Scaling up Niche Innovations for Sustainability: Exploring the WEF Nexus

1. Final project meeting Thursday 17 January, 2019

2. Aims of project • To understand conditions for scaling up niche innovations that have potential to dramatically improve sustainability across the WEF nexus • To illuminate transformational processes of step-change recognising a wider dynamic context • To articulate behavioural, power & governance components of transformation

3. Objectives • Explore food, water & energy provision systems at a range of scales, to identify more sustainable, secure, equitable systems • Highlight socio-technical interconnections and tensions between systems under current conditions and within a dynamic context • Develop a decision making kit for accelerating change, applicable at a range of scales • Involve stakeholders throughout

4. Draft conclusions • Scaling up of negative impacts/costs must be accounted for. • Innovation/achieving potential benefits is conditional on changing socio-tech-environmental conditions in multiple domains and across systems. • Politics is shaping unintended outcomes of policies aimed at delivering environmental benefits. • Reflexivity is needed to manage unintended consequences – and it must be cross-departmental. • Context, scale and diversity of innovations requires consideration. • Changing protein provision will shift energy and water consumption patterns geographically.

5. Draft conclusions • Stakeholders connect innovation with social factors in ways that conventional models do not. • Policy responses to global environmental challenges must consider social, geographical and governance factors for positive innovation diffusion. • Widespread uptake of water harvesting, enhanced by high levels of community cohesion, could postpone developing energy-intensive alternatives such as desalination plants. • Scenarios offering the greatest cuts in CO2 may incur greater financial (not economic) or social costs.

6. Draft conclusions • Confronting complexity can enable more informed modelling and robust planning. • Data collection is the greatest challenge in nexus research. • User-specific tools are needed for WEF nexus decision making. • Three stage decision making that can consider context is needed given the extent of uncertainties involved. • Prioritising financial aspects can stifle innovation.

7. Stakeholder Discussion

8. Aims of meeting • Share some insight into the Stepping Up Water-Energy-Food nexus project • Discuss and understand approaches to policy and stakeholder engagement with complex research and findings. • Appreciate what stakeholders might need from researchers to improve engagement and make it more effective • Explore if and how the discourse on ‘experts’ has impacted on academic-decision maker engagement. • Identify mechanisms for improving engagement with complex research and findings.

9. Aims of project • To understand conditions for scaling up niche innovations that have potential to dramatically improve sustainability across the WEF nexus • To illuminate transformational processes of step-change recognising a wider dynamic context • To articulate behavioural, power & governance components of transformation

10. Objectives • Explore food, water & energy provision systems at a range of scales, to identify more sustainable, secure, equitable systems • Highlight socio-technical interconnections and tensions between systems under current conditions and within a dynamic context • Develop a decision making kit for accelerating change, applicable at a range of scales • Involve stakeholders throughout

11. Simplified method

12. Method

13. Case studies & learning • Anaerobic digestion “diversity is key” • Diverse technology applied at many scales • Dependent on incentives for energy production only • Digestate undervalued • Disposal can be a barrier to financial viability • Insect protein “the new sushi”! • Nascent food & feed industry. Great optimism for growth • Uncertainty over regulations - how they apply to insects (e.g. Novel Food Regulation, food safety standards for ‘farms’) • Rearing crickets requires heat • Unless part of a wider system using waste inputs, may be better to rear in hotter climates and import • Fair Share of food waste “needs to decline”? • Best route to growth through helping to implement systems allowing identification of food prior to becoming waste • This will eventually kill the sector – the ultimate aim!

14. Governance mapping • Actors can engage in multiple functions: • Entrepreneurial activities • Knowledge development • Knowledge exchange • Guidance of the search • Formation of markets • Mobilisation of resources • Counteracting resistance

15. Nexus governance insights • ‘Innovation’ as a lens offers insights • Helps to focus on drivers and dynamics of change • Existing ‘innovation frameworks’ are limited • Tend to focus on single innovations • Address challenges in single domains • Underplay the role of politics and power • Demands critique of ‘sustainability innovation’ • Understanding and effecting sustainability transitions requires going beyond single domain whole-system approachesgoing beyond system boundaries • Must address complexity in governance • Reflexivity and humility both key aspects of managing unintended negative consequences of innovation

16. Simplified method

17. Data gathering and input Challenge: Much of the data is not openly accessible or exists.

18. AD ABM (Lincolnshire) • Simulating alternatives differing by diffusion rate & scale • Incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data • …building in change under different scenarios

19. New - future nexus scenarios • Characterised by multidimensionality, complexity, uncertainty • Used participatory scenario analysis • Considered long-term social, technological & climatic change • Examined cross-domain & multi-scalar resource management • Explored how to support effective innovation in nexus-space

20. Decentralised service based economy; highly entrepreneurial / experimental society; high rate of participation. Low level of climate impact, due to a high level of climate action that permeates through every economic sector. Centralised development of large-scale smart, automated) operations. Low participation but high level of social satisfaction; climate action the lowest level of climate action (still in line with CCC 2oC); climate impacts less than modelled predictions. Climate action didn’t go as well or as quickly as planned; climate impacts have been greater than anticipated in some areas; one-size-fits-all mitigation and adaptation has proven problematic but creative local solutions abound. High level of variation in different areas of the UK, and different communities.

21. Decision support tool-kit (DST) • Component parts of tool-kit • System model of AD innovation - ABM • Set of criteria to assess its viability in terms of sustainability and nexus impacts • Multi-objective optimisation – structured way to interact with the system model – MCA (TOPSIS) Barriers of AD innovation Drivers of AD innovation

22. Overarching conclusions • Policy responses to global environmental challenges must consider social, geographical and governance context/factors for positive innovation diffusion. Try to mitigate unintended consequences. • Innovation/achieving potential benefits is conditional on changing socio-tech-environmental conditions in multiple domains and across systems– need reflexivity across departments. Blurred boundaries. • To understand how innovations may or may not work, need to analyse beyond domain boundaries, using scenario planning. • Multi-stage decision making that can consider context is needed given the extent of uncertainties involved– but prioritising financial aspects can stifle innovation. • User-specific tools are needed for WEF nexus decision making.

23. Specific conclusions • Politics is shaping unintended outcomes of policies aimed at delivering environmental benefits. • Changing protein provision will shift energy and water consumption patterns geographically. • Stakeholders connect innovation with social factors in ways that conventional models do not. • Widespread uptake of water harvesting, enhanced by high levels of community cohesion, could postpone developing energy-intensive alternatives such as desalination plants. • Scenarios offering the greatest cuts in CO2 may incur greater financial or social costs – need tools to consider multiple factors – but be clear about assumptions.

24. Over to you – perspectives… • Does your work currently make use of complex research? • Can you provide any specific examples of where you have and it has worked, or where you wanted to and it hasn’t? • What do you need from research and researchers to work more effectively together? • What would enable you to use complex research more effectively? • Have political/media discourses around the role of experts impact on how academic research is used?