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Denmark has long been known as a pioneer in renewable energy technology development. Apart from technological leadership, Denmark has also been the home to many community-based renewable energy initiatives. Citizen involvement in local energy projects has been key to increasing and maintaining acceptance to wind, solar and biomass. Three Danish islands (Bornholm, Samsø and Ærø) have been particularly active in promoting renewables. All three have claimed the title “energy island” and two of them have established specific institutions to promote further RE projects. In this article, we investigate community energy projects on two of the islands (Samsø and Ærø) through an Energy Democracy lens. The purpose of this investigation is to understand how the development on these islands relate to the concept of Energy Democracy: we outline how democratic processes and institutions shape the development of the local infrastructure and how this development, in turn, shaped local democracy. We found that many of the features of Energy Democracy were present in the two cases. Our research highlights a number of shortcomings of the concept of energy democracy, most importantly, a certain disregard for questions of energy justice and a blindness towards questions of scale.

This article investigates the political attempts to frame European climate politics and provides a critical discourse analysis of the European Green Deal. A rapid transition towards low-carbon development across the world has been contested by discourses aiming to acknowledge the inseparability of social and ecological issues. These discussions are fairly new in the European context and in 2019, the European Commission presented its Communication on the European Green Deal—the European Union’s legislative roadmap to carbon neutrality by 2050. Empirical evidence for this article is derived from process tracing and policy analysis of the European Commission’s documents on the European Green Deal in relation to existing Green New Deals. Drawing from a neo-Gramscian perspective we argue that the European Green Deal is an attempt to extend the neoliberal hegemonic formation within European climate politics. This results in the foreclosure of democratic channels for articulating climate politics according to dissenting discourses, thereby avoiding the political contestation inherent to climate politics.

This paper investigates the Yellow Vests movement and the extent it constitutes an original platform for resistance to a sustainability transition agenda in the French context. The movement represents a disruption to global climate mitigation solutions that are often formalized at a global scale, and illustrates cultural and economic constraints in providing social justice in the age of climate change. Using a cultural performative approach, this case study reveals the relevance of framing and cultural analyses to understand such resistance. This qualitative exploration initiates a narrative analysis to assess how the universal resolve of the 2015 Paris Conference and the related legitimacy of the sustainability discourse has been further contested by the Yellow Vests and their fractured framing. From the ‘end of the world’ to the ‘end of the month’, we investigate the rise and fall of the legitimacy of the French sustainability discourse by analysing politicians’ and activists’ speeches, historical narratives as well as visual materials of resistance in France in the context of sustainability transitions. Tip of a broader social crisis, the movement reveals an original conflict of temporalities, symptomatic of the inevitable interdependency of socio-economic inequalities to sustainability transitions. Beyond the resistance itself, the Yellow Vests embody an original exemplar for the importance of cultural appropriation within the sustainability discourse’ legitimation processes.

While there is much debate on transformative change among academics and policymakers, the discussion on how to govern such change is still in its infancy. This article argues that transformative governance is needed to enable the transformative change necessary for achieving global sustainability goals. Based on a literature review, the article unpacks this concept of transformative governance. It is: integrative, to ensure local solutions also have sustainable impacts elsewhere (across scales, places, issues and sectors); inclusive, to empower those whose interests are currently not being met and represent values embodying transformative change for sustainability; adaptive, enabling learning, experimentation, and reflexivity, to cope with the complexity of transformative change; and pluralist, recognizing different knowledge systems. We argue that only when these four governance approaches are: implemented in conjunction; operationalized in a specific manner; and focused on addressing the indirect drivers underlying sustainability issues, governance becomes transformative.

Degrowth scholarship argues for multi-scalar transformations beyond the growth-oriented economic paradigm to achieve long-term socio-ecological sustainability. While the literature on degrowth has grown substantially, little has been said about how these transformations are understood in practice. By drawing upon practice theory and using performative methods, this paper explores the ways in which degrowth scholars and practitioners experience and understand degrowth. It provides a preliminary account of living degrowth by portraying a diverse range of interrelated practices grouped in five spheres: (1) rethinking society, (2) acting political, (3) creating alternatives, (4) fostering connections, and (5) unveiling the self. Drawing upon the spheres of practices, we conceptualize living degrowth as an endeavour that aims to transform current problems into imagined futures in multiple realms. The practices of living degrowth are concerned with theoretical, political, material, economical, social and personal dimensions of world and life. This points to the importance for sustainability science to investigate and foster transformations in all domains and at all levels, reaching from the outer to the inner and vice versa.

This study takes its departure from literature on the far-reaching engagements from civil society during the 2015 “refugee crisis” in Europe as it seeks to understand the status of collaborative governance at the local level. It takes an in-depth look of Malmö, a city in Sweden which in 2015 became the centre for the Swedish refugee reception and solidarity initiatives. The study identifies challenges and opportunities of horizontal collaborations to develop the social dimension of city resilience. It includes eleven interviews with key actors from the civil society sector as well as from the municipality and utilizes theory on solidarities in the “refugee crisis” together with social cohesion and inclusion as a framework for analyzing data. This allows for a comprehensive appraisal of the (spatially produced) responses to migration from the city’s horizontal alliances. The findings suggest that there are diverse conclusions to be made about the long-term potential of horizontal collaborations in bringing about social resilience. On the one side it is discovered that short-term project collaborations may only serve to “fill the gap” left by neo-liberal local governments and not bring about the structural change needed. On the other side, it is found that horizontal collaborations can be a strategy for civil society actors to influence more inclusive alternatives by bringing the realities of refugees into local policy making, particularly those refugees otherwise rendered invisible due to legal categorizations. Lastly, there are suggestions made for how to enhance the opportunities of horizontal collaborations in creating a socially cohesive, inclusive and resilient city.

Distributive justice broadly concerns how benefits and burdens ought to be distributed among a set of groups or individuals as a matter of right and entitlement (Ip 2017). According to the distributive paradigm of justice (Miller 1999; Rawls 1999), the subject of justice is the very basic structure of the society, which defines how we distribute various rights, goods, and liberties, as well as how we regulate social and economic equality or inequality (Schlosberg 2007).

This article aims to produce an analysis of the politicization of the citizens after Spain’s Indignados movement from a citizenship framework. The article suggests that claiming the right to the ci...

The global extraction of minerals is commonly located in areas populated by indigenous people; and while conflicts between multinational corporations and local activists and indigenous people are widespread today, the understanding of their dynamics are lacking. The Swedish government’s encouragement to an expanding mining industry has caused resistance due to environmental and social implications, particularly its effect on Sami reindeer husbandry. The resistance to a mine in Gallok is based on the belief that the right to decide about land use historically falls on the Sami people, and the right to affect land use is detrimental for the survival of Sami culture and reindeer husbandry. Although the conflict may be perceived as concerning access to natural resources, we argue that the perceived environmental conflict can be viewed as part of a larger struggle over social status and recognition. Data have been collected using qualitative methods such as observations, interviews and documents. The subsequent analysis relies on a meta-theoretical framework of justice as recognition using a typology of relations of power. Our findings suggest that relations of power constitute different categories of social actors. Stakeholders like the Sami population are subordinated to more dominant stakeholders such as the government, the company and media, who have ‘more’ power or ‘different’ kinds of power ‘over’ others. Through these asymmetric power relations, historical state-Sami relations are continuously reproduced within prevailing institutions, and also in this mining conflict. Interviewees from business and the municipality testified to the discourses driven by a neoliberal and profit-focused worldview. Challenging the neoliberal discourse, other stakeholders, namely civil society and Sami, expressed an alternative discourse based on a local, traditional, cultural, environmental and anti-neoliberal worldview.

The energy justice framework serves as an important decision-making tool in order to understand how different principles of justice can inform energy systems and policies. The realization of the urgency of providing modern energy technology and services particularly to rural areas has prompted both the Nepalese government and development institutions to focus on community-run renewable energy facilities. It is argued that off-grid and micro-scale energy development offers an alternative path to fossil-fuel use and top-down resource management as they democratize the grid and increase marginalized communities' access to renewable energy, education and health care. However, Nepal's energy development is also heavily influenced by demands from the fast-growing economies of neighboring countries such as China and India. As a result, this article evaluates the Nepalese national energy policies by applying the key aspects of the energy justice framework and showing the feasibility constraints due to geopolitical and biophysical factors to the implementation of energy just policies in this developing country context. The empirical evidence is derived from interviews during a one-month fieldwork in the Lalitpur and Katmandu districts of Nepal, site-visits, discourse analysis of expert statements, government policies and newspaper articles as well literature review on peer-review articles.

The Copenhagen Food Coop (CFC) is an alternative food community in Copenhagen that provides locally grown organic vegetables and fruits to its members. It also disseminates knowledge on organic and sustainable food production, distribution, and consumption and aims to develop a participatory and inclusive community organisation. Some scholars see such alternative food networks as having great potential for creating environmentally and economically sustainable societies, while others see them as a way of ‘de-politicising’ the local. We intervene in this debate, using in particular Bang’s distinction between mode 1 (traditional) and mode 2 politics (network politics) and an actor-network methodology. We find that rather than being ‘apolitical’, CFC is ‘double political’ in the sense that members are involved in mode 1 as well as mode 2 politics. So, vegetables are indeed political. However, they need not be. For some stakeholders the story of the CFC is synonymous with community or health, which implies that the organisation is non-political. However, we have chosen to tell the story of CFC as a political topos, a story that allows us to demonstrate not only the political, but also some of the organisation’s economic, cultural, and discursive traces. (Less)

Contrary to what practice suggests, social media platforms may not be an appropriate forum for communicating with civil society about sustainability issues such as climate change. Misinformation campaigns are distorting the line between fact and falsity on social media platforms, and there has been a profound shift in the way that social media users consume and interact with information. These conditions have been popularly labeled as the post-truth era. Drawing from Neo-Marxian theory, we argue that post-truth can be explained as a new iteration of ideological struggle under capitalist hegemony. We substantiate this claim through a mixed methods investigation synthesizing corpus-assisted lexical analysis and critical discourse analysis to evaluate 900 user-generated comments taken from three articles on socioenvironmental topics published on Facebook by news organizations in the United States. The results showed that the nature of this struggle is tied explicitly to the role of science in society, where the legitimacy of science is caught in a tug-of-war of values between elitism on the one hand and a rejection of the establishment on the other. It follows that presenting truthful information in place of false information is an insufficient means of coping with post-truth. We conclude by problematizing the notion that Facebook is an adequate forum for public dialogue and advocate for a change in strategy from those wishing to communicate scientific information in the public sphere.

The transition from a fossil fuel-based energy system to a renewable one has emerged as a priority for many governments. This, in turn, has facilitated a rapid increase in renewable energy investments. However, this development raises important questions about the sustainability of energy governance when it comes to access and control of energy, public participation and transparency. In this article, decentralized renewable energy production is presented as one of the pathways towards more participation in sustainable energy development. Community renewable energy projects help to enable communities to act as citizens, rather than consumers. In this article, we aim to understand the interactions between community renewable energy transition and collective practices of citizenship. We investigate collective practices in energy development within the ecological citizenship framework by addressing the extent to which each community’s energy project displays the characteristics of ecological citizenship, in t...

Nature is perceived and valued in starkly different and oftenconflicting ways. This paper presents the rationale for theinclusive valuation of nature's contributions to people (NCP) indecision making, as well as broad methodological steps fordoing so. While developed within the context of theIntergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this approach is more widely applicable toinitiatives at the knowledge?policy interface, which require apluralistic approach to recognizing the diversity of values. Weargue that transformative practices aiming at sustainablefutures would benefit from embracing such diversity, which require recognizing and addressing power relationships across stake holder groups that hold different values on human nature relations and NCP Fil: Pascual, Unai. University Of Cambridge; Reino Unido Fil: Balvanera, Patricia. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Pataki, György. Corvinus University of Budapest; Hungría Fil: Roth, Eva. University of Southern Denmark; Dinamarca Fil: Stenseke, Marie. University Goteborg; Suecia Fil: Watson, Robert T.. University of East Anglia; Reino Unido Fil: Basak Dessane, Esra. Project House; Turquía Fil: Islar, Mine. Lund University; Suecia Fil: Kelemen, Eszter. Environmental Social Science Research Group; Hungría Fil: Maris, Virginie. Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive; Francia Fil: Quaas, Martin. Kiel University; Alemania Fil: Subramanian, Suneetha M. United Nations University; Japón Fil: Wittmer, Heidi. Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research; Alemania Fil: Adlan, Asia. University of Khartoum; Sudán Fil: Ahn, SoEun. Korea Environment Institute; Corea del Sur Fil: Al-Hafedh, Yousef S. King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology; Arabia Saudita Fil: Amankwah, Edward. Center for Environmental Governance; Ghana Fil: Berry, Pam. University of Washington; Estados Unidos Fil: Bilgin, Adem. University of Oxford; Reino Unido Fil: Breslow, Sara J. Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs of Turkey; Turquía Fil: Bullock, Craig. University College Dublin; Reino Unido Fil: Caceres, Daniel Mario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural; Argentina Fil: Daly-Hassen, Hamed. University of Carthage; Túnez Fil: Figueroa, Eugenio. Universidad de Chile; Chile Fil: van den Belt, Marjan. Victoria University of Wellington; Nueva Zelanda Fil: Verma, Madhu. Indian Institute of Forest Management; India Fil: Wickson, Fern. GenØk Centre for Biosafety, Siva innovasjonssenter; Noruega Fil: Yagi, Noboyuki. The University of Tokyo; Japón

This paper inquires into privatisation of water use rights for energy production. It is argued that contemporary struggles over rivers in Turkey are not only about conflicts of interest, but also reflect a discursive struggle of recognition. On the one hand, discourses associated with modernisation and neoliberalism construct the rivers as governable resources in ways that are normalised through legal and political practices. On the other hand, alternative framings of rivers are promoted by resistance movements that strive to challenge these hegemonic and power-laden representations of the rivers that dominate formal legal, political, and institutional frameworks. By framing water as a hybrid resource incorporating social, discursive, and physical relations, this article deals with the question of how rivers have become sites of contestation, in which various actors struggle for their representations, and thereby recognition.

We explore the emergence of two contemporary mega water projects in Turkey that are designed to meet the demands of the country's major urban centers. Moreover, we analyze how policy makers in the water sector frame problems and solutions. We argue that these projects represent a tendency to depoliticize water management and steer away from controversial issues of water allocation by emphasizing large-scale, centralized, technical, and supply-oriented solutions. In doing so, urgent concerns are ignored regarding unsustainable water use, impacts on rural livelihoods, and institutional shortcomings in the water sector. These aspirations build heavily on prevailing discourses of modernity, development, and economic growth, and how urban centers are perceived as drivers of this growth. In the light of these tendencies, social and environmental implications are downplayed, even though the projects will change or already have changed the dynamics within urban-rural life and agricultural water resources practices. We develop an understanding of how such projects are presented as the only solution to problems of water scarcity in Turkey. (Less)

This piece analyses some of the recent environmental governance changes in Turkey that could be described as neoliberal: privatization of watercourses, decentralization of water user associations (WUAs), and increasing use of market instruments, such as full cost recovery and privatization of urban water. In line with debates on variegation and neoliberalism (Brenner, Peck, and Theodore 2010), we argue that there are key historical traces and contextual factors that make the contemporary situation in Turkey unique and interesting with respect to broader debates on neoliberal environmental governance. Neoliberal practices and policies build on, accentuate, and articulate with these historical and contextual specificities. Historically, there are key connections to Ottoman policies and legacies, situating current pollcies as a disjointed continuation of some earlier and longer-term efforts (even as in other ways, contemporary policies also represent a sharp break from earlier policies and norms). The European Union accession process, recent economic crises, and the recent politics associated with the Islamic AK party all similarly bear a clear imprint on the pathways and effects of neoliberal environmental governance practices in this context. Our aim here is to untangle, and situate, contemporary environmental governance practices in Turkey in relation to some of these historical and contextual processes and pathways.