Loughborough University
Browse

Visualizing Nepal’s electricity supply resilience from a whole-systems perspective: A participatory approach

Download (692.84 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2021-12-01, 11:16 authored by Xinfang Wang, Louise Reardon, Long Seng ToLong Seng To
Energy resilience is a complex issue, encapsulating a diversity of factors. Such complexity makes effective policymaking difficult, and requires a whole-systems approach. This paper argues that the bottom-up participatory causal loop mapping method can be helpful in facilitating a shared understanding of the issues, and can help facilitate the application of a whole-systems approach to the design of effective policy interventions. Focusing on Nepal as a case study, this paper outlines the participatory approach, highlighting the method’s value in visualising the variables and interconnections affecting the resilience of Nepal’s electricity supply. Through the mapping, participants identified four interconnected groups of factors as important for resilience: governance, technology, economic and social. Within these, political leadership was noted as particularly important. Environmental factors were largely absent, which is an interesting result given the emphasis on renewable sources and clean technologies in energy policy in Nepal. The outcomes of our bottom-up participatory approach show the significant benefit of using this approach for highlighting context-dependent understandings of complex issues and represents a novel methodological innovation for energy research, which could be applied in diverse geographies and contexts.

Funding

Institute for Global Innovation (IGI) of the University of Birmingham

Royal Academy of Engineering under the Research Fellowship scheme

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Energy Research & Social Science

Volume

85

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Elsevier

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Energy Research & Social Science and the definitive published version us available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102409.

Acceptance date

2021-11-11

Publication date

2021-11-27

Copyright date

2021

ISSN

2214-6296

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Long Seng To. Deposit date: 30 November 2021

Article number

102409

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC