{"id":1769,"date":"2022-10-05T14:25:38","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T13:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/sci\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2024-08-19T13:15:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T12:15:19","slug":"remaking-infrastructures-in-response-to-sustainability-and-climate-emergencies-challenges-strategies-and-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/sci\/2022\/10\/05\/remaking-infrastructures-in-response-to-sustainability-and-climate-emergencies-challenges-strategies-and-opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"(Re)making infrastructures in response to sustainability and climate emergencies: Challenges, strategies, and opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Torik Holmes, Carla De Laurentis, and Rebecca Windemer examine how infrastructures are acting as platforms through which solutions to climate emergencies can transpire.<\/span><\/h5>\n

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On the 30th of June 2022, Torik Holmes<\/a>, from the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI), Carla De Laurentis<\/a> and Rebecca Windemer<\/a> (both from the University of the West of England) hosted an in-person workshop on infrastructures and climate emergencies. The event drew together thirty-six researchers, with academic homes in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Australia.<\/p>\n

The workshop was premised on the idea that infrastructures play a dual role with regards to the constitution of climate emergencies and attempts to respond to these. We thus set out with a shared understanding that infrastructures form \u2018locks\u2019 and \u2018keys\u2019 – helping to perpetuate and hold in place ways of life that lead to states of emergency, while also acting as platforms through which solutions can (and must) transpire.<\/p>\n

The workshop provided a stage to discuss and explore the conceptual and practical challenges associated with this symbiotic understanding of climate-related challenges. It further facilitated a consideration of linked themes, including: materiality; spatiality and scale; temporality and timeframes; and other social, political, and economic dimensions of the topic at hand.<\/p>\n

\"Comic-like

Illustration of a city outline against a backdrop of hills, roads and power masts.<\/p><\/div>\n

Roundtable discussions around digital, transport, electricity, gas, water, and waste networks were preceded by two keynote presentations. Adam Peirce (Climate Emergency Manchester<\/a>) zoomed in on Manchester and considered the links between the declaration of a climate emergency in the city and subsequent political practice and policy. Adam called for a thorough examination of situated political processes as part of trying to keep authorities true to their word. As part of doing so, he drew attention to the importance of trying to understand how political authorities function, who makes key\u00a0decisions, where these are made, and whom and what purposes these serve. Adam highlighted the gap between discourse and political practice arguing that it is crucial to pinpoint empirical examples of infrastructural investment and built development as part of developing understandings and holding the powers at be to account.<\/p>\n

Adam\u2019s presentation was followed by a talk by Professor Matthew Paterson<\/a> (Director of the Sustainable Consumption Institute). Prof Paterson discussed how infrastructure has been treated as an object of climate governance over the past three decades. The fetishism and hegemonic status of climate markets has arguably meant that the socio-material functioning and implications of systems of supply and consumption have been reduced to relatively abstract sets of numbers. In turn, the infrastructural threads of climate challenges and emergencies have largely remained masked and fruitful opportunities for adaptation and mitigation under explored and neglected. Prof Paterson suggested that the tide appears to be turning, somewhat, with national governments and international agencies increasingly seeing climate change as an infrastructural conundrum. Whether this shift will materialise in a sea-change that goes beyond market-oriented measures and tinkering remains unclear. Past approaches suggest such a shift is unlikely though. Prof Paterson\u2019s most recent book – In Search of Climate Politics<\/em><\/a> \u2013 provides further context regarding why this is the case.<\/p>\n

The presentations provided strong footings for our round table discussions, within which participants introduced their research and addressed the following set of questions:<\/p>\n