Professor Anna Davies

Summary

With planetary urbanization fast approaching there is growing clarity regarding the unsustainability of cities, not least with respect to food consumption. Sharing, including food sharing, is increasingly being identified as one transformative mechanism for sustainable cities: reducing consumption; conserving resources, preventing waste and providing new forms of socio-economic relations. However, such claims currently rest on thin conceptual and empirical foundations. SHARECITY will identify and examine diverse practices of city-based food sharing economies, first determining their form, function and governance and then identifying their impact and potential to reorient eating practices. The research has four objectives: to advance theoretical understanding of contemporary food sharing economies in cities; to generate a significant body of comparative and novel international empirical knowledge about food sharing economies and their governance within global cities; to design and test an assessment framework for establishing the impact of city-based food sharing economies on societal relations, economic vitality and the environment; and to develop and implement a novel variant of backcasting to explore how food sharing economies within cities might evolve in the future. Providing conceptual insights that bridge sharing, social practice and urban transitions theories, SHARECITY will generate a typology of food sharing economies; a database of food sharing activities in 100 global cities; in-depth food sharing profiles of 7 cities from the contrasting contexts of USA, Brazil and Germany, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Australia; a sustainability impact toolkit to enable examination of city-based food sharing initiatives; and scenarios for future food sharing in cities. Conducting such frontier science SHARECITY will open new research horizons to substantively improve understanding of how, why and to what end people share food within cities in the 21st Century.

Funding Agency

European Research Council

Programme

ERC Consolidator Award

Project Type

Research

Person Months

60

Summary

This research examines four key areas of household consumption that inhibit our ability to achieve sustainable development: transport, energy, water and food. Four themes are developed: how consumption can be measurd and evaluated; how sustainable behaviours and incentives are being developed and implemented; identifying links between consumption, health and well-being; and finally how matters of household consumption are being governed through institutional practice and participation

Funding Agency

EPA

Programme

STRIVE

Person Months

84

Summary

This research will co-create a toolkit for good practice communication between researchers, policy makers and intermediaries such as journalists and NGOs working in the fields of biodiversity, climate change and water

Funding Agency

EPA

Programme

STRIVE

Project Type

Desk Study

Person Months

8

Summary

The Stern Review (2006), which examined the economics of global climate change, brought unprecendented attention to the economy-environment interface and reiterated calls for more sustainable development. Although highly contested, sustainable development is frequently conceptualised as that which contributes to social, economic and environmental well-being for present and future generations. While many aspects of modern life are now globalised the ethos of sustainable development seeks to foster more integrated and inclusive practices that facilitate 'thinking globally, [and] acting locally'. It is in this context that social economy enterprises - defined as non-profit activities designed to combat exclusion through socially useful goods or services sold - have been identified by the United Nations, the European Union and many national governments as a mechanism through which economic growth can contribute to sustainable social development, inclusion and well-being. Within the social economy arena environmentally-focused social economy (ESE) enterprises, such as community-based recycling organisations, gardening initiatives and fuel poverty programmes, explicitly engage with all three pillars of sustainable development. While such initiatives have been experiencing a period of expansion in the European Union no systematic analysis has been undertaken of their activities, the conditions that shape those activities or the contribution they are making towards sustainable development in Ireland. In order to address this analytical deficiency this project will extend theoretical debates about sustainability and the social economy, particularly drawing out issues of scale and governance, through an empirically grounded evaluation of ESE enterprises. Methodologically the project comprises a phased multi-method research programme including a nationwide survey and mapping exercise, in-depth case study analysis and the development of a sustainability impacts procedure. The research findings will expand understanding of the sustainability-social economy interface within the current development context in Ireland and will be of interest to domestic and international academic and policy making communities.

Funding Agency

IRCHSS

Programme

Thematic Grant Award

Project Type

Applied

Person Months

36

Summary

Concerns remain in society about the risks to human health and the environment associated with waste incineration and with the toxicity of the by-products that incineration creates despite the reassurances of regulators, politicians and industry. This project examines and evaluates the ways in which debates about risks related to incineration have been conducted in Ireland in order to facilitate a better understanding of how incineration risk communication is produced and received.

Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Programme

ERTDI 2000-2006