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Scaini, Anna, et al.
(författare)
Pathways from research to sustainable development: Insights from ten research projects in sustainability and resilience
2024
Ingår i: AMBIO. - : SPRINGER. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209.
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Drawing on collective experience from ten collaborative research projects focused on the Global South, we identify three major challenges that impede the translation of research on sustainability and resilience into better-informed choices by individuals and policy-makers that in turn can support transformation to a sustainable future. The three challenges comprise: (i) converting knowledge produced during research projects into successful knowledge application; (ii) scaling up knowledge in time when research projects are short-term and potential impacts are long-term; and (iii) scaling up knowledge across space, from local research sites to larger-scale or even global impact. Some potential pathways for funding agencies to overcome these challenges include providing targeted prolonged funding for dissemination and outreach, and facilitating collaboration and coordination across different sites, research teams, and partner organizations. By systematically documenting these challenges, we hope to pave the way for further innovations in the research cycle.
2.
Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(författare)
Inclusive recycling movements: a green deep democracy from below
2020
Ingår i: Environment and Urbanization. - : SAGE Publications. - 0956-2478 .- 1746-0301. ; In Press
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
This paper examines the multiple strategies articulated by grassroots recycler networks to bring about socioenvironmental change. The paper shows how these networks are an emblematic case of grassroots governmentality, whereby urban poor communities contribute to building more inclusive environmental regimes by developing technologies of power more typical of the powerful. These technologies include enumeration, with its resulting self-knowledge; the production of discourses and rationalities of social inclusion and environmental sustainability; and engagement in open and diverse alliances, at times with actors holding apparently antagonistic interests. The paper also reveals how recycling networks are a representative case of deep and green democracy. It is deep democracy, as grassroots networks strive to gain deep and true representativeness in their territories. It is green democracy, as it illustrates alternative pathways to environmental governance that is not limited to state and global organizations, but that also includes a range of control techniques emanating from the communities themselves.
3.
Kain, Jaan-Henrik, 1960, et al.
(författare)
Characteristics, challenges and innovations of waste picker organizations: A comparative perspective between Latin American and East African countries
2022
Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 17:7
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Waste picker organisations (WPOs) around the globe collect, transport and process waste to earn their living but represent a widely excluded, marginalised and impoverished segment of society. WPOs are highly innovative, created by grassroots out of “nothing” to deliver economic, social and environmental sustainability. Still, we do not know how such innovations are developed, and how they are disseminated and adopted by other groups. This article examines characteristics, challenges and innovations of WPOs across five countries in Latin America and East Africa. It is based on quantitative and qualitative data regarding modes of organisation and management, gender, received support, business orientations, environmental and social contributions, and innovations developed in response to multiple challenges. The paper provides a comprehensive understanding of WPOs’ activities and their grassroots innovations in the Global South. The study shows how WPOs contribute significantly to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the societies they serve as well as the wider urban societies. To start and maintain WPOs in informal settlements with a lack of infrastructure, institutional frameworks, and public and private investors is a difficult quest. WPOs take many different organisational forms depending on the complexity of local realities, ranging from advanced collective organization as cooperatives to small self-help groups and microentrepreneurs. Self-organisation into regional and national networks provides economic opportunities, autonomy and stability as well as political influence. Yet, institutional support is fundamental and the lack thereof threatens their existence. Sustaining WPOs as important providers of socio-environmental benefits through governmental and non-governmental actions is a worthwhile undertaking that builds sustainability.
4.
Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(författare)
Grassroots innovations in 'extreme' urban environments. The inclusive recycling movement
2023
Ingår i: Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. - : SAGE Publications. - 2399-6544 .- 2399-6552. ; 41:2
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Waste pickers all over the world work innovatively to reduce the environmental footprint of cities as they struggle to meet their critical livelihood obligations. Informed by the case of waste picker organizations (WPOs) this article examines how grassroots initiatives and extreme-niche innovations are created and sustained by mobilizing resources, rationales and relations. The study is informed by a cross-national survey and in-depth interviews with WPOs in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Kenya and Tanzania, and builds upon theories of grassroots innovation movements. The findings show how operating in contexts of extreme scarcity, these grassroots organisations tap into local resources, e.g. tacit knowledge, economies of affection and other socially embedded institutional resources. Blending material and environmental rationales, contributes to expanding their audiences and to gaining further support. In such deprived urban contexts, radical and cumulative crises and events hindering residents’ livelihoods can paradoxically also spark ingenuity out of necessity, and the transformation of these settings into extreme niches of innovation. Finally, the mobilization of relations through the formation of networks linking WPOs with supportive intermediaries and global circuits of solidarity becomes another fundamental resilience strategy by which WPOs can navigate contested environments and insert their extreme-niche innovations in governmental structures. By simultaneously adopting a broad repertoire of strategies of insertion, contention, and mobilization WPO and their innovations thrive in highly constrained environments. We conclude with reflecting on how ‘extreme’ niches of innovation − at the cracks of the formal city, economy and waste systems − can unleash the creative power of stigmatized, illiterate and neglected grassroots to experiment with new solutions in resource-poor environments.
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