The UK, as part of its policy framework response to the ever-mounting evidence of anthropogenic climate change (Hansen et al. 2015, 2016), has passed ambitious legislation committing the government to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the 1990 baseline by 2050 (H.M. Government 2008). This is an ambitious commitment to an overwhelming challenge, as briefly reviewed below.
Since the Industrial Revolution, and rapidly picking up pace following the end of the Second World War, humanity has presided over a dramatic increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases triggering climatic change and global warming (Hansen et al. 2005; EEA 2012). Such increases are associated with the release of vast quantities of primarily carbon dioxide (CO2). In turn, these increases trigger positive (amplifying) feedback in the form of warming melting the permafrost and releasing unknown volumes of methane1 (CH4) (Hansen et al. 2007; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 2014).
Such changes in atmospheric chemistry are amplified by a diminishing planetary albedo, caused by melting polar ice caps and glaciers. As the planet gradually blackens , it absorbs more heat than it reflects. Taken together, the systemic properties of the greenhouse effect, leading to global warming and climate change impacts, give rise to a positive feedback loop as a continued escalation of those very properties of the system that bring about amplified change. The pace at which these changes are accelerating suggests that previous assessments of an accepted upper global temperature tolerance level set at â2 °C now represents the threshold of extremely dangerous climate change â, and yet remains a level society may have âlittle to no chance of maintainingâ (Anderson and Bows 2011: 41).
In addition to clear existential risks from climate change , evidence is mounting of a perfect storm of converging threats which has been designated the Anthropocene epoch (the age of the human) (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Zalasiewicz et al. 2010; Verburg et al. 2015). While its precise point of origin is currently under debate a number of candidate starting points have been mooted. For example, one candidate is the dawn of agriculture when humans first sought to control and bend nature to our own ends (Lyons et al. 2015), while another is the Industrial Revolution and the magnification in scale of human power afforded by burning fossil fuels (Waters et al. 2016).
However, consensus has recently converged around the detonation of the first atomic devices in July 1945 during the Trinity nuclear tests as the most likely point at which the Anthropocene started, because globe-wide changes in the stratigraphic record can be identified in the sudden appearance of plutonium, caesium, and strontium at this time (Waters et al. 2015). The significance of this new epoch is that it signals the end of the Holocene , a period of some 11,500 years characterised by moderate and stable temperature ranges conducive to human development and flourishing. In contrast, the newly emerging epoch is characterised by profound uncertainty and risk for the future of human civilisation.
There are a number of markers associated with the dawn of the Anthropocene , in addition to the sudden marked appearance of radioactive isotopes. Evidence for the new epoch includes climate change , the human precipitation of a sixth biological mass extinction event (Novacek and Cleland 2001; Ceballos et al. 2015), patterns of transgressing planetary processes beyond a safe operating space (Röckstrom et al. 2009), and significant changes to land cover biomes (Haberl et al. 2007; Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2014) and hydrological systems (Nilsson et al. 2005).
In addition to these key markers, more recent estimates are that intensive agriculture has reduced arable soil to the extent that there are approximately 60 years of harvests left in the available soil resources (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO] and Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils [ITPS] 2015), while the regeneration of three centimetres of top soil is a process that takes up to 1000 years. When these anthropogenic impacts are viewed collectively, some have been prompted to reconsider the utility of concepts such as sustainability in favour of a renewed emphasis on adaptation . Such emphasis necessitates radical changes to economic infrastructures and our modus vivendi (Dumanoski 2009; Craig and Benson 2013; Benson and Craig 2014; Foster 2015). Still others have even begun contemplating the likelihood of an end to civilisation as we know it (Kingsnorth and Hine 2009; Diamond 2011; Scranton 2015). Clearly, threats to human sustainability exemplify, par excellence, a wicked problem (Rittel and Webber 1973), characterised as a set of challenges that have no definitive formulation, that tend not to resolve in a true or false outcome and which have no specific stopping point.
Against these alarming and apocalyptic trends, the UK government introduced a national community energy strategy, in which are outlined the scope of the anticipated contribution community-based sustainability (CBS) projects can make to helping the government attain its 80% reductions, as per the Climate Change Act 2008. Building on the devolution of powers enshrined in the UK Localism Act (H.M. Government 2011), the national community energy strategy calls upon CBS projects to contribute to a rigorous and robust âevidence baseâ, in order to demonstrate âtheir effectiveness, financial sustainability and wider social benefits to secure investmentâ (Department of Energy and Climate Change [DECC] 2014: 45). As per the Localism Act 2011, CBS projects are becoming increasingly expected by policy-makers to contribute to the establishment and control of localised community-scale sources of energy supply and demand management (Bradley 2014; Aiken 2015).
As the policy and performance pressures on CBS practitioners mount, it is apparent that funded CBS projects are coming under increasing scrutiny to not only deliver on community sustainability outcomes, but to be able to evidence the extent of this delivery. This mounting pressure ups the ante, in turn, for CBS practitioners to ensure that their monitoring and evaluation (M&E ) practices are appropriately framed in order to make a strong case for demonstrating the added value...