In this comprehensive Handbook, scholars from across the globe explore the relationships between workers and nature in the context of the environmental crises. They provide an invaluable overview of a fast-growing research field that bridges the social and natural sciences. Chapters provide detailed perspectives of environmental labour studies, environmental struggles of workers, indigenous peoples, farmers and commoners in the Global South and North. The relations within and between organisations that hinder or promote environmental strategies are analysed, including the relations between workers and environmental organisations, NGOs, feminist and community movements.

While urban settlements are the drivers of the global economy and centres of learning, culture, and innovation and nations rely on competitive dynamic regions for their economic, social, and environmental objectives, urban centres and regions face a myriad of challenges that impact the ways in which people live and work, create wealth, and interact and connect with places. Rapid urbanisation is resulting in urban sprawl, rising emissions, urban poverty and high unemployment rates, housing affordability issues, lack of urban investment, low urban financial and governance capacities, rising inequality and urban crimes, environmental degradation, increasing vulnerability to natural disasters and so forth. At the regional level, low employment, low wage growth, scarce financial resources, climate change, waste and pollution, and rising urban peri-urban competition etc. are impacting the ability of regions to meet socio-economic development goals while protecting biodiversity. The response to these challenges has typically been the application of inadequate or piecemeal solutions, often as a result of fragmented decision-making and competing priorities, with numerous economic, environmental, and social consequences. In response, there is a growing movement towards viewing cities and regions as complex and sociotechnical in nature with people and communities interacting with one another and with objects, such as roads, buildings, transport links etc., within a range of urban and regional settings or contexts. This comprehensive MRW will provide readers with expert interdisciplinary knowledge on how urban centres and regions in locations of varying climates, lifestyles, income levels, and stages development are creating synergies and reducing trade-offs in the development of resilient, resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, liveable, socially equitable, integrated, and technology-enabled centres and regions.

Since its founding in 2011, the Research Center on the Commons and Sustainable Society has been at the forefront of Commons Research in South Korea. This book brings together the discoveries and insights the Center has produced in its first decade, as a contribution to international commons research and to the understanding of the commons in South Korea particularly. Divided into five main parts, the book charts the course of commons research in South Korea. Part I surveys the historical background to commons thinking through the course of its foundation as a dictator-led developmental state through to its current democratic and neoliberal status quo. Following on from this, Part II looks at how diverse commons perspectives have taken root during this period. Part III then analyses the various specific fields through which commons research in Korea has grown. After this, Part IV presents the fruits of this commons research—the alternative policies and social actions that have been proposed for Korean society. Lastly, Part V addresses the remaining challenges which ongoing commons research in Korea is seeking to address. An insightful resource for scholars of both Korean political economy and commons studies more broadly.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This seminal book addresses the critical and urgent question of ‘what makes welfare states sustainable?’ in the era of climate change. Expert authors challenge traditional perspectives on questions of sustainability which have focused on population ageing, global economic turbulence and on containing current and future public social spending.

Globalisation, regionalisation, new technology, demography, voters’ expectations and re-structuring of societies are expected to influence welfare state development for years to come. This handbook analyses how different welfare state models and regimes will be able to cope with contemporary and future challenges, providing a variety of evidence based tools that make it essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers alike.

Consumer (co-)ownership in renewable energy (RE) is essential to the overall success of Energy Transition. In June 2018, the European Union agreed on a corresponding enabling framework as part of a recast of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II). The transposition of these comprehensive rules – in particular those on local RE communities – requires developing, implementing and rolling out business models that broaden the capital participation of consumers. The challenge is to include municipalities and/or commercial investors like SMEs and advance to economies of scale while retaining the benefits of individual consumer participation. This book is addressed to energy consumers in local communities, their municipalities and to the policy makers who represent them. Additionally, non-EU countries, in particular those where rural areas have limited access to energy, e.g. in Asia, Africa and Latin America, may be interested in the benefits of consumer ownership. While demand for energy in developing countries is growing, access to energy is crucial for improving the quality of life. The editor of this book presents a new model of consumer ownership in RE for both the EU and countries worldwide. Part One describes the rationale for consumer ownership in RE with regard to social, organizational, legal and financial conditions. Part Two discusses the issue of financing RE and introduces a new financing technique, the Consumer Stock Ownership Plan (CSOP), comparing it to traditional models. Part Three provides 18 country studies from Europe, North America, South America and Asia, organized so as to enable a cross-country comparison of policy approaches and feasibility. Policy recommendations are based on the results of this survey. Part Four summarizes, compares the best practice cases, presents a cost-benefit analysis of “prosumage” and against this background evaluates the impact on future policy.

Energy transition is a complex global problem, with governance and policies cutting across multiple legal silos including human rights, environment, international economics, finance, energy, law of the sea, and transnational commerce. As of yet, there is no comprehensive treatment of the legal principles governing energy transition as a whole. Furthermore, energy transition must solve a trilemma that pits energy equity (the need to provide access to energy needed to fuel human development) and energy security (the need to provide resilient and reliable energy systems) against environmental sustainability. Without a comprehensive understanding of these issues, law and policy-makers risk exacerbating rather than resolving the underlying problems. Principles of International Energy Transition Law introduces the energy transition problem by situating the climate emergency in its broader energy and development context, showing how global energy value chains are deeply enmeshed in and drive global economic and human development. It combines the different legal perspectives in one consistent analysis by outlining their interactions and showing how they can be reconciled. The book discusses thirty-two international legal principles governing different aspects of the energy transition trilemma's three parts. It then uses a commons governance perspective to propose a holistic approach to applying and balancing these different parts and their different legal principles. Highlighted sections summarise the most important concepts and ideas for easy reference, making the title particularly accessible for students and policy-makers as well as law practitioners.

The Fukushima disaster of 2011 shook the globe, arousing warm debate and new research within the academic fields of countries in both the West and the East on issues related to nuclear security, public trust, government governance, risk governance and risk perception along with technological and social aspects. The Fukushima incident not only revealed the importance of risk governance in the East Asian region, but also became an important turning point in the restructuring of energy in several East Asian nations. However, the regulatory culture in East Asian countries is by nature different to that of their western counterparts; the history and culture of East Asia has formed East Asian countries’ unique regulatory characteristics. This book aims to establish a risk governance structure for the East Asian region, providing a completely new perspective for both practical implementation and the academic field. It focusses on the problems of risk governance in East Asia. Through a discussion of the risk related issues raised by contemporary globalization, this book outlines the unique form of East Asia’s risk governance architecture. It brings together the work of top academics from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to provide a common picture of how these three countries’ governments are dealing with the energy transition brought on by the climate change crisis. The various aspects of East Asia’s unique regulatory culture and governance models are placed into context, while East Asia’s risk governance theoretical framework is outlined.

The Energy Transition, the inevitable shift away from cheap, centralized, largely fossil-based energy systems, is one of the core challenges of our time. This book provides a coherent and novel insight into the nature of this challenge and possible strategies to accelerate and guide such transitions. It brings together prominent European scholars and practitioners from the fields of energy transition research and governance to draw attention to the current complex dynamics in the energy domain, and offer elegant and provocative explanations for current crises and lock-ins. They identify multiple energy transition pathways that emerge and increasingly compete, and emphasize the need and possibilities for novel governance. By analysing the complexity of energy transition processes and the difficulties in shifting to sustainable pathways, this text questions the extent to which actually governing energy transitions is already reality, just an illusion, or a bare necessity.