Cut Carbon Symposium: Societal Readiness Levels
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•1,120 views
DecarboN8 Theme Leader, Professor Monika Bücher, on Societal Readiness Levels at the Cut Carbon Symposium 29.09.20
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to Cut Carbon Symposium: Societal Readiness Levels
Similar to Cut Carbon Symposium: Societal Readiness Levels (20)
More from DecarboN8
More from DecarboN8 (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Cut Carbon Symposium: Societal Readiness Levels
- 1. SRL 8 SRL 7 SRL 6 SRL 5 SRL 9 SRL 4 SRL 3 SRL 2 SRL 1 Integrated into normal practice within good life and society systems Functional in good society sub-systems Demonstration of positive systemic change Socio-technical (sub-)system prototypes Proof of concept with potential for systemic change Concept with potential for (sub-)systemic change Societal Readiness Levels (SRL) Why do we need SRL to decarbonize mobilities? What does an SRL Framework need to address and how should we use it? What can do with it? Monika Büscher, m.buscher@Lancaster.ac.uk, @mbuscher
- 2. We have never tried to bring about a transformation of how we live that is as profound or rapid as that implied by our Paris Commitments to address Climate Change Photo by Dimitry B on Unsplash
- 3. United Nations Emissions Gap Report 2019 What should we do? Global emissions would need to fall by some 7.6% every year this decade. Carbonbrief
- 4. 4.6%Lenzen M, Li M, Malik A, Pomponi F, Sun Y-Y, Wiedmann T, et al. (2020) Global socioeconomic losses and environmental gains from the Coronavirus pandemic. PLoS ONE 15(7): e0235654. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235654
- 5. 485Affiliates across the globe Guardian Oct 2019 Guardian Sep 2019 6 million 64% 66% 79% 86% 88% of Americans believe we are in the middle of climate crisis of Chinese, Australian, German, and British citizens understand that climate change is mostly caused by humans 70% of British people want urgent political action to tackle climate Climate Change Coalition 2019 Is society ready for it?
- 6. UK Department for Transport Decarbonising Transport Setting the Challenge A technocratic focus
- 7. The delivery robots of Starship Technologies have already completed 100,000 autonomous deliveries and travelled over 500,000 miles. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps looks to drive a “green economic recovery” in the coming months. Intelligent Transport, 16th June 2020
- 8. Technocratic Problematic • Business as usual, no systemic change • Electrifying 31.9 million cars (2019) and a £27bn spend on major roads schemes ≠ decarbonizing • Equity: The agency of households to implement charging solutions is quite different. • Path dependencies of charging point decisions – home, city-centre, park and ride car parks
- 9. Liveable, effective, significantly decarbonizing, aligned with systemic change, societally good Isolated idea, concept, technology SRL 8 SRL 7 SRL 6 SRL 5 SRL 9 SRL 4 SRL 3 SRL 2 SRL 1 Integrated into normal practice within good life and society systems Functional in good society sub-systems Demonstration of positive systemic change Socio-technical (sub-)system prototypes Proof of concept with potential for systemic change Concept with potential for (sub-)systemic change micromobility walking cycling E-bikes MAAS home-working demand reduction
- 10. One of the priority policy areas highlighted in the advert for which “analysis is critical”, is “how to optimally achieve net-zero”. Stewart 2020. Downing Street seeks data expert to set up 'skunkworks' in No 10. The Guardian, 10th July Picture from Garry Gatchalian on Pinterest Unintended Consequences: Datafication, dataism
- 11. ‘identify and support place-based solutions for the greatest polluting areas, to help enable lower carbon communities. A range of potential measures will be considered to encourage progress, recognising that different areas will need different combinations of solutions’ Mapping the 2019 UK General Election UK Department for Transport Decarbonising Transport Setting the Challenge https://worldmapper.org/uk-general-election-2019/ https://naei.beis.gov.uk/data/map-uk-das?pollutant_id=2
- 12. Technology Readiness Levels 2016 Final Report of the NASA Technology Readiness Assessment (TRA) Study Team solutionism
- 13. Practical, effective, significantly supportive or augmenting innovation in practice, aligned with systemic changes that are societally good Isolated idea, concept, technology Societal Readiness Levels Framework Iterative social and ethical impact assessment built-in Accountable, reflexive, co- created, equitable, transparent design Technocratic, opaque or black- boxed, no Social or ethical impact assessment Technologically and ethically competent citizens Willing and able to experiment, evaluate, co-design, active and critical data subjects Passive consumer or data subject Value Ethics Use SRL 8 SRL 7 SRL 6 SRL 5 SRL 9 SRL 4 SRL 3 SRL 2 SRL 1 Integrated into normal practice within good life and society systems Functional in good society sub-systems Demonstration of positive systemic change Socio-technical (sub-)system prototypes Proof of concept with potential for systemic change Concept with potential for (sub-)systemic change Responses, response-ability
- 14. Bogota, … ‘Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Paris, Milan, Vienna … remove the old, obsolete car infrastructure and actually make infrastructure for all of us Morten Kabell, CEO of the European Cyclists' Federation, told Euronews in a live interview.
- 15. We know … urban mobility is a complex animal, and the fact that responsibilities are spread among many different stakeholders can make coordination and consensus difficult to achieve. UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills 2014: The Case for Public Support of Innovation, p. 89
- 16. SRL can support commoning mobilities The logics of commoning shows a potential to reassess mobility not only as an individual freedom but also as a collective good, paving the way for fairer mobility transitions and a collaborative tackling of sustainable mobility challenges. Nikolaeva, A., Adey, P., Cresswell, T., Lee, J. Y., Nóvoa, A., & Temenos, C. (2019). Commoning mobility: Towards a new politics of mobility transitions. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 44(2), 346–360.
- 17. Practical, effective, significantly supportive or augmenting innovation in practice, aligned with systemic changes that are societally good Isolated idea, concept, technology Societal Readiness Levels Framework Iterative social and ethical impact assessment built-in Accountable, reflexive, co- created, equitable, transparent design Technocratic, opaque or black- boxed, no Social or ethical impact assessment Technologically and ethically competent citizens Willing and able to experiment, evaluate, co-design, active and critical data subjects Passive consumer or data subject Value Ethics Use SRL 8 SRL 7 SRL 6 SRL 5 SRL 9 SRL 4 SRL 3 SRL 2 SRL 1 Integrated into normal practice within good life and society systems Functional in good society sub-systems Demonstration of positive systemic change Socio-technical (sub-)system prototypes Proof of concept with potential for systemic change Concept with potential for (sub-)systemic change Responses, response-ability Büscher, M. and Spurling, N. (2019) Working Paper: Social Acceptance and Societal Readiness Levels.
Editor's Notes
- I’m Monika Büscher, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. I lead the Social Acceptance and Societal Readiness Theme in the DecarboN8 Network, together with Nicola Spurling also from Lancaster Sociology. Greg has made it very clear how important attention to social detail is. We are asking how can we know that our innovations are good enough? How can we measure it? In a nutshell, societal readiness levels are a way to gauge how ready innovations are for society. The idea of societal readiness levels has been around for a while. I started developing an SRL framework with a focus on digital ethics and socially responsible innovation. Decarbonising transport expands that work. How well do our technology, policy, or social, or socio-technical innovations support real world transformations, real world changes in social and material, place-based practices of mobility, as well as local and broader cultural and societal values, and new, good socio-technical systems? It goes from SRL 1, a concept with potential for systemic change, to SRL 9 – an innovation integrated into normal life, and supportive of ‘good’ life and ‘good’ society and nature systems. Of course ‘good’ or ‘better’ are highly contested notions, and SRL are a way to help the diversity of stakeholders impacted become aware, reason, communicate, make decisions, and evaluate responses. Why do we need this?
- We – as in humanity - have never tried to bring about a transformation of how we live that is as profound or rapid as that implied by our Paris Commitments to address Climate Change. And before Covid we had never experienced what that might look and feel like. What we need to do in the next decade is an enormous societal challenge.
- You know where we are. Our current policy scenario, heading towards more than 3 degrees warming. Consequences would be catastrophic and extremely unequal, bringing about what Naomi Klein calls a new barbarism especially with a view to large scale human movement and migration. This is where we need to be. We need to reduce emissions by more than 7% every year this decade.
- Covid has given us a head start this year. The crisis has delivered a 4.6% reduction. In the remaining months of 2020, we need to find another 3% to meet this year’s target. And, of course, if we don’t, the challenge for the coming years increases. PAUSE I’m sure you’re aware of the scale of the challenge. Our ways of life, our societies need to change much much more than we have in these utterly unprecedented times.
- Is society ready for it? The evidence suggests yes. 6 million young people protested on the streets for climate action last autumn. Xtinction rebellion has more than 400 affiliate groups, 64% of Americans understand that climate change is anthropogenic, 70% of British people want political action to tackle climate change.
- And yet. I don’t mean to pick on the UK. It is much the same in other countries. The world is taking a technocratic approach. These are the six main avenues of innovation that you consulted on this year. Modal shift, decarbonising through technology and ‘place-based’ solutions, greening economic growth.
- Here are some examples. Electrification as a way of decarbonising road vehicles, automation in how we get our goods and in public transport.
- What’s the problem? None of this achieves or even aims for systemic change, when we know that our mobility systems, not the individual components need to change. Electrifying millions of cars and building more roads will achieve the opposite, it will lock us in deeper into car culture, aspiring to electric minis and Teslas. Fear of Covid means the number of people who choose to travel to work by car has almost doubled. 66% of people choose the car, they buy a car if they don’t have one. Then there are serious equity issues. As Greg hinted at, people on lower and precarious incomes, living in high rise or terraced housing have far less agency over electrification than those living more affluent and secure lives. This is largely invisible and unaddressed. And, by embedding charging points in city centres and homes and not park and ride car parks, we infrastructurally lock-in journey patterns that are unsustainable.
- So – slightly devil’s advocate - I would put many of the ‘solutions’ we have right now right at the bottom of the societal readiness scale. These innovations are not ready for people to adopt them, they do not lead to good societal outcomes. They are concepts, technical prototypes, seriously lacking social and societal readiness. There are some, more systemic attempts, and the DecarboN8 network is developing more. We also find many unintended consequences …
- Societal readiness levels can support formative evaluation of innovations, as ideas emerge. The UK government is advertising for a data expert to set up a ‘skunkworks’, that is, an experimental data analysis laboratory to explore the use of big data for achieving net zero.
- Place-based policy innovation could take on a very sophisticated character based on such analysis, combining data on where carbon emissions are the highest, could be combined with data on people’s voting patterns, constituency boundaries, and population sizes. The place-based ‘solutions’ that the department for Transport is looking for, may well be intended to identify the greatest polluting areas and to shape measures to encourage progress in decarbonising. But clever data analytics behind the closed doors of a skunkworks, not open to public engagement, could also open doors to measuring pollution in politically convenient ways. Such as not counting the many flights affluent citizens with their electric vehicles are taking. It could also politicize decarbonisation, helping to identify the most politically sensitive areas where strong measures may affect voting patterns, and translate into political reluctance to implement strong policies.
- We have worked with Technology Readiness levels for far too long. They can tell us if a technology is theoretically ready for markets and implementation. But they don’t allow people to assess how useful, useable, and societally good innovations are or what their unintended consequences might be. It leads to solutionism.
- What we need instead is responses that increase our response-ability to the climate emergency, co-created with and for society. A Societal readiness Framework provides us with a way of measuring the value, ethics, and usefulness of innovation, and it supports us in devising methodologies that make place, culture, social practices the focus of innovation, they can help make innovation accountable, collaborative, equitable, and support citizens to turn from passive consumers of ‘solutions’ to technologically and ethically competent data and carbon subjects.
- It can support more systemic innovations that break old car dependent infrastructures and patterns. PAUSE
- We know that mobility is a complex system, that there are many conflicting interests, stakeholders, and responsibilities PAUSE
- Societal Readiness Levels can support commoning mobilities, a collaborative approach, bringing everyday practice, engineering, policy, politics into dialogue. It doesn’t have to be lockdown, demand reduction, or decarbonisation of business as usual. SRL can support a truly innovative rethinking of how we can share mobility as a common collective good, not an individual right or freedom, with all the inequalities that brings.
- This is not a finished framework. We’re working on it. Your input would be invaluable. Thank you.