Community Power - Participation vs Ownership

Over the last few posts, I introduced some basic concepts of community power with a couple of contemporary examples particularly in energy sector. Today, I would like to cast a light upon the argument that 'community ownership of the shared equity/facility is not necessarily a prerequisite in sustainable management of the projects whereas participation is' (Nolden, 2013; Harvey and Reed, 2007).

First and foremost, it is important to provide a clear definition of the two terms I have just mentioned. 'Ownership' in this context refers to legitimate rights to own the capital on which communities invest, such as wind turbines and solar PV. 'Participation', on the other hand, is a form of commitment/engagement through which communities influence how the capital is developed and is managed in long-term. For example, farmers may want to lease their land to utility companies to develop a wind farm, or a community may also want to financially invest in the construction of solar PV panels and receive shares (Nolden, 2013). 

Figure.1. A photo of wind turbines in Grange Farm Wind Farm (Reference: Bulkington Wiltshire, 2015)

Indeed, Harvey and Reed, 2007 suggest in their study that fostering 'a sense of responsibility' for financially supporting the facility may be a more viable measure to achieve sustainability than achieving community ownership itself. Basically, if a community owns the capital it has a full responsibility for all aspects of management including application forms to local authority, financial planning and maintenance. In particular, the planning requirements for small scale feed-in-tariff in the UK are full of meticulous work because of their local regulation which primarily intends to avoid from any big company exploiting the local community (Nolden, 2013). 

In addition, communities must apply to the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MOS) for the total installed capacity below 50kW or Ofgem for ROO-FIT accredition above in order to become an eligible installer/producer of any renewable energy (Ofgem, 2015). Given the lack of technical knowledge and experience of community members in energy sector, the above logistics cost and time to spend can easily discourage them from initiating community-owned renewable energy development. Therefore, ownership of community-led projects does not always turn out to be a successful manner.

'Participation', by contrast, is regarded as an indispensable element of community projects. It takes a variety of forms such as an intra-community outreach programme to promote renewable energy through educational activities and public open discussion, community investment including a land lease and the purchase of shares in energy companies developing on-site renewable energy production (Nolden, 2013). This is a type of social and institutional arrangement that helps a community feel responsible for their shared equity with much less financial and management risks being involved compared to when they actually own the capital.

Figure.2. A photograph showing a community projects for renewable energy at Ostrod Primary School in Norway(Reference: The Guardian, 2015)

Nevertheless, it does not to say that ownership is always a failure. There are a number of successful stories in community-owned projects across the world. Germany, for example, is a well-known country for its prevailing renewable energy through community initiatives. Currently, Germany's share of electricity by renewable energy is about 20% (53GW), 51% out of which is owned by citizens (BNU, 2012b in Nolden, 2013). The number is significant considering economies of scale that both benefits and encourages large utility companies to install a generator in greater capacity.

So, what makes community-owned projects become prosperous like in Germany? That's a question I would seek to address in the upcoming posts. Any ideas or questions are welcome as always. :)  

Roles of Internet in Fostering a Sense of Community

It's been about a month since I started writing a post for this blog. Today, I would like to share some of my thoughts that have recently come to my mind, that community power probably started to develop since the onset of rapid 'internet' prevalence. If, for example, there is no internet, how would you know that such a small, local-specific action exemplified in my last post is taking place somewhere? This becomes even harder when it goes beyond political or linguistic boundaries, within which the media coverage would be restricted simply because they have limited time and resources to cover everything. They have to choose on the basis of their interest which is undoubtedly influenced and sometimes even manipulated by the most powerful in society.


Figure.1 Map showing the 24-hour relative average use of internet in 2012. The levels are in order from the high to low; red, yellow, green, light blue and dark blue (Reference: SPIEGEL ONLINE, 2013)

With the widespread availability of internet (Figure.1), however, people are now free to voice their opinions, raise issues, and actively connect with those in remote whose existence would have not been recognised otherwise. It created the virtual space which is dimensionally 'non-space' but has given rise to instant, single-click communication regardless. Some people even insist that 'internet is another country', reflecting upon the fact that it has a certain degree of political power (UREG, 2015).

What such development enables the community is to share their experience of struggle outside their geographical, political arena along with drawing an international attention and support to their action. There are a sense of sorrow, sympathy, rage, generosity, and all sorts of economic and political motives that guide individual's decision. I guess what I am trying to say is that internet provides the community with a valuable opportunity to be internationally 'recognised and cared', and therefore boost its self-esteem to exercise more locally-derived democratic decision-making instead of top-down approach from the central government.

Now, let me briefly introduce an example of community-led climate action. The Big Lemon is a Community Interest Company (CIC) and runs the public bus services in Brighten, the South England. All their buses are fuelled with biodiesel from waste cooking oil from local restaurants. Their aim is to encourage local people to divert from using a private car, which exhausts 8 times more greenhouse gases than public transport (Emergent Research & Consulting, 2012). You can have a quick watch on the video below featuring their services.

Video.1. Promotion Video of the Big Lemon (Reference: The Big Lemon CIC, 2015)

Obviously, the relative contribution of their reduction in GHGs emissions in the city, and in global scale is very limited. However, what I think significant about them is that their small-scale local action plays an essential role in helping locals become more aware of the existence of 'community', and feel positive about their personal decision to use the services. With the help of knowledge and information derived from internet, people know what contributions they have made by their own actions and feel proud of themselves to be participating to climate change mitigation regardless of the scale. Here, the emphasis is not on the quantitative contribution of their CO2 reduction but on its effect on the attitude and perspective of the general public. Thereby, internet inevitably helps foster a sense of community among the people.

It's just a chain of thought without much supporting materials, so, it will be very appreciating if any of you share some thoughts or relevant studies with me. I very much look forward to your response to this post. :)

Too Small to be Effective? - Community Power in Mitigating Global Climate Change

Last week, I briefly introduced some of the key factors that have frequently affected how individuals perceive global climate change. Their personal experience of struggles related to climate change is geographically diverse in nature, and is highly dependent upon their socio-economic status. The implication of the heterogeneity in the effect of climate change is that there is not a single transferable practice of adaptation to solve them all across the globe simultaneously. Instead, there needs to be a community-based approach (CBA) which reflects and makes use of various regional characteristics (Reid, 2015).

The above short line of argument based on the previous post highlights the importance of regionally-derived adaptation to climate change. However, 'adaptation' itself does not seem, in the first instance, to make a direct contribution to mitigating global climate change in any way. Clearly, we need to decrease the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to tackle its root cause, potentially through applying some of the methods in the following approach that geoengineers have recently proposed - Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). Although I will not explore this in detail here as it is beyond the scope of the purpose of this blog, I will highly recommend any of you interested in this topic to read the following introductory paper by Caldeira et al (2013). One of my peers also writes her blog on geoengineering here if you are keen to discuss. 

Coming back to the point, whereas 'adaptation' such as flood-control and changing crop patterns is critical to prevent a detrimental effect on people particularly the vulnerable, a 'mitigation' approach to climate change, exemplified in CO2 reduction, cannot be ignored to ultimately achieve a less violent climate and therefore more sustainable future of the Earth. They are not mutually exclusive but fundamentally interplay with each other. Indeed, the recent IPCC reports have put an increasing emphasis on adopting a balanced combination of the two in order to achieve security for sustainable food production, economic activity and ecosystem functioning (IPCC, 2014). 

Now, the question is - can community-led actions help mitigate the effects of climate change? 

Well, if you assume a single community power to be a catalyst for directly affecting the global climate, the answer is clearly 'NO' because any single community action on its own is comparatively way smaller than it can have a discernible impact on the planetary-scale climatic system. However, it is not what is being asked here. In essence, it is more to do with whether such a bottom-up approach is 'necessary' to ultimately achieve our sustainable vision of the Earth. 

In order to address the question, let's explore the following example. Low Carbon West Oxford (LCWO) is a community initiative charity group, which was set up following the three major flood events between 2001 and 2007. Since its launch in 2007, they have been working on a wide range of carbon reduction schemes such as introducing sustainable transport system, encouraging local food production and development in renewable energy. With the emergence of an Industrial and Provident society 'West Oxford Community Renewables (WOCR)' in 2009, the two are co-operating with each other towards the reduction in the community's CO2 emission by 80% by 2050. Some of their success stories in 2009/10 include a cut of 140 tonnes of CO2 emission in 36 participating households through the Low Carbon Living Programme within one year, and 80 tonnes of CO2 through the introduction of 2 street cars shared by 170 people.

The key ingredients for their continuous success are the following; a) direct exposure to flood events that brought about serious concerns over the effects of climate change in their future generation; b) great leadership of the County and City Council; c) availability of grants and prizes helping boost community investment; d) model of re-investing locally created income through their programmes within the community such as into their further charitable work (Figure.1). 

Figure.1. a diagram showing a flow-model of money and its contribution to sustainable living in the community of West Oxford. (Reference: Low Carbon West Oxford, 2015)

Barbara Hammond, a found of the LCWO, strongly supports the flowing model insisting that 'the economic benefit to developing these renewable energy projects is kept in the community, and can be used to create further economic development benefits about helping people to reduce their energy and therefore their energy bills', and thus, 'have a less pressured lifestyle economically' (Hammond, 2013). The first 5 minutes of the video below shows her summarizing their community work.   

Again, the relative contribution of their community programmes to reduction in the global atmospheric CO2 concentration is very limited. Nonetheless, they illustrate the following two fundamental characteristics of community-led projects. 

First, people are willing to take an action for their shared community concerns, not directly for climate change. Hammond clarified the point saying 'we all know you can't say that climate change caused that summer floods... but maybe this (experience of flood events) is the outcome of climate change. If I want my children to experience a different future, I need to do something about that'. In the research undertaken by Emergent Research & Consulting, (2012), such motive is defined as one of the two big factors that engage people in community action, so-called 'our future', meaning that sharing a story of a resilient and thriving place encourages their action. 

Secondly, their community project essentially includes direct benefits to individual's personal life, for example, reduction in energy bills and transport costs. This is another motivation that the study pronounces known as 'here and now', calling for the immediate benefits of action to their personal life. 

These two fundamental factors for success in community-led project are often overlooked in top-down approach of the central government, whose aims are, again, to achieve 'internationally negotiated CO2 reduction' in their country. They do not give much consideration to how climate change issues can be linked with and embedded into local concerns and struggles. That I think is where conflicts emerge between the central government and local communities because their local needs are frequently ignored under the national policy. Also, locally-funded nature of community projects is economically more sustainable than those under full financial support from the government because their central policy can easily be reversed or abandoned depending on their political situation. 

Given that communities are the only geographical space where significant CO2 reduction can take place, it is anticipated that such friction would heavily undermine the ability of national government to practice their climate change mitigation policy in their land. Therefore, I think that a bottom-up approach to climate change is critical and should not be under-valued just because of their relatively small impact on the global atmospheric CO2 concentration. They are the best identifying some of the inter-links between climate change and local concerns and needs, which is fundamental to achieving a successful, long-term community action. Although the scale-up of community-led climate change actions across a wider geographical area will be necessary to reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at global scale, the first priority in human-based climate change mitigation programs in any country should be given to empowering community to act 'for themselves and by themselves'. 

I think this post highlights some of the essential roles that community power plays in tackling global climate change. Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts into this topic with me. :) P.S. Have a good reading week Geog folks!

Conceptualizing Global Climate Change As 'Our Struggle'

Everyone now knows that global climate change is something that is definitely happening today. The warming is 'unequivocal' with 95% certainty of human's predominant contribution to the cause - about 90% increase in probability from the preceding IPCC report (Carbon Trust, 2013). The atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases including CO2, methane and nitrous oxide is clearly out of a predicted long-term trend of the Earth's atmospheric composition in the last 800,000 years at least (IPCC, 2014). Figure.1 below demonstrates a historical record of CO2, methane and temperature, derived from Antarctica's ice core Dome C. The rapid increase in both CO2 and methane since the 18th century is completely out of its long-term inter-glacial variation, which is generally accepted as being obliquity and precession driven (Jouzel, et al., 2007). Now, it is expected that the atmospheric temperature would go up to 3.7 - 4.8 degrees Celcius if the current emission levels remain the same by the end of the 21st century (IPCC, 2014).


Figure.1. A left graph shows historical levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (ppm), methane (ppb) and temperature (℃) over the last 800,000 years; A right graph consists of CO2 (ppm) and methane (ppb) over the last two millenniums. (Reference: Macmillan Publishers Ltd (2008) "Windows on the greenhouse" by Ed Brook, Nature 453: 291-292, in Environmental Defence Fund)


Similarly, there have also been anomalous rises in ocean surface temperature across the globe. This is attributed to the fact that ocean can absorb most of energy that enters into the Earth's climate system. In fact, 90% of all the energy has been stored into the ocean since 1971 (Light, 2014). Warmer ocean expands to raise sea levels that can cause economic and environmental destruction to coastal regions and islands, and trigger extreme weather through a greater amount of evaporation. However, what lacks in the analysis, I think, is that it is unable to draw a full picture of the potential effect of so-called 'still-inactive stored energy' in the ocean to the climate system in the future. What I specifically mean is that we cannot be sure whether the relationship between ocean temperature and the climate are in linear or logarithmic relationship, and therefore, whether the current rate of increasing and intensifying extreme weather would change in scale as more energy gets trapped in the ocean over time.

It is very simple - science cannot prove their prediction is 100% right nor wrong because of a number of limitations associated with their assumptions and methods. It is like sailing in the middle of the ocean where you only have a compass to guide yourself without a map. You know which direction you are heading to but never know if it is a right way to the destination you are aiming to reach. All you can do is to deduct from any signs like small islands, flow of the ocean, movement of fishes or birds to re-direct yourself to where you now think is an appropriate / better direction. Likewise, science is all about a sequence of observation and experiments that can or cannot provide you with a better prediction or solution. In the end, you have to make your own decision in whether to accept or decline the outcome.

Such uncertain and sometimes ambiguous elements of science have lost people's trust to some extent. Well, this is perhaps also blamed on to our tendency to over-trust scientists in providing a clear, definite answer to our question. However, in the context of global climate change, it might not be the case. What has been more problematic in our understanding about climate change over the last few decades, I suppose, is that many of us have failed to conceptualize it into something that is happening to our individual life, as 'our struggle'.

This is essentially due to the fact that spatial and temporal variation in the effect of climate change is very significant. Although temperature rises are expected in most parts of the world, the implication of the change in human's life is heterogeneous across the world (Thornton, et al., 2007). Their study suggests that whereas crop yields in Africa are expected to fall by 10-20% on average in response to future climate change, some regions are subject to increase. It is primarily because of topological variation in Africa, which plays an essential role in creating distinct rainfall patterns across the continent. For example, yields for maize generally increase at high altitudes while those at lower land see a drop due to increasing water stress when temperature rises. It is known as a temperature-driven increase in crop yields, with all other factors being equal (Thornton, et al., 2007).

Similarly, extreme weather is more intense in tropical regions because they absorb most of energy from the Sun and therefore temperature rises are the most significant. According to some numerical models, it is demonstrated that whereas global atmospheric temperature will go up to 4℃ by 2080 at the current rates of GHGs increases, it can rise up to 7℃ in southern Africa and 8℃ in East Africa (Independent, 2006). The estimation is very high and nearly double the global average level. Given that their lower socio-economic status, they cannot be well adapted to anomalous climatic events. Thus, climate change will certainly 'add more burdens to those who are already poor and vulnerable' (IPCC, 2007).

On the other hand, economically more developed countries, like USA, UK, Canada, France and Germany have tended to be and will likely to be less affected by climate change compared to the above regions. The fact is that these nations have been economically strong enough to ensure water, food and energy security more easily to meet their basic needs for life and economic activities, regardless of their actual physical potential. They are also better equipped with technology such as irrigation schemes and flood controls, which can help mitigate the effect of rising temperature or extreme weather induced by climate change  - truly technocentric viewpoint.

Therefore, despite some big steps have been made towards the global climate change negotiation recently, it is clear that their historical attitude of arrogance used to prevent their citizens from realizing climate change as their potential struggle. In other words, it is only a recent phenomenon that people started concerning over global climate change as something close to their personal life - concerns over geographically widespread outbreak of diseases due to warming; more frequent occurrence of torrential rain, typhoon or hurricane causing destruction of houses and loss of life; increased possibility to suffer skin cancer; crop failures, etc. Whatever personal experiences above and more, what is happening nowadays is that people are increasingly re-conceptualizing climate change as from something irrelevant into something that really affects their life. This, I think, is where community power is recognised and begins to develop.

With this in mind, I think that now it is time to talk about examples of community power. In the next post, I will review some historical examples of collective actions that took place in response to the growing awareness of global climate change. The biggest question I'm going to address in the upcoming weeks is whether community power is truly 'powerful' in a sense that can make a contribution to mitigating global climate change. Perhaps, too many ambiguous, buzzy words in political science. If you have any thoughts about power of community, personally or generally, please feel free to make a comment here. :) See you all soon!

Power of Collective Action

Over the past few decades, civil movements for global climate change are rapidly growing in number and scale. Perhaps, it follows the unprecedented rate of development in information technology that allows people to share their personal experiences relevant to climate change. Extreme weather, sea level rises, and increasing atmospheric temperature are some of the classic examples in the contemporary history of climate change.

As a result, people nowadays voice their opinions about climate change more easily and frequently on internet. This essentially has led to a rapid development of collective power, which goes beyond geographical boundaries that used to be a barrier to international/global actions for their common struggle.

Similarly, there has been a major shift in how people react to climate change at regional level. For instance, an increasing number of people now feel a sense of responsibility for potential consequences of their socio-economic activity that is being conducted in their home land. Among them is the emergence of community power where people assemble to take action for mitigating the effect of climate change. Hertford Energy Now is a good example of these. It is a non-profit organization that has promoted the development of community-owned energy generation in East Herts, England. They successfully installed solar PV panels in Mill Mead School, and they are currently on track to expand so-called 'HertsSolarSchools' across the region within the Phase 2 Project. This kind of community actions from the bottom is vital to practice a central government's policy such as Feed-in Tariff programme.

On the other hand, community power / collective action can also be politically active in mobilizing public opinion. Aizu Natural Energy Foundation, based in Fukushima, Japan, for instance, was launched in May 2013 two years after the Great East Japan Earthquake by a member of local inhabitants such as the representative partner of Yamatogawa Sake Brewery. In his interview, he criticizes Japanese government for leading the region to be economically dependent on surrounding cities:

"Before the earthquake, Fukushima had the food resources ten times more than the necessary amount in the prefecture, at about 1000%. And we had several GW electric facilities except nuclear power plants. There is an enormous potential of renewables available in Fukushima. However, almost all the energy produced in the region was distributed to the city areas, and then we bought it back by our selves. Fukushima was in a situation as if it is a colony of big city areas. Then, after the nuclear disaster, the strong will to overcome the situation grew inside myself, and I decided to pursue Fukushima's autonomous development" (Energy Democracy).

Their vision is to establish the local autonomy of energy and their micro-economy by introducing renewable energy into their region, mainly solar PV panels. Currently, the capacity of energy production running under this initiative exceeds 2.54MW. What is significant about this programme is that they are run by local people as well as being financially supported mainly by local banks and institutions (Energy Democracy). In other word, the regions is now moving forward to the rearrangement of local economy in structure by managing their demand-supply relationship by themeselves. Although their primary vision is not to mitigate climate change in regional level, their community action has certainly visualized recent political crisis in monopolized energy production in Japan. In this sense, community power can also play as a political power in civil society in whatever context.

Despite these successful stories, however, some argue that community power itself is no guarantee of success (Carter, et al., 1993). Particularly in less economically developed countries, there are a number of constrains associated with community action. For instance, many attempts have been made on installing water supply and sanitation programme in sub-Saharan Africa over the past few decades. However, they often ended up breaking down and being abandoned a few years after construction began. Carter, et al. reports on their paper that this is mainly because of the following three factors: local's unclear understanding of the existing problems with water supply and sanitation; their lack of awareness over beneficial impacts of the programme; and little understanding of factors that sustain their programme. The first two are summarized as lack of knowledge and awareness, and the third factor points out the fact that once a new system is introduced, investors often leave it to locals without developing maintenance programme ahead. Thus, governmental intervention in education and training as well as financial assistance are essential to some extent in order to sustainably manage a long-term local development still in many parts of the world.

To summarize above, although community power plays some key roles in mobilizing society, it is not always practically successful, depending on the socio-economic and political status of the region.

From next posts, therefore, I will explore many more cases of community power to discuss on this complex system, particularly by looking into roles it plays in shifting attitude and perspective of people towards global climate change. See you all next week!



Reference not to be hyper-linked:

Carter, R, Tyrrel S & Howsam P (1999) 'Impact and sustainability of community water supply and sanitation programmmes in developing countries', Journal of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, 13: 292-296.