Whole Systems Networking Fund: project announcement
We are delighted to announce the details of the projects awarded via our Whole Systems Networking...
This project we will tackle key issues around how to build future energy systems that are not only responsive to the needs of local communities, but also integrate the experience of community members who are usually side-lined in the energy policymaking process.
Voices from poor communities, specifically women, are the least likely to be heard and often do not have an influence on energy policy. This project aims to turn this on its head: to be sustainable, future energy systems need to integrate evidence-based, community-sourced perspectives and experience at the levels of planning, development, policy and evaluation.
The project will engage with low-income communities in Plymouth, UK and Cape Town, South Africa on the key question of how to structure future energy systems. This will help to ensure they are responsive to, and informed by, community needs, rather than by systems ‘parachuted from above’ that do not always recognise the importance of local community input. At the same time, it will highlight the crucial learning opportunities that exist when establishing dialogues between different communities regarding their experiences, approaches and innovations.
The project will focus on bringing community voices together and informing policy at the UK, South African and international levels, as well as between them. To do this, it has the following objectives:
The methodology is qualitative and will be based on the analysis of community members’ experiences during workshops in Plymouth and Cape Town. To support this, it will follow a comparative, grounded and engaged methodology.
Five to six pre-workshop interviews will be held with local community members. These will be audio-recorded and transcribed. In Cape Town, they will be conducted in isiXhosa and will be translated to English. The workshops will also be treated as research events, with discussions being documented and analysed as a basis for contributing to policy briefs and a policymaking toolkit.
The project aims to produce the following outputs, cutting across academia and policy, to bolster the dissemination of our research findings.