The dynamics of technological systems integration: Water management, electricity supply, railroads and industrialization at the Göta Älv (original) (raw)
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Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 2012
This paper uses a case study on the evolution of the Rhine river delta to illustrate the coevolution of the environment, the technology used to exploit it, and the institutions governing it. Three strands are interwoven: (1) Achieving equilibrium between protecting and utilizing land is difficult. In this area, as a result of exploitation, agriculture on fertile peat is succeeded by stock raising on infertile peat, peat extraction, inundation, and drainage to regain fertile soil. (2) In the dynamic between collective and individual action that accompanies these changes, individuals beget institutions and institutions beget individuals. (3) New technologies are invented, helping overcome challenges posed by the natural environment. Their unexpected consequences undermine the solutions found, leading to new technologies, etc. The ultimate cause is the interaction between human cognition and action. Our cognition is limited in the number of dimensions it can simultaneously handle, and our action (directly or indirectly) affects all the dimensions of the complex adaptive system that is the environment, triggering unintended consequences, and new actions. This feedback takes the system from perceived challenges to solutions to new, unintended challenges, driving the region further and further from its point of departure, towards the bottom of the sea.
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Critical Review of Integrated Water Resources Management
Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) emerged as a popular concept in the water sector in the 20th century. From a highly techno-centric approach in the past, it has taken a new turn embracing Habermasian communicative rationality as a place-based nexus for multiple actors to consensually and communicatively integrate decisions in a hydrological unit. The 'how to integrate' approach had remarkable appeal worldwide in promoting authentic participation of all stakeholders. However, critics argue that the domain of water resource management is a political process of contestation and negotiation; the emphasis is on complexities, contextuality, power dynamics and the importance of analysing real world situations. They demonstrate 'how integration cannot be achieved' given the power dynamics in social interactions. These apparently contradictory discourses draw on different theoretical paradigms and polarise the discourse on IWRM, without offering constructive alternatives. To this end, this paper offers an option to complement this polarised discourse by examining 'how integration actually does take place' in a strategic context thereby facilitating consensual decisions to integrate water management for a sustainable future.
Land Use Policy, 2013
The EU Water Framework Directive introduces the principle of integrated river basin management, incorporating both the idea of spatial fit between ecosystems and social systems and a requirement to integrate water management across scales and sectors. In designing their implementation setups, member states must therefore address both the roles of different institutional actors and the interplay among institutions. In this paper, we will explore strengths and weaknesses of different institutional arrangements for integrated water management through a comparative analysis of river basin management planning processes in six countries around the Baltic Sea. We use theories on multi-level governance, regime interplay and institutional effectiveness. We find that, in most cases, central governments have played a dominant role in the formulation of river basin management plans, while local influence has been somewhat limited. The tight procedural deadlines of the directive appear to have pushed for more centralisation than originally intended by the countries. But the analysis also shows that interplay mechanisms such as norms, ideas and incentives do promote effective institutional interplay and may serve to overcome coordination problems of implementation structures. Moreover, it is expected that institutional interplay will improve over time resulting in more integrated management.
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Local decisions in the Finnish energy production network—a socio-technical perspective
Landscape and Urban Planning, 2002
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to evaluate decisions on local energy production in the context of the national energy production system in Finland. The article is based on two case studies on the establishment of district heating. A particular focus is placed on the choice between forest fuel and heavy fuel oil in these two cases in the late 1970s in Finland.Energy production is on a general level understood from the point of view of the national scale. For instance, the Finnish energy production is discussed as a whole, which enforces us to use averages and generalisations when describing the system. Energy production is however, always local action with concrete local solutions, production plants and systems as well as local environmental impact.The national scale is comprised of local scale solutions as well as national scale tendencies, which interact. This study tries to understand the complex relationship between these two interacting scales by focusing on concrete action at the local scale development.According to the results of this study, the national scale, the mainstream, dominates, but does not determinate, the decision-making at the local level. Energy production is a socio-technical system. The development of this system is dominated by a technological momentum, which in turn is threatened by human or non-human innovator-promoters. Innovator-promoters are manifestation of the openness of the socio-technical system: the system is not a deterministic closed system, but open to change.The role of technological momentum and innovator-promoters explain the complex development of the socio-technical system both at the local and national scale. The study conforms strongly to the notion that local scale pioneering decisions are possible, and encourages the belief that these pioneering decisions can shape the development at the national scale and turn the development of it into new trajectories.
The facilitation of small hydropower in Switzerland: shaping the institutional framework
Proceedings of the Hidroenergia 2010 Congress, 2010
The paper aims to contribute towards further shaping of the institutional framework in Switzerland in order to facilitate the development of small hydropower (<10MW). The context of the research is the current liberalisation process of the electricity sector, the forthcoming electricity gap and the government's aim to increase the weight of renewable energy sources (RES), as well as post-Kyoto regulation. Small hydropower (SHP) has, generally, a higher energy ratio and lower production costs than other RES, and should therefore be further facilitated. In addition, decentralised and small-scale pump-storage schemes can contribute to further integrated stochastic RES production and the regulation of the grid. In 2008, SHP produced 5.4 % of the Swiss electricity production. The potential is only partially tapped and current estimates show that the use of this potential could be increased by 60-100 %. The technology is well developed and several mechanisms within the institutional framework already exist to facilitate SHP (e.g. newly introduced feed-in tariffs scheme) although further evolution of the institutional side is needed. Based on the literature of co-evolution between technologies and institutions, and based on the coherence framework, ideas are developed of how to improve the institutional framework. Firstly, the dynamics of the electricity sector have to be considered such as the trend of decentralisation and the need of additional storage capacities to absorb within the infrastructure the stochastic electricity production. Climate policies influence the electricity sector as well and more coherence between energy and climate policies is needed. Secondly, the application of the coherence framework to the SHP case shows that institutions have to be coherent in size and scope with the technology. More standardisation is required to reduce transaction costs. On the technical side, standards could contribute to a technical standardisation of SHP thus improving the quality of the implementation of the technology. This is necessary as with the liberalisation new actors have entered the market without always having all the needed competencies. Furthermore, the idea of including pump-storage power plants below 10 MW within the institutional framework which facilitates SHP is developed. The deployment of such plants could be boosted within multipurpose infrastructure and the rehabilitation of existing plants. It is therefore mainly the institutions which have to further evolve to be better aligned with the well developed SHP technology, and which have to include new ideas such as SHP pump-storage schemes. This will lead to further deploy RES and contribute to climate change mitigation.