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‘Productive Uses of Energy and gender in the Street Food Sector’, is a title of our four year project which is part of the DFID funded ENERGIA Gender and Energy Research programme. This research focuses on male and female owned micro enterprises preparing and selling food in Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa. This sector provides livelihoods for many women and men in these countries and this project provides the gender and energy nexus analysis. One of the primary goals of this project is to influence energy policy making and implementation in the focus countries.

Addressing climate change adaptation in the cities of the Global South is crucial as they are the most at risk and, arguably, the least capable of coping with it due to their rapid expansion, informal development, and limited institutional capacity. This paper explores this challenge in the case of Chennai, India, a city which, in recent years, has faced several climate related disasters, including floods. Building on an innovative combination of research methods (policy documents analysis, stakeholder interviews, and a community workshop), the study analyses the barriers and explores potentials for operationalising socio-ecological resilience in Chennai in the face of an ongoing conflict between rapid urbanisation and the natural water system, compromising the region’s hydrological capacity and resilience to flooding. In particular, drawing on the notion of evolutionary resilience and multi-level approach, the paper investigates (1) the scope for developing an integrated vision for resilience of the Chennai region (macro level); (2) the presence and the capacity of institutions to connect the different stakeholders and mediate their interests (meso level); and (3) the barriers and potentials developing local adaptation strategies in a bottom-up manner (micro level). The study sheds light on the under-researched issue of socio-ecological resilience in Chennai, while identifying potentials for implementing it through a combination of top down and bottom-up approaches, which in turn provides useful lessons for planning for resilience in other cities in the Global South.

New towns are a major form of urban growth in China. In recent years, increasing numbers of large new town projects have been planned and built in and around existing cities. These new town projects have frequently been employed by city governments as central elements of pro-growth strategies, based on ideas of urban entrepreneurialism, which seek to promote economic growth, project a dynamic city image, and increase urban competitiveness. This article studies how the pro-growth, urban entrepreneurial approach affects the planning and development of Chinese megacities. A conceptual framework focusing on land-leasing revenue and new town development strategies is employed to explore the linkages between urban growth mechanisms and urban outcomes. Empirical material from four cities in the Pearl River Delta—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Zhuhai—is presented. The analysis indicates that new town developments in these cities have different levels of dependency on spatial expansion and land revenue, and emphasize different issues of sustainable development in their plans. Cities with a lower dependency on physical and economic growth are be more likely to emphasize the quality of the built environment and address issues of sustainable urban development more closely when planning and implementing new town projects.

Abstract The industrial sector plays a huge role in creating economic growth. While energy is vital for industries to thrive, various factors are undermining the availability of energy including phasing out of fossil fuels, CO2 emission caps and, the large gap between the fast developments of industrial clusters and the energy supply, especially in developing countries. Recently, enabled by renewable energy technologies, a transition process is taking place towards decentralized settings for energy provision where households in neighbourhoods initiate renewable electricity cooperatives. The question addressed in this research is if or to what extent the model of collective action deployed by citizen cooperatives is applicable to collaborations between industries in an industrial cluster. We identified the conditions for the establishment of Industrial Community Energy Systems (InCES) from a collective action perspective by using Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development Framework. The case study selected is the industrial city of Arak, one of the largest and most diversified industrial clusters in Iran. Besides desk research, data was also collected by conducting semi-structured interviews and by holding stakeholder workshops. The results of this study highlight the importance of community spirit and trust for the establishment of InCES, unlike citizen cooperatives where finance and environmental attitude are essential. A transparent legal framework to resolve conflicts that might emerge in industrial partnerships is another crucial element given the many differences among industries such as differences in energy demand and in usage patterns.

Climate change effects are not uniform and have disproportionate impacts among different groups of people within communities. It is therefore important to understand the underlying issues of intersectionality for climate change adaptation and human well-being. This paper aims to measure human capabilities and freedom of choice by analyzing perceived climate change impacts and current climate change adaptation ability among ethnic and non-ethnic communities in Bangladesh. This study applies a range of participatory rural appraisal tools and key informant interviews to assess impacts of climate change when considering gender and ethnicity. Women in the coastal regions have less access to resources and services because of social capital and cultural practices and this directly or indirectly influences their adaptation to climate change. Women have limited or no participation in decision-making processes at family or community levels and this impacts their vulnerability and well-being. In consequence, women’s capabilities must be focused on moderating their vulnerability and risk, and developing effective adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change and natural hazards.

The diffusion of the smartphone and the urban sprawl is pushing both private and public actors to revisit the concept of demand-responsive transport (DRT). This paper provides a historical overview of DRT experiences, understanding their pros and cons. In addition, it presents the case study of Mokumflex, a 12-month DRT pilot program that replaced the regular bus service in low-density areas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on a close collaboration with the private enterprise that operated the service and also with the local bus operator, we performed an empirical before and after comparison. These insights help to understand the impacts of DRT systems and support (future) design of DRT and public transport. A set of indicators was chosen for the intermodal comparison: travel distances, ridership, costs, Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions and population's perception. Ridership dropped from 78.1 passengers/day to 15.9 passengers/day, however, for being “demand-tailored”, passenger-km reduced even more, going from 1252.8 km/day to 136.6 km/day, hence reducing the costs and GHG emissions per passenger. In regards to population's perception, the system enjoyed a good evaluation.

Nature-based solutions (NBSs) are measures reflecting the ‘cooperation with nature’ approach: mitigating fluvial flood risk while being cost-effective, resource-efficient, and providing numerous environmental, social, and economic benefits. Since 2015, the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda has provided UN member states with goals, targets, and indicators to facilitate an integrated approach focusing on economic, environmental, and social improvements simultaneously. The aim of this study is to evaluate the contribution of fluvial NBSs to the UN 2030 Agenda, using all its components: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), targets, and indicators. We propose a four-step framework with inputs from the UN 2030 Agenda, scientific literature, and case studies. The framework provides a set of fluvial flooding indicators that are linked to SDG indicators of the UN 2030 Agenda. Finally, the fluvial flooding indicators are tested by applying them to a case study, the Eddleston Water Project, aiming to examine its contribution to the UN 2030 Agenda. This reveals that the Eddleston Water Project contributes to 9 SDGs and 33 SDG targets from environmental, economic, societal, policy, and technical perspectives. Our framework aims to enhance the systematic considerations of the SDG indicators, adjust their notion to the system of interest, and thereby enhance the link between the sustainability performance of NBSs and the UN 2030 Agenda.