influence in land decisions. The analysis reveals emerging links between power, culture and land representation that could foster new forms of local resilience. However, perceptions of systemic barriers such as insecure land tenancies and democratic deficits stymied the potential of this raised motivation. As normative community resilience strategies continue to devolve responsibility over resources without devolving power, a new resilient settlement is required to confront an environmentally uncertain future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments are deemed not only useful, but necessary in sustainability transformation to enhance local decision-making. This is especially apparent in Finland where national government programmes and city administrations promote sustainability experimentation and bottom-up initiatives in the interest of equitable participation. At the same time, universities are expected to respond to societal calls for major infrastructural transformations, while neoliberal principles shift responsibility from authorities to individual citizens. This paper examines the case of a student-driven sustainable campus initiative called "Test Site" in a university committed formally to sustainability education. The students questioned whether sustainability should be taught in air-conditioned classrooms, what topics were socially just and worth pursuing, and rather sought material engagement, creative exploration and autonomy. Invested faculty members were dependent on demonstrations and proof of impact, or at least convincing visuals, to sustain the initiative. The outcome of experimenting most valued by the students however was the material-based social learning on how to self-organise. The meaning of such "minor" experiments thus becomes muddled, involving local, situated power dynamics among university management, faculty and students and what is regarded as useful space and activity for learning. The case illustrates how an experimental site partly removed from university constraints rendered explorations of self-organising participants as valuable yet depended on visible proofs to justify this very exploration as worthwhile. Even within a neoliberal and highly hierarchical governance structure, some participants are able to make small gains to pursue socially just solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faith communities are increasingly recognised as an important piece of civil society that can contribute to addressing difficult sustainability and environmental problems. This research investigates the environmental activities and engagement of faith leadership organisations in Canada, a region in which faith-based environmentalism has not been studied extensively. The paper traces the evolution of environmental engagement among a diverse, multi-faith group of communities, beginning with the entry into environmental work by some groups in the 1960s and 1970s. Over the years, some programmes have matured, others have faltered, programmes have adapted to address new environmental challenges, and new communities have entered into environmental discourse. The paper also analyses contemporary activities, which can be divided into formation activities, advocacy and activism, and practical actions. Formation activities, such as education and worship programmes, are the most common, and advocacy and activism are often the most contested form of engagement. These activities demonstrate a commitment to a holistic approach, to addressing underlying causes of environmental harm by transforming worldviews, and contributing to societal change through both practical actions and advocacy and activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically engages with the increasingly prevalent concept and practice of "urban experimentation" and associated transformations towards sustainability. Too often, the paper argues, urban experiments are assessed from a diffusion-oriented perspective which foregrounds questions of how to replicate lessons from (similar) experiments across (similar) places. This common perspective implies an over-emphasis of unifying visions and rationales at the expense of diverging interpretations of "sustainability"; a neglect of "unsuccessful" experiments and questions of persistence; and an over-focus on certain types of – "green" or "creative" – places while disregarding the emergence and characteristics of experiments in more ordinary urban geographies. To address these issues, the paper introduces a novel methodological approach, combining a metropolitan geodemographic typology with qualitative data on 166 active and inactive urban agriculture initiatives across London. Varying socio-spatial patterns of experimentation are discussed, illustrating how contextual differences at neighbourhood levels matter. The paper demonstrates that neglecting the diversity of urban socio-economic, demographic, and physical contexts may lead to the erroneous suggestion that only places privileged by certain demographics can "achieve" sustainability and points to the significance of experiments beyond narrow ideas of novelty and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, the Circular Economy (CE) has emerged as an important framing for business and policy action in support of sustainable development. In that time, there has been an explosion of academic publications, policy developments, and business activities related to the CE. Given that CE has been widely praised and adopted by policy think tanks, policy makers, and business, as a way to frame sustainable development, we think it is about time scholars from a critical sustainability perspective interrogate the CE framework from all three domains of sustainable development: economic prosperity, ecological integrity, and social well-being, with a particular focus on who wins and who loses in the CE. This double special issue of Local Environment helps to fill this long-overdue oversight with 14 papers that engage the Circular Economy both conceptually and through case study analyses. The aim of this special issue is two-fold – to expose diverse perspectives on the CE to Local Environment readers and to raise the awareness of justice considerations in CE discourse for a broader audience. It addresses the large knowledge gap in the literature by bringing together the work of scholars in different fields who are examining the role of justice and equity in the circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular economies are often framed as addressing a trio of problems: environmental degradation, economic stagnation, and social ills, broadly defined. Our paper centers on this last claim – that circular economies promise social benefits. There is a dearth of literature focused on the social dimensions of circular economies (Geissdoerfer, Martin, Paulo Savaget, Nancy M. P. Bocken, and Erik Jan Hultink. 2017. "The Circular Economy – A New Sustainability Paradigm?" Journal of Cleaner Production 143 (February): 757–768. doi:.), and even less attention to the meaning of social justice in the context of circular economies, let alone how it might be enacted in policy and practice. Drawing on data generated from focus groups with circular economy experts and a content analysis of US-based governmental, NGO, and business literature on circular economies, we explore whether and how justice emerges in circular economy discourse. We explore the narratives that these actors use to describe justice, and the barriers they see in achieving just and inclusive circular economies. We aim to identify the ways in which social justice is defined and discussed – or not – by the actors who seem to be most actively pushing for a circular economy (CE). Our work addresses the critical need to articulate clearly what it is we mean by social justice in relation to the CE. For if the CE is to contribute to sustainable social transformations, justice must be more than a buzzword – the CE must be just by design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing access to coastal and marine resources has long been a planning priority in many locations. At the same time, housing affordability and the lack of investment in lower-cost overnight accommodations in environmentally sensitive coastal areas have exasperated efforts to provide equitable access. While agencies have funded projects to help increase the supply of lower-cost overnight accommodations along the coast, including development of campgrounds, hostels and other facilities, the extent of need has not been quantified and other solutions are needed to preserve and increase supply of lower-cost accommodations along the coast. Further, the synergies between potential policies to address access to the coastal environment and those that promote local housing and transportation efficiency have not been investigated. Using the case of the California Coastal Commission/Conservancy, this paper quantifies the need for access studying the distribution of households at 80% of the median income level within 150 miles of the coast and finds that access to coastal lodging is limited. It hypothesises that broader housing, transportation and equity policies need to be brought into the dialogue to help address lower-cost accommodations in parallel with local environmental, housing and transport issues. Lastly, it offers recommendations and new construction opportunities for low-cost accommodation infrastructure in these kinds of environmentally sensitive areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities worldwide have embraced the idea of integrated stormwater management using more decentralised and green infrastructures to enhance urban sustainability. Los Angeles County has recently introduced a new stormwater tax that envisions achieving sustainable stormwater futures through far-reaching infrastructural change. While embracing such visions, however, different actors seek to use tax revenues for diverging infrastructure designs. Our paper therefore explores shifting stormwater politics in Los Angeles by highlighting the social relations underlying technology. Technical disputes that we frame as combinations of material artefacts, discourses, expertise and institutions provoke the specific "material politics" behind the emergence of a hybrid stormwater system in which centralised stormwater practices of incumbent public utilities predominate but increasingly co-exist with more decentralised landscape-centred practices and become interdependent on them. We argue that technical disputes reflect ambiguities about a future stormwater system and engender the renegotiation of responsibility, knowledge orders and the overall rationale of stormwater management. An inherited focus on controlling stormwater volumes thwarts attempts to couple stormwater and urban greening improvements more tightly. We conclude by emphasising that infrastructures are relational systems that carry many potential stormwater futures and by outlining ways to better align stormwater management with wider urban sustainability objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sharing of seeds is a practice with ancient roots. However, the structures of global agri-food trade in late modernity have drastically reconfigured practices of exchange and reshaped matters of legal ownership, resulting in constrained access to seeds for many. Scholars and activists are increasingly concerned about the negative impacts these changes are having from a justice and sustainability perspective. To date, seed sharing research has predominantly occurred as one element of wider seed sovereignty debates, and particularly in relation to farmers in low- and middle-income countries. Seed sharing beyond these contexts has received limited attention. To broaden understanding of seed sharing and its diverse practices, this paper provides a foundational landscape level analysis of urban community seed sharing initiatives from 100 urban locations globally. It outlines the rules, tools, skills and understandings that shape seed sharing practices and teases out commonalities with, and differences between, these urban activities and those that currently dominate the landscape of seed sharing research. In conclusion, further research is proposed to build on these foundations and establish the contributions, actual and potential, that urban seed sharing provides for just transitions to more sustainable urban food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crucial role of the informal economy in urban environmental management is yet to be acknowledged in policy-making. This paper explores the sustainability discourses that shape urban environmental policies, and how they relate to different conceptualisations of the informal economy. Focusing on Mexico City, this paper analyses the discourses of policy-makers and their reflection in the city's waste management plan. Results show reformist and radical discourses of sustainability are correlated with preferences as to the integration or exclusion of the informal economy in environmental policy. In addressing Mexico City's environmental challenges, policy-makers have embraced a reformist sustainability discourse that focuses on technological fixes to environmental degradation and promotes a techno-managerial mode of governing. This discourse is correlated with a view of the informal economy as a barrier to the sustainability transition, which leads to the exclusion of informal workers from the policy arena and renders invisible their working conditions and their contribution to urban life. The paper concludes that the reformist sustainability discourse obscures and reproduces environmental injustices – repoliticization of the sustainability discourses shaping urban environmental policies is necessary to achieve sustainability transitions that are also socially just. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the potentials and barriers to the realisation of a degrowth scenario in housing development in the Oslo region. The point of departure is a previously designed radical degrowth scenario, which depicts a future housing development that is both environmentally sustainable and socially just. Through a gaming session with housing stakeholders in the Oslo region, I investigated the elements hindering or facilitating the degrowth scenario. This paper analyses the results of the gaming session using morphogenetic theory, theory of political economy of environmental sustainability and critical urban theory. The results of the gaming session reveal important structural hindrances to the scenario within the current housing model, which directly depends on the socio-economic structures of capitalism. The article promotes a debate concerning housing for degrowth and a reflection on the deep socio-economic conditions for degrowth transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, gated communities have been associated with negative social, economic and environmental impacts that are not conducive to sustainable urban development. Eco-estates have been touted as the answer to these sustainability issues and are viewed as the new "green" gated communities. Nature is a key aspect of eco-estates as it promotes a back-to-nature narrative to homebuyers and promotes sustainable living. This paper investigates eco-estates in South Africa with a view to establish whether they really contribute to just sustainabilities, that is a nuanced framing of sustainable developmvnent that involves a focus on social and economic equity. The study posits that while green initiatives within eco-estates may play a part in sustainable development, they fall short of advancing a just sustainability. The inherent exclusionary nature of eco-estates perpetuates inequality as the access to sustainable living in eco-estates is premised on whether one can afford to buy into these estates. Just sustainabilities in eco-estates cannot be met unless interventions to widen the access to nature and sustainable living are implemented. Until then, eco-estates will remain islands of exclusion of nature and "green" living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers conceptual and operational insights for more effective and forward-looking local sustainability decision-making through the emerging concept and framework of holistic urban productivity. Following a short discussion of the contemporary understand and theoretical influences of urban sustainability, we explore the concept, principles, and practices of urban productivity and look at how they can help address urban sustainability planning, implementation, and assessment. We then introduce a conceptual framework for holistic urban productivity which encompasses a set of principles and goals to tackle complex urban processes for effective, inclusive, and forward-looking decision-making. It is informed by and converges numerous theories and approaches and seeks to act as an overarching framework to help operationalise sustainability by empowering urban actors to pursue balanced and synergistic optimisation of all urban community elements. A city that implements the principles and framework of holistic urban productivity embraces economic resilience with shifts in employment patterns and habits; innovative, socially just, and environmentally responsible technologies; compact and nature-enhancing land use planning; strong social connections and affordable housing; and green, light, and smart infrastructure. Urban productivity principles can help lead the transformation of cities into well-functioning and sustainable systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the production of Prairie Urban Farm, an urban agricultural initiative in the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta. Motivated by our involvement in the initiative and guided by a broader interest in the evolving meaning and politics of urban agriculture, the paper presents Prairie Urban Farm as a negotiated and emergent social space. Rather than limit understandings of the initiative to official representations and discourses, the analysis draws on interviews with regular volunteers as well as personal reflections to emphasise everyday urban agriculture – those practices, understandings, and motivations often subsumed under official framings or tropes that together characterise the everyday, lived aspects of urban agriculture. The paper pursues tensions between Prairie Urban Farm understood as a sustainability and food security initiative and more ambivalent understandings. We ask, is Prairie Urban Farm, officially presented as an urban agriculture and food security project, not simply a community garden by another name? Obscuring these boundaries through a detailed ethnographic and qualitative analysis, we make an argument for finding value in urban agriculture beyond discursive tropes and in relation to the reflexive possibilities engendered within a view of gardening as epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast food seems unequivocally at odds with any moves towards more sustainable food consumption. It is identified as a major contributor to obesity, health inequalities, and to environmental impacts through its production and distribution. However, this problematisation of fast food ignores its contribution to understandings of "living well", particularly for young people. This paper draws on data from an international project which explores how young people understand what makes for living well in cities. We focus on research with young people in Lambeth, London, exploring the role of food – specifically fast food practices – in their constructions of living well. Drawing on focus group interviews and photo diaries with young people aged 12–24, we highlight the enthusiasm inherent in discussions of fast food whereby it is constructed as easily accessible, inexpensive and attractive, whilst affording young people a degree of autonomy and agency. Fast food outlets are regarded as friendly, convenient, and safe social spaces, in a context where austerity cuts have reduced access to spaces specifically for young people. Further, consumption of fast food facilitates and legitimises young people's use of local streets and green spaces. Thus practices of fast food consumption might be understood to contribute to the ability to "live well" from the perspective of young residents. Making fast food less accessible to young people may be part of obesity and sustainable food strategies, but a broader wellbeing strategy is needed which is informed by understanding the valued social practices fast food currently affords young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban development has been one of the advanced world's most significant characteristics. Within many parts of the world, economic growth, technological innovations, and socio-cultural change are visible attributes. Nonetheless, Ghana and many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa has been faced with limitations rendering cities and urban areas incapable to perform effectively in the national development agenda. Measures implemented to achieve proper urban planning and sustainability are considered to be those that can offer long-lasting solution and balance environmental benefits with socioeconomic growth. All things being equal, there is an expectation of little or no flaws for urban sustainability, yet findings from previous studies indicate recurring environmental challenges in urban Ghana with a hike in the depletion of natural resources. This paper evaluates the efficiency of the "reactive" measures used to tackle urban environmental challenges in Ghana and advocates for the adoption of "proactive" measures after a meticulous review of literature. With the study findings suggesting inefficiencies and unsuitability in the "reactive" measures, the end goal is for the building of stronger institutions and enhancing environmental governance for better urban growth in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning policies in Europe and elsewhere increasingly promote urban densification as the spatial planning solution for achieving urban sustainability goals. However, examples from several cities have shown the complexity, in practice, of translating densification's potentials for creating environmentally, socially and economically sustainable compact cities. Although extensive research is already available on the sustainability dimensions of densification, the social dimension has, in general, been under-researched. Specifically, spatial associations between densification and its potential social impacts have received little attention. This paper aims at contributing to filling this gap. The aim is twofold: first, I analyse overlapping spatial patterns of densification and housing accessibility, which I consider to be an indicator of social sustainability; second, I explore mechanisms that may hinder the possibility of combining urban densification with an inclusive housing offer. The findings are based on a mixed-method approach, consisting of a quantitative assessment of housing accessibility and a spatial and policy analysis of urban densification. Using Oslo as a case study, I argue that, in a context where the market rules the planning system and housing policies, densification may eventually compound market logics and exacerbate social exclusion dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste management and recycling need to be more inclusive, integrating informal agents such as Waste Pickers. In many Global South countries, Waste Pickers' Organisations (WPOs) have their work recognised at country levels. Despite Brazilian policies' achievements, WPOs have faced many challenges, one being their financial sustainability. This paper presents a financial diagnosis and analysis of the solidary and inclusive selective collection in a Brazilian city that supports a WPO since 2010. The SoCo Tool allows to quantify and understand the impacts and benefits of selective collection. Results show an operational cost of US$ 47.00/tonne performed by the WPO or US$ 20.632,80 (2016), meaning a 37% cost reduction for the local authority. ACLAMA is a small, but efficient WPO, with a high average productivity per worker and a low rejects rate compared to other case studies. Concerning occupational health, results showed that these aspects could be improved, as well as social benefits for the workers of ACLAMA. We raise the discussion that surviving on materials' sales are not enough and a greater financial participation from the municipality and producers in the form of payment for urban cleaning services could help to bear costs for these social benefits and other operational improvements, such as more investments in sorting machinery and equipment. Municipal waste management with the inclusion of organisations of waste pickers presents a real possibility for achieving productive cooperated organisation, income generation for several families, environmental gains to reach a more humane and sustainable society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital tools for performance-assessment are commonly used to shorten the feedback loop in testing designs for buildings and neighbourhoods. However, these tools do not extend to the social dimension in the same way as the economic and environmental dimensions. This paper aims to contribute to the development of digital tools to design socially sustainable neighbourhoods. We analyse 115 academic articles to establish a theoretical understanding of Social Sustainability (SoSu). Based on these results, we propose a digital user-interaction model to operationalise SoSu in the digital design process of buildings. In the literature, we observe a lack of consensus on the theoretical discussion on SoSu. Several extrinsic and intrinsic factors are identified contributing to this fuzziness; the dependency on stakeholder value systems, the qualitative nature of social indicators, and comparison to environmental sustainability being the most common. Still, we distinguish two overarching categories, social equity and social capital, that are further divided into sub-themes. Having mapped the categories and hierarchies of social themes, we propose a user-interaction model that incorporates these findings into a digital environment. The user-interaction model creates a guided decision-making framework for architects and urban planners by enabling stakeholders to make conscious and informed decisions grounded in theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Justice dimensions are integral to research on climate change planning in cities. In this comment piece, we engage with a recently published paper by Hess and McKane [2021. "Making Sustainability Plans More Equitable: An Analysis of 50 US Cities." Local Environment, 1–16], which examines the integration of equity considerations into sustainability plans in cities in the US. By reflecting on this article, we draw attention to three assumptions that permeate the literature on justice and climate planning in cities. These include: the separation between social and environmental aspirations, viewing the city from a sectoral perspective, and the focus on plans and objectives rather than on actions. We argue that the scholarship needs to move beyond these three assumptions to tackle structural conditions of injustice in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the Global South, community-based adaptation (CBA) projects are increasingly being implemented in an effort to respond effectively and sustainably to the impacts of climate change, with a particular focus on people's livelihoods. Despite an increase in the number of CBA projects being implemented, detailed analysis and evaluation of their efficacy and the barriers faced in achieving successful outcomes is lacking. This study draws on an analysis of grey literature (i.e. project and donor reports) to explore the barriers faced in achieving effective CBA. An extensive global search of online project evaluations yielded 25 documents comprising 69 projects from which this analysis is based. This paper first presents an overview of the 69 projects and highlights any trends. Second, this paper describes the barriers to CBA according to three broad themes: socio-political, resource, and physical systems and processes. Following this is a discussion of the most prevalent barriers: cognitive and behavioural, financial, and human resources. Third, this paper discusses the key findings elucidated from this review. This includes the need for greater sharing of project reports and findings so lessons can be learned across spatial and temporal scales, and the disparity between critical academic literature on CBA and what is implemented in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of the local food movement point to its environmental, economic, and social benefits, yet there is little research on the extent to which particular local food projects live up to these promises. Vermont leads the country in farm stands, direct-to-consumer sales, and farmers' markets per capita and the town of Hardwick, Vermont has received substantial media attention for its growing economy based on new food and agriculture businesses, including being the subject of a book entitled The Town that Food Saved. Using interviews with local food participants and analysis of US Census data, the paper assesses the impact of the local food economy in Hardwick using environmental, economic, and social outcomes. The paper also examines how the agricultural renaissance there has been accepted, resisted, and shaped by local actors. Using Census data, the paper finds that between 2000 and 2016, the unemployment rate in Hardwick remained steady, mean incomes increased, and 296 new jobs have been retained. In addition, the percentage of families in Hardwick with income below the poverty level decreased between 2000 and 2016, and the percentage of families accessing supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) benefits increased. The paper also finds that many participants in the Hardwick food economy have concerns about the accessibility, affordability, and inclusivity of the newer food-based projects there. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which Hardwick fulfils some of the hopes and concerns of the local food movement, and the potential for place-based agricultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, local communities often enact Community-Based Initiatives (CBIs) to respond to climate change through Climate Change Adaptation (CCA). CBIs can also be integrated into the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) agenda. The paper explores the extent to which CBIs promote the mainstreaming of CCA into DRR. Primary data were obtained from interviews with representatives of CBIs and supporting organisations in three local governments of the Hunter Valley (New South Wales, Australia). Findings show that CBIs recognise the potential contribution of climate change in modifying the local hazard profile. CBIs mainstream CCA into DRR by following four approaches: environmental and social justice; sustainability and transition; ecosystem-based approach; and adaptive planning. Partnerships were identified both among CBIs and between CBIs and City Councils; however, conflicts between CBIs, City Councils and business actors emerged, and a lack of commitment by multi-level governments in responding to climate change was revealed. The findings show that CBIs consider CCA and DRR within a broad everyday context related to vulnerability and local development. But we argue that assigning responsibility for climate change issues to CBIs is not a panacea and should not be the only local climate change response. Instead, CBIs need to be included in a larger and long-term commitment by actors that possess access to resources, such as higher levels of government. The paper provides a local Australian perspective on the effectiveness of mainstreaming CCA into DRR and furthers the conversation for the benefit of other communities facing similar challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increased attention to alternative food efforts as individuals and groups seek to build stronger local food infrastructures to increase accessibility, transparency, and fairness with how food is grown, produced, and distributed. In considering individuals and families contending with food injustices and insecurities; concerns and questions have surfaced about what it means to privilege the leadership and participation of these communities in alternative food efforts. While there are no linear answers to these questions, this paper explores how one statewide food network in the United States seeks to involve youth contending with the juvenile justice system in a job readiness programme, Youth Kitchen, that interfaces the youth with farmers, chef educators, community organisations, and farmers markets. This paper contends that integrating alternative food and juvenile justice work is a complex terrain that both advances social justice and reproduces existing power asymmetries within alternative food networks. The inclusion of accounts from multiple stakeholders in the local food and juvenile justice system generates a multilayered view that moves away from an either sustainability or social justice rubric to a more process-oriented lens that reveals the strategic dilemmas that alternative food networks encounter. On the one hand, the social landscape of this programme promotes an ethic of care and shared ownership between the staff and participating youth. At the same time, akin to many alternative food networks, neoliberal interests bump against this ethic of care and white privilege seeps into staffing patterns and everyday programmes in ways that reproduce the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines self-provisioning and homemade food practices as examples of socially inclusive forms of sustainability that have potential to contribute to the principles of food justice. While homemade food practices in Bulgaria resemble the philosophies of transnational alternative food movements such as Slow Food and the organics, these should not be viewed as a purposeful challenge to increasingly industrialised globalised markets. Rather, I suggest that homemade food in Bulgaria is an alternative to alternative food through its “quiet opposition” to neoliberal policies and post-socialist reforms, perceived as unjust by the majority of Bulgarian citizens. Moral support for elderly people and village dwellers, suffering most from discriminatory policies, growing economic inequalities and widening food gaps, is expressed through preferences for the natural taste of homemade foods circulated through informal networks. Whilst the transformative potential of self-provisioning practices as more democratic and socially inclusive forms of sustainability exists, however, it is also important to address the most serious threats to achieving food justice in Bulgaria: growing polarisation between villagers and urban-based policy makers, lack of recognition and stimuli for subsistence farming, and deprivation of access to space and resources for farming and food growing. Through an empirical focus on yogurt this paper demonstrates that food justice issues in Bulgaria do not just relate to the food sustainability in terms of human rights, “fairer” relations of production, environmental conservation and animal well-being, but also to the sustainability of families, communities, national traditions and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scale and intensity of bushfire activity in Australia is likely to increase as a result of climate change. Effective bushfire management policy measures are therefore essential to minimise the interrelated social, environmental and economic impacts of fire in the landscape. This paper presents a historical review of bushfire management in the South West of Australia (SW): a bushfire prone and biodiverse region. Using a worldview framework to analyse key policy documents and literature, the paper demonstrates that the evolution of complex policy sectors such as bushfire management, is influenced not only by scientific and technical developments but also as a result of changing worldviews. Adapting the Integrative Worldview Framework (IWF), seven worldview categories that dominated particular periods of history in Australia are presented. These worldview categories are then used to examine the evolution of bushfire management practice, policy and institutional arrangements relevant to the SW. The argument presented herein is that a better understanding of worldviews and how they influence complex and contentious policy fields such as bushfire management, is useful for policy analysis, reflexive practice and research. The paper suggests an integrative worldview approach, which enables opportunities for exchanges and constructive conflict between stakeholders and agencies with diverse worldviews, could contribute to creating more sustainable bushfire management. Finally, it is argued that opportunities for Indigenous and Western worldview exchanges in the bushfire management sector, through collaborative knowledge partnerships could assist the sector in both management practice and policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change communication to the Public is in general presented in a negative fashion and often depicts the resultant costs and impacts as distant. Its substantial gloom together with the less immediate consequences significantly weaken responses. Narratives and stories are potent arbiters of meaningful communication and are an important vehicle for communication in our information-rich lives. Importantly, they reduce jargon, gather and translate information, provide insight, reframe evidence and engage audiences. It has been argued by many observers that stories are potentially useful in driving change; presenting a way to value what is gone, expressing emotions, and helping us assert our determination to salvage something and work towards the future. This paper details the methods utilised by the authors to generate stories and case studies in a community in Ireland over a 4-year research period. The aim of the work was to identify and assess the salience and potency of storytelling - as part of a “co-creation” process - with regard to galvanising local action in the generation of sustainable models of lifestyle practice for residents. In this paper, co-creation includes the planning phase of co-design and the implementation phase of co-production. The demonstration of these sustainable lifestyle practices was a strong driver for the sustainable transition of this community supporting the reduction of its ecological footprint by 28% over 4 years, evidence of which is highlighted in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing interest in the active involvement of local stakeholders in the management of floods in Europe. Such involvement is seen as necessary as the management of floods becomes more complex. Management approaches now seek to include a range of potential measures to reduce risk (e.g. structural defence, spatial planning and property-level protection measures). Local stakeholder involvement is seen to be important because governments lack the capacities such as knowledge and funding required to deliver all these measures alone. This paper focuses on the implications that more participative approaches have on the fairness of European flood risk management (FRM). Studies of environmental justice are well placed to address this question because they are interested in who is included and excluded from decisions related to the distribution of environmental goods (resources) and bads (risks). Existing literature suggests that fair decision-making processes (procedural justice) can lead to fair distribution or resources and risks (distributive justice). This literature review of 30 peer-reviewed papers provides an analysis of justice and FRM by assessing practices of participation which are presented in the recent literature on local stakeholder involvement in FRM in England, Germany and the Netherlands. It was found that participation in practice generally focuses on transferring responsibility to the local level at the expense of power. This paper discusses the implications that this finding has for justice and synthesises potential ways forward based on recommendations of the reviewed literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of polyphony, this paper theorises polyphonic environmental planning processes. It argues that Bakhtin's vision of polyphony reveals new insights about the nature of inclusive and transformative environmental planning processes that align and contrast with existing traditions of participatory planning. The polyphonic environmental planning processes are theorised as having two criteria: difference and relationship. The conditions needed to satisfy these criteria are explained through procedural and recognition justice accounts. The paper intervenes in the ongoing scholarly discussion about the ethical base of contemporary planning theories by suggesting that the polyphonic construction of environmental planning processes will have implications on the form and content of these processes. In terms of the form, the polyphonic environmental planning processes imply the creation of an inclusive, dialogical space. In terms of the content, recognising the intrinsic value of otherness will alter the self–other relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on a review of the methodological approaches associated with solid waste management (SWM) in the context of sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities. Using Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as a case study, the paper proposes a new way of looking at solid waste in the bid to come up with alternative methods to improve the plight of SWM. A combination of qualitative research methods and system analysis have been employed to evaluate the causal relationships observed in contemporary SWM systems in Kinshasa. This paper argues that there is an absence of coherent and broad-based approaches to SWM in Kinshasa as is common in other SSA countries. Empirical evidence suggests that contemporary SWM strategies and approaches developed on a global scale which have increasingly been adopted by the Congolese national and local government authorities have proven inadequate to address the SWM realities on a local level. Using system thinking and system dynamics, this paper attempts to develop a feasible methodological framework focusing on the formulation of an appropriate approach to improve SWM in Kinshasa. It is argued that new ways of approaching the complexity that exists in SWM will facilitate the adoption of technologies and innovative ways of thinking and managing solid waste in a more sustainable, socially, and environmentally accepted manner. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global dimensions of climate change necessitate a response that takes national differences – social, economic, geographic, and cultural – into account. Action-oriented education has a key role to play in advancing citizen engagement in a culture of sustainability. This paper describes research conducted with one such education programme, Youth Leading Environmental Change (YLEC), which operates in six countries and engages university-aged youth in discussion and practice related to global sustainability, systems thinking, and environmental justice. YLEC aims to advance four key competencies; this paper focuses on the goal of action competence, which involves acquiring knowledge, reflecting on experience in the context of one’s values, envisioning alternative futures, and acting individually and collectively to advance those alternatives. The present article examines the impacts of YLEC on environmental action competence in two of the countries involved in this research: Uganda and Germany. In-depth interviews were conducted with participants in both countries to examine the development of action competence during and after the programme. Findings suggest that outcomes differed in each country, reflective of participants’ different lived experiences. YLEC effectively built on the conditions faced in each country to accompany youth to a higher level of awareness and action. These findings have implications for environmental education programmes striving to work with multiple nations and diverse participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]