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A-3/21 Path-dependencies in Norwegian dairy and beef farming communities: Implications for climate mitigation

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Summary

Within Norwegian agriculture, combined dairy and beef production has been identified as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and thus targeted for significant reductions. The article examines the path dependency of the dairy and beef production system in Norway and focuses on identifying lock-ins. The authors used qualitative methods to gather information from stakeholder meetings in Trøndelag and Rogaland counties. They explored the stakeholders’ responses to two different visions of agriculture in the future: the improved utilisation of outfields using Norwegian Red cattle and increasing production per animal by using feed concentrates. Six key areas of lock-in were identified: technology investment, culture, feeding strategy, policy, access to new farmland through moorland conversion, and ownership of the climate issue. The findings suggest that the current pathway in agriculture is strongly locked into production orientation through these lock-ins, making a production reduction option difficult to implement. There was also widespread belief among the stakeholders that the system of combined dairy and beef production was a climate-friendly option, suggesting that farmers are not convinced that a change in this direction is required. The authors conclude that the option of reducing production would be difficult to implement without addressing the multiple lock-in effects.

A-1/21 Women’s belongings in UK fisheries

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Summary

Research on gender in fisheries often argue that women’s contributions are important to the functioning of fisheries and are worthy of recognition. However, this has so far failed to consider how women experience and practice belonging to fisheries. This paper structures the analysis of women’s narratives around three conceptualisations of belonging: i) how women perform place-belongingness; ii) the politics of belonging; and iii) more-than-human co-constructions of belongings. To develop the conceptual approach, the paper synthesises these three concepts with an understanding of belonging as fluid and adaptable to particular situated relationships. In doing so, the paper explores how women’s gendered belongings are co-constructed and performed in the male-oriented UK fisheries contexts. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews, the paper finds that women’s practices of belonging make and maintain fishing communities and places, and that women’s practices of belonging both confirm and challenge longstanding notions of who belongs in the fishery – with women fishers challenging socio-spatial exclusions in fishing. Women’s belongings in fishing were further co-constructed in relation to the more-than-human such as fishing materialities, smells, non-human animals and the ocean. The concept of belonging helps to highlight the processes of becoming with fish, fishing and the fishery – even when there are no clear identities and identifications available for the women involved. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1873748

A-29/20 A Systems Engineering Framework for Bioeconomic Transitions in a Sustainable Development Goal Context

Article
Summary

To address sustainable development goals (SDGs), national and international strategies have been increasingly interested in the bioeconomy. SDGs have been criticized for lacking stakeholder perspectives and agency, and for requiring too little of business. There is also a lack of both systematic and systemic frameworks for the strategic planning of bioeconomy transitions. Using a systems engineering approach, we seek to address this with a process framework to bridge bioeconomy transitions by addressing SDGs. In this methodology paper, we develop a systems archetype mapping framework for sustainable bioeconomy transitions, called MPAST: Mapping Problem Archetypes to Solutions for Transitions. Using this framework with sector-specific stakeholder data facilitates the establishment of the start (problem state) and end (solution state) to understand and analyze sectorial transitions to the bioeconomy. We apply the MPAST framework to the case of a Norwegian agricultural bioeconomy transition, using data from a survey of the Norwegian agricultural sector on transitioning to a bioeconomy. The results of using this framework illustrate how visual mapping methods can be combined as a process, which we then discuss in the context of SDG implementation. Sustainability 2020, 12(16), 6650