Countries around the world are prioritising net zero emissions to meet their Paris Agreement goals. The demand for social impact assessment (SIA) is likely to grow as this transition will require investments in decarbonisation projects with speed and at scale. There will be winners and losers of these projects because not everyone benefits the same; and hence, trade-offs are inevitable. SIAs, therefore, should focus on understanding how the risks and benefits will be distributed among and within stakeholders and sectors and enable the identification of trade-offs that are just and fair. In this study, we used a hypothetical case of large-scale hydrogen production in regional Australia and engaged with multi-disciplinary experts to identify justice issues in transitioning to such an industry. Using Rawlsian theory of justice as fairness, we identified several tensions between different groups (national, regional, local, inter and intra-communities) and sectors (environmental and economic) concerning the establishment of a hydrogen industry. These stakeholders and sectors will be disproportionately affected by this establishment. We argue that Rawlsian principles of justice would enable the practice of SIA to identify justice trade-offs. Further, we conceptualise that a systems approach will be critical to facilitate a wider participation, and an agile process for achieving just trade-offs in SIA.
Impact assessment as a discipline continues to evolve and search for ways to address challenges that are wicked, systemic, and unconventional. More guidance however is required on integrating multi-disciplinary and novel approaches without losing the richness of impact assessments. This paper explores integrating the causal network approach, underpinned by a community well-being framework, into environmental and social impact assessments. We do this by using a hypothetical scenario of large-scale green hydrogen industry in Australia and engage an interdisciplinary team of experts representing a broad experience across the social, economic, and environmental sectors, via interviews and a workshop. The result is a complex detailed causal network, depicting both environmental and social risks and opportunities associated with the hydrogen industry. We discuss using simple and complex versions of causal networks as both are needed to when communicatng with all relevant stakeholders. We found that the causal network approach is useful for the initial scoping of potential social and environmental impacts, especially for a multi-disciplinary team. Three areas were identified to further strengthen such an approach to facilitate a fully-fledged impact assessment in a real case. First, causal relationships need to be evaluated to assess the magnitude of the impacts and identify mitigation measures and incentives. Second, stakeholders, including local communities, should be involved throughout the assessment process, beginning from the conceptualisation of such assessments. Third, the causal network approach presented in this paper is likely to benefit from incorporating ecological frameworks (or similar) to expand environmental pathways in the network.
The adoption and use of electronic appliances generally contribute to higher productivity and thus are key to ameliorate living standards of rural households. A wide range of decentralized electricity systems has been used to power remote parts of Nepal. How these systems facilitate the adoption of electronic appliances, is a question under explored in the existing energy policy literature. This study bridges this gap by comparing the electronic appliance adoption among households that use micro-hydropower and solar home systems against traditional lighting solutions and grid electricity in Nepal. Applying the two-stage least-square method to data from Nepal's population and household census of 2011, we found solar home systems do not increase the use of high-wattage electronic appliances such as televisions and fridges when compared to kerosene, but micro-hydro plants and grid electricity do. This finding indicates that low-capacity electricity sources like solar home systems appear to be limited to facilitate the adoption of high-wattage electronic appliances. It is recommended that energy access policies should look beyond providing basic access to electricity for lighting and prioritize the provisioning of electricity sources that support the use of high-wattage electricity appliances.
Technology plays a central role in mining activities throughout Australia and is critical to achieving greater economic and environmental sustainability. Our choices about which technologies to develop, adopt and deploy in the landscape reflect one of the most critical interfaces between mining and society. There have been numerous reviews and studies of the social licence of the mining industry, which have examined the way in which public perceptions influence the broad acceptance and approval of mining activities. However, very few studies have examined public perceptions of the technologies and extractive methods used by the mining industry. This paper therefore contributes to expand the scope of this mining-society scholarship by understanding the drivers that shape public perceptions in relation to established and emerging mining technologies. We present findings from a survey of Australian citizens (N = 476) that tested their general awareness of and response to different types of mining technologies and extraction methods that are currently in use. These included comparisons between three broad methods of resource extraction technologies including open cut, underground and in situ leach mining. Hydraulic fracturing, a technology that is used in conjunction with some forms of resource extraction, was also included. In this paper, we examine the relationships between the public's self-rated knowledge of these four mining technologies, their perceptions of the environmental and safety impacts of those technologies, and their level of acceptance of each mining technology using descriptive statistics and path analysis. Our research found that higher levels of overall acceptance were expressed for established technologies such as open cut and underground mining. However, our results also reveal a nuanced role for the type of knowledge that citizens may have about novel and emerging technologies in determining their acceptance of these technologies.
Abstract Climate services can support on-farm decisions, yet this potential is currently not fully realized. Here, using a participatory qualitative risk analysis framework, we introduced 24 Australian farmers to My Climate View, an Australian online, multi-decadal climate service, and asked them to identify, assess and discuss management of long-term risks in light of its projections. We found that multi-decadal projections can help farmers to better understand future climate risks, potentially reducing the psychological distance of climate change. The use of long-term climate projections, however, can be impeded by lack of confidence in data, so leveraging the expertise of trusted service providers may help boost farmers’ confidence. Finally, though climate services providing multi-decadal projections can help farmers to identify future climate risks, they require interactive and recurring engagement to turn awareness into action.
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