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Unlike numerous European Union member states, Norway lacks an explicit definition of energy poverty and targeted alleviation policies. Historically associated with energy abundance thanks to its early capitalisation on hydropower attributes, the country offers a fertile context to investigate the changing impact of Europe's turn towards energy security amid geopolitical turbulence and resultant impacts at household level. We report on the first study to address this directly in Norway by analysing its energy poverty policy mix. The policy mix literature has identified coherence, credibility and comprehensiveness as desirable aspects for effectiveness. Based on a top-down approach through a desk study of relevant policies, and a bottom-up approach using an expert focus group discussion, we identify and explain the implications of Norway's diffuse energy poverty policy mix. Measures address symptoms rather than underlying causes through short-term populist policies and misdirect support in ways that risk increasing inequity while failing to ameliorate energy poverty for vulnerable households. While Norway's broader welfare system offers social protection, the lack of a definition of energy poverty, ambiguous institutional responsibility, and weak coherence of policy measures limit policy mix effectiveness, while failing to furnish a firm base for its credible and comprehensive treatment.
Despite comparable solar irradiation and strong economic capacity, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden exhibit markedly different solar photovoltaics (PV) deployment trajectories. By 2025, Denmark and Sweden had each surpassed 5 GW of installed PV capacity, while Finland and Norway had only recently reached 1 GW. This paper explains these divergent outcomes by comparing market dimensions, energy resource endowments, and policy development across these four Nordic countries. Secondary data on PV deployment, electricity prices, cost of capital, energy mixes, and policy instruments shows that differences in solar diffusion cannot explain the different deployment rates. Instead, deployment patterns are strongly shaped by policy design, timing, and stability, and by how PV competes with incumbent low-carbon resources. Countries with early, generous, but unstable support schemes experienced rapid yet volatile growth, while more gradual and predictable policy frameworks enabled steadier expansion. Further, high end-user electricity prices and access to low-cost capital have favored distributed, self-consumption-oriented PV, whereas weak incentives and complex permitting have constrained utility-scale deployment. These findings highlight how accountable energy governance-through clear targets, stable policy frameworks, and limited politicization-conditions solar PV diffusion in wealthy latecomer countries. The identified key dynamics are broadly applicable to wealthy latecomers in national energy transitions.
Farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS) deliver the bulk of seeds used by smallholder farmers in many countries of the Global South. Community-based agrobiodiversity management is a participatory approach to strengthening FMSS from within, often undertaken in collaboration with scientists and breeders. Community seed banks (CSBs) are central to this approach. While well-managed CSBs are widely recognised for their potential to enhance seed and food security and support climate-change adaptation, research-based evidence remains limited. This study fills in this gap by analysing the functions of CSBs in FMSS, their contributions to climate-resilient seed systems and how this affects local seed security. The findings are based on a comparative, qualitative in-depth case study of 17 CSBs, covering five CSBs each in Ethiopia and Malawi, and seven CSBs in Nepal. Our study highlights how CSBs contribute to conserving crop diversity and making it available locally. We also show how some CSBs contribute to variety enhancement and/or development, providing collaborative platforms for plant breeders and farmers. Another important function is capacity building in seed management and farming methods. The CSBs have helped farmers adapt their agricultural production to climate change by providing quality seeds of climate-resilient crop varieties in time for planting, and through capacity building in suitable farming methods. The study demonstrates how these CSBs have contributed to local seed security. However, not all varieties are always available, amounts may vary, and there have been instances of genetic erosion. In most cases, seeds are widely distributed through farmer-to-farmer-exchange and trade. Nevertheless, challenges of scale are evident, as the number of CSBs are limited, the numbers of members and farmers served by the CSBs vary, and CSB growth strategies have had only limited success. We conclude that CSBs perform multiple functions and that their contributions to developing climate-resilient seed systems are significant but have thus far been confined to relatively small segments of farmers.
Smallholder farmers in the Global South largely rely on seed accessed from farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS) for their seed security. Community seed banks (CSBs) have emerged to manage and enhance the diversity of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) and make it accessible to farmers. However, the connections between farmers' access to crop genetic diversity and food security and the contributions of CSBs remain understudied. We address this gap by exploring the following questions: (1) How does access to PGRFA affect food security among smallholder farmers in the Global South? (2) How do CSBs contribute in this regard? (3) What are the gender-specific aspects and implications of these findings? Using Zotero, we conducted a narrative literature review with a qualitative analysis of 85 relevant peer-reviewed publications. Our findings indicate that access to PGRFA positively influences the six dimensions of food security, although to varying degrees, and that well-functioning CSBs contribute substantially to this end. Women often benefit from being CSB members. However, the technical and financial sustainability of many CSBs is poor and their outreach is limited. Enabling political, legal and institutional environments is integral to realizing the food security potential of FMSS and CSBs.
