The MRFCJ Research Database maps ongoing climate justice research in third level institutions in Ireland and also identifies climate change, human rights or development research with potential to have a climate justice application. The database contains researcher details, research summaries, examples of research papers and information on links with research partners in developing countries.
facilitate networking and contact between researchers working in the field of climate justice
facilitate linkages between researchers in Ireland and in developing countries working on climate justice
assist MRFCJ to showcase and promote Irish climate justice research.
What type of research is showcased on the MRFCJ Research Database?
Climate justice encompasses issues at the cross section of human rights, climate change and development. The definition of Climate Justice MRFCJ uses is:
Climate justice links human rights and development to achieve a human-centered approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly. Climate justice insists that all the peoples of the world (and not just the rich and powerful) have a right to development. A developmental approach to climate justice recognises this fact while also demanding that it should be made both possible and attractive for such development to occur in a sustainable way.
MRFCJ has developed a process to identify actual and potential climate justice research based on information provided by third level institutions. For the purposes of this exercise, climate justice research falls into three research categories:
Human, Societal and Developmental aspects of Climate Change:
Research that focuses on the impacts of climate change on individuals and society and which considers climate change in the context of development and human rights.
Adaptation to the impacts of Climate Change:
Research which focuses on assisting the most vulnerable to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Equitable Low Carbon Development:
Research in the area of low carbon technologies and strategies for low carbon development, with a focus on providing opportunities for those living in low income, low emitting countries. Additional Note
We recognise that climate justice is a relatively new concept but we also know that there is research being undertaken in third level institutions in Ireland that has or could have a climate justice application.
For the purposes of this database, actual climate justice research projects are those which fall into at least one of the above categories. Some projects fall into more than one category. Detailed below are some examples of actual climate justice research projects:
Climate Justice Research Category: Human Societal and Developmental Aspects of Climate Change
Third Level Institution: National University of Ireland Galway
Research Project: Human Rights Implications of Climate Change: the accountability of states and companies
FACT - 2010 was one of the warmest years on record, tied with 2005 and 1998 (WMO).
FACT -The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998 (WMO).
FACT -The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is predicted to increase due to climate change (IPCC).
FACT - Both severe weather events and incremental changes to climate have human rights implications (Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights).
In her research, Laoise O’Connell, a PhD candidate at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway, is focusing on the last of these facts. This research will examine the legal means of solving the injustice arising from the burden of climate change falling heaviest on the inhabitants of developing countries, those who contribute least to the principal cause of contemporary climate change (i.e. greenhouse gas emissions).
Though it can only be hoped that effective mitigation measures will be taken by the international community to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, should current trends continue and the more severe predictions contained within the IPCC reports come about, the
question of what role the legal system can play in assisting the victims of climate change against the countries and companies that failed to control emissions will be key.
The study will note the flaws in the current Kyoto agreement, contend that its focus is too restrictive and will highlight its inefficacy in bringing about the necessary greenhouse gas emissions reductions to avoid the more extreme impacts of climate change.
The research will explore the case for including a human rights framework in any post 2012 agreement and assess the relevant existing legal obligations of states and companies in the context of climate change.
The study will document the rise of climate change litigation and will investigate its potential to act as a lever to achieve emissions reductions through international agreement or otherwise.
In summary, the purpose of the research is to identify and outline how states and private actors may be held accountable for extraterritorial and domestic violations of human rights caused by climate change based on available scientific evidence, through litigation and other accountability mechanisms.
Climate Justice Research Category: Adaptation to the Impacts of Climate Change
Third Level Institution: National University of Ireland Maynooth
Research Project: Transformative Education Network
Even if emissions are stabilised relatively soon, climate change and its effects will last many years, and adaptation will be necessary.
Adaptation or ability to reduce human vulnerability to climate change is especially important in developing countries since those countries are predicted to bear the brunt of the effects of climate change. The ability of people in developing countries to respond and adapt to climate change is hampered by social and economic disadvantages.
At the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM), departments of Geography, Adult and Community Education and Biology are engaged in a transformative education project that was established to enable communities, academics and policy-makers in Ireland, Malawi and Zambia to respond to the problems of climate change and food security. This project has been funded by Irish Aid and the Higher Education Authority (HEA).
The activities are located in site-specific communities of practice selected locally by the three African universities in Mzuzu and Zomba (in Malawi) and Lusaka (in Zambia) and the project will design a range of educational programmes for different groups and levels associated with the communities of practice, according to their needs and interests. Each community of practice is managed by a local researcher while a general research manager for the whole project is based in NUIM.
This project focuses on social as well as scientific capacity building, knowledge transfer and development. It plans to:
enhance the capacity of universities involved in this project to support and enable communities to develop adaptive responses to food security in a context of global climate change.
develop the interdisciplinary and partnership capacity within and between Irish and African universities in this work.
facilitate knowledge exchange between indigenous communities and academics.
enhance the capacity of the universities to work with other agencies who influence the lives of communities (including policy-makers and legislators at local and national level, teachers, community workers and university workers).
Research activities will include a review of existing literature and empirical studies on:
food security and adaptive practices in communities (including the collation of information on adaptive practice locally in association with agricultural communities and university workers. This will include baseline research on agricultural practices and socio-cultural research on motivational and adaptive factors)
research activities on food and climate science (collection and collation of scientific information on food security and climate change through desk research, networks and visits)
research on socio-cultural factors (including gender dynamics, community relations and production practices) and political dynamics of relationships (local, national and regional government, international agricultural and climate agencies, aid agencies, NGOs, community groups, and local communities). It will also include research on mediated communications about development, to design and monitor effective ways of communicating through local media outlets (local newspapers, radio, internet sites as appropriate) in Ireland, Malawi and Zambia.
Education and training courses will be designed by teams from the four universities and the communities in response to community needs and delivered locally in different formats.
The long term intention of the project is to develop a sustainable education project that will build the capacity of local communities to respond to the impact of climate change and the capacity of universities to support and enable communities.
This project involves policy-makers, higher education institutions and local communities in Ireland and Africa working together to develop greater food security for all.
Climate Justice Research Category: Equitable Low Carbon Development
Third Level Institution: Trinity College Dublin
Research Project: Renewable Energy Storage (RESTOR) Research Group
Approximately 20% of the world’s population live without access to electricity. Grid-based
electrification is often not available to remote villages and households, because of the high cost of expanding the grid network to these areas.
In response to this major issue of energy poverty, the RESTOR research group, headed by Dr. Tony Robinson in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in TCD, has been developing off-grid energy solutions for developing countries. These energy solutions are low carbon and sustainable and will allow people in remote areas to develop without increasing their carbon footprint.
Cookstoves Project
In developing countries, mainly wood, charcoal and other solid fuels are burned in inefficient and badly ventilated fires for heat and food preparation. The WHO has linked smoke from biomass fuels to many health problems, in particular:
acute infections of the lower respiratory tract (pneumonia) in young children, the chief killer of children worldwide and the disease responsible for the most lost life years in the world; and
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema, in adult women who have cooked over unvented solid fuel stoves for many years.
For more information regarding the international clean cook stove initiative see www.cleancookstoves.org.
The RESTOR group are developing a clean cook stove technology with an integrated electrical generator that will reduce the amount of wood consumed for typical cooking tasks by 50%, reduce air pollution by 50% and produce between 15-75Whr of electrical energy per day, enough to power several LED lamps, mobile phones, a small laptop or a radio as illustrated in the diagram below.
The following youtube video provides more information about this project:
This affordable cook stove will have numerous positive development outcomes e.g.:
reduction of health problems associated with traditional cook stoves
reduction of the amount of wood required for cooking and therefore helps prevent deforestation
possibility of communities accessing the carbon market if deployed in large enough numbers
quality of life improvement, in particular for women, will increase with use of this stove through both health benefits, shorter time spent cooking collecting fuel
The team has visited villages in Malawi and plans to have prototypes deployed in fall 2011 with large scale deployment of this technology in Malawi with Concern International and Irish Aid as partners in 2012. The stoves will be manufactured and assembled locally to reduce cost and provide a source of income.
Eternal Candle
In 2009, the research group developed the Eternal Candle which is a renewable solar heat storage technology for providing light in the developing world. This idea is awaiting patent approval and has been assisted in its development by Enterprise Ireland.
This is an off-grid white light-emitting diode (WLED) lantern which is powered by the sun. During the cooler night-time temperatures in dry desert-type climates such as sub-Saharan Africa and large regions of India, China and central Asia, the Eternal Candle converts the stored heat into electricity which drives the WLED. It is a lamp that requires no batteries and has no running costs.
Powering Laptops in Developing Countries
The RESTOR group has recently begun a project in collaboration with Intel with the aim of providing reliable off-grid power for low energy consumption laptops for schools in developing countries. The project, jointly sponsored by IRCSET and Intel, aims to develop novel technology that uses multiple power sources, such as wind, solar photovoltaic and thermoelectric, to provide rural schools with electricity for low power laptops with internet connectivity.
For the purposes of this database, potential climate justice research is research being carried out in the fields of climate change, human rights or development which could have a climate justice angle, by for example:
transferring know how or technologies to address climate change to developing countries
exploring the justice and equity aspects of the causes and solutions to climate change
research that contributes to protecting those most vulnerable to climate change and ensuring equitable access to the benefits of a low carbon future.
For further detail and examples of what we mean by potential climate justice research, click on the links below:
Potential Climate Justice Research - Human, Societal and Developmental Aspects of Climate Change
Human behaviour, including the ways in which we interact, needs to be understood in order to ensure that everyone in society can be a part of a low-carbon, climate resilient future.
On-going research on the human and societal aspects of climate change in Ireland could have relevance for those most marginalised in society. Equally, research being undertaken in relation to development and human rights could incorporate a climate change perspective. These projects are placed in our potential climate justice category for Human, Societal and Developmental Climate Change Research and some examples are set out below.
Ger Mullaly, in University College Cork, has done work on governance for sustainable development in Europe, assessing institutional capacity in relation to climate change and the role of decision making processes from the local to national.
The methodologies used and research outputs could be applicable to marginalised and vulnerable communities in other parts of the world who are working to understand climate change, communicate its impacts on their lives and implement effective adaptation and mitigation actions.
UCD’s PhD in Global Human Development is a full time ‘sandwich’ programme offered jointly to junior staff in universities in Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and China. (University of Dar Es Salaam, University of Malawi, University of Zimbabwe, National University of Rwanda and Xiamen University).
The purpose of the program is to pool the capacities of UCD and the respective partner universities to provide graduate research students and supervisors with the skills and resources necessary to conduct top class research in the field of Development.
Candidates are provided with the academic and intellectual tools to work on issues related to the Millennium Development Goals and Poverty Reduction through their respective core disciplines and place this within real-world experience and research in the developing world.
This PhD Program has the potential to build capacity and develop competencies in the area of climate change in the developing world and as such is a potential climate justice project in Human, Societal and Developmental Climate Change Research Category.
Potential Climate Justice Research – Adaptation to the Impacts of Climate Change
Communities in developed and developing countries need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Those who are most vulnerable often have the least access to adaptation tools.
Research in developed countries that could be easily transferred (either through knowledge transfer or technology transfer) is a potential climate justice project in the second category - Adaptation to the impacts of Climate Change – Research which focuses on assisting the most vulnerable to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
An example of this is the CoastAdapt project as described to the right:
CoastAdapt is a transnational project funded under the EU INTERREG 4B Northern Periphery Programme that aims to help coastal communities adapt to the impacts of climate change.
University College Cork and the University of Ulster are research partners in the project which engages with local stakeholders to share experiences and information throughout the region.
The project’s three main objectives are:
To reduce the risks brought by climate change
The development of adaptation tools
The implementation of these tools
The methods, outcomes and lessons learned from this study are directly applicable in a developing country context, hence this project is included in the database as a potential climate justice project in Adaptation to the impacts of Climate Change.
Potential Climate Justice Research – Equitable Low Carbon Development
In order to control carbon emissions, it is essential that we have low-carbon lives in both the developed and the developing world. In Ireland there are hundreds of researchers working on a sustainable energy future. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has mapped this research and the results are available on http://research.seai.ie.
Within the MRFCJ climate justice database we are focussed on sustainable energy research which is applicable to people living in developing countries with limited or no access to electricity and / or reliance on unsafe and dirty energy sources (such as kerosene, coal and manure). As such the emphasis is on small to medium scale affordable and appropriate energy solutions, many of which are off grid and suited to a variety of urban and rural contexts.
Researchers who feel their research falls into this category have been put into the database as potential Climate Justice Projects in the Equitable Low Carbon Development category. Some examples of these projects:
In the Centre for Environmental Research in the University of Limerick, Richard Moles and his colleagues have been working on a number of projects to enable Ireland to embrace low-carbon development. Some of these projects have potential applications in developing countries, for example:
Research into whether or not a rural community can be encouraged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions through the concomitant use of a community-based ecological footprint (EF) accounting system.
Spatial modelling of sustainability indicators and policy implications for sustainable development across three regions of Ireland.
Evaluation of the success of purpose built low-carbon neighbourhoods and villages in EU states. Research based in Ireland but applicable in the developing world.
Alberto Longo and George Hutchinson, researchers in economics, in the Gibson Institute in Queen’s University Belfast, are looking at the monetary benefits of reducing greenhouse gases emissions in the Basque Autonomous Community, in collaboration with BC3 Basque Centre for Climate Change and at consumer preferences for different energy sources in Chile. The methodologies and outputs of this research could be applicable in a developing country context.
In the Limerick Institute of Technology, Patrick Murray has been looking at marine algae as a source of biofuel.
In the Institute of Technology Carlow, David Dowling is researching the role of energy crops in energy supply, effluent disposal and soil remediation.
Paul MacArtain in Dundalk Institute of Technology is studying wind energy with a particular attention on small and medium wind energy systems and their design.
Researchers Stephen Daniels and Andrew Griffin in Dublin City University, in a public/private sector initiative with Cinergy, are developing and selling small off-grid renewable energy solutions. While this research is not carried out with the energy needs of developing countries in mind, it has the potential to contribute to positively to the objectives of the 2012 International Year of Sustainable Energy for All and the actions and targets associated with it.
