ABSTRACT This article examines the position of small businesses within just transitions to net zero agri‐food systems. Decarbonising global agri‐food systems is fundamental to net zero goals. Decarbonisation processes have varying implications for different people and across different geographies, prompting concerns for equity and inclusion. In this context, there has been a growing concern for a ‘just transition’ to net zero. To date, small businesses have not been considered a concern for just transition, but examination of the agri‐food system highlights their importance in achieving an inclusive and equitable transition. Drawing from a semi‐systematic literature review, we provide a thematic analysis of agri‐food transitions, synthesising a novel research agenda through combining agri‐food just transition and small business decarbonisation scholarship. In our review, we (1) investigate existing understanding of the position of small businesses within agri‐food transitions; (2) produce a framework to analyse implications for small firms under different transition pathways; and (3) outline the transition‐induced justice considerations that arise. Highlighting key research gaps and moving beyond existing literature, we develop an archetypal transitions framework to conceptualise and better understand what a just transition for agri‐food small businesses looks like in three different, but interrelated, pathways: (a) agri‐food system localisation; (b) demand‐led dietary transitions; and (c) intensive tech‐led transitions. Analysing these pathways, we identify key points of opportunity and challenge for different types of business across the agri‐food supply chain. Through case study examples, we uncover the interrelationships and trade‐offs that net zero transitions create for small businesses. Providing broader implications for agri‐food sustainability, our framework shapes future research avenues, allowing for rethinking of small business agri‐food just transitions and reimagining more equitable agri‐food systems, built upon solidarity.
ABSTRACT High electrification rates can conceal persistent forms of energy poverty when access is measured as a grid/no‐grid condition. This study examines electricity access as a situated and post‐connection process in Eswatini, a small, landlocked country with a comparatively high electrification rate, strong import dependence on South Africa and uneven rural/peri‐urban energy practices. Drawing on mixed‐methods fieldwork in two rural communities and two peri‐urban informal settlements, and on a 2017 Population and Housing Census enumeration‐area (EA) energy dataset, the paper demonstrates that electricity access is shaped by affordability, reliability, repair geographies and the availability of alternative fuels. The findings demonstrate that grid connection does not necessarily translate into sufficient energy access: electricity is widely used for lighting and phone charging, while cooking remains strongly differentiated by place. Nationally, the EA data show much higher electricity use for lighting than for cooking, and a pronounced rural dependence on firewood. Qualitative data indicate that rural households with grid connections continued to rely heavily on firewood, while peri‐urban households combined electricity with propane, paraffin and candles. The paper contributes to critical energy geographies by theorising Eswatini as a liminal energy geography positioned between South Africa's grid‐centred electricity system and the off‐grid/pay‐as‐you‐go solar regimes more prominent in eastern and parts of southern Africa. It argues that energy access research and policy must move beyond infrastructural connection, towards sufficiency, reliability, affordability and clean‐cooking transitions that reflect the spatial and relational realities of household energy use.
ABSTRACT Flooding in urban informal settlements (UIS) is often analysed through physical hazard exposure, yet risk extends beyond location. Social differentiation and political marginalisation also shape who is most affected, how impacts are experienced and ultimately how vulnerability is understood in UIS. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between May and August 2025 in Mukuru kwa Reuben, an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, this study examines how biophysical, socio‐economic, institutional and political factors interact to shape vulnerability to floods, situating the analysis within critical debates on urban informality and climate justice. Grounded in urban political ecology enhanced with gendered perspectives, the study uses a sequential mixed‐methods approach that integrates GIS‐based flood mapping, participatory mapping, focus group discussions, household surveys ( N = 220) and policy analysis to capture both spatial patterns and differentiated lived experiences of vulnerability. The findings reveal that whereas low‐lying topography and poor drainage drive exposure, vulnerability is intensified by insecure tenure, precarious livelihoods, gendered care burdens and overlapped and fragmented governance. Hybrid mapping uncovers localised ‘risk microenvironments’ often invisible to formal models, showing the benefit of plural methodology to capture complex and situated realities. The study advances flood vulnerability in UIS as a governance–exposure assemblage, showing how biophysical exposure becomes socially consequential through tenure insecurity, fragmented service provision, selective enforcement, unequal resource access, precarious livelihoods and uneven recognition of informal settlements in urban planning. Insights from Mukuru carry wider relevance for rapidly urbanising cities across Africa, showing that reducing flood vulnerability requires addressing not only hydrological exposure, but also infrastructural deficits, tenure insecurity, governance failures and entrenched inequalities.
ABSTRACT Livelihood vulnerability assessments in developing nations have traditionally focused on rural agrarian settings, analysing environmental shocks through a strictly hydro‐meteorological lens. However, peri‐urban areas are critical socio‐spatial interfaces where state‐led urban encroachment acts as a concurrent, compounding macro‐stressor alongside climate variability. Arguing against standard, climate‐only frameworks, this study demonstrates that peri‐urban vulnerability is a multi‐stressor outcome of both climatic and rapid land‐use transformations. Employing a mixed‐methods approach, the study utilised the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) framework with data from a survey of 345 households, complemented by qualitative insights from Focus Group Discussions (FGD). The LVI‐IPCC results (on a scale of −1 to +1) reveal a state of moderate vulnerability (mean = −0.029), representing a fragile equilibrium where limited adaptive capacity barely offsets rising exposure. High sensitivity (0.586) emerged as the most acute dimension, driven by the interaction of urban encroachment (eroding the natural asset base) and climate variability (undermining crop productivity). This dual pressure acts as a vulnerability multiplier, threatening long‐term sustainability by trapping households in high‐risk subsistence cycles. Although farmers possess strong human (0.628) and social capital (0.554), their adaptive capacity is severely constrained by deficits in physical and financial capital, particularly the lack of rural electrification and income diversification (0.428). The study concludes that traditional resilience is being systematically overwhelmed. Actionable recommendations include implementing participatory land‐use zoning to protect agricultural buffers, institutionalising micro‐insurance schemes for crop loss and providing vocational training to youth to reduce dependence on shrinking farmland and ensure long‐term peri‐urban resilience.
ABSTRACT Rest is increasingly presented as a key solution to the challenge of rising workplace temperatures under climate change. Yet, despite this growing importance, the scientific literature often treats the relationship between rest and core temperature simplistically, viewing rest as a passive recovery tool essential for cooling the body and maintaining productivity. We frame this dominant approach as the ‘recovery‐productivity calculus’ that underpins current debates on rest‐based heat interventions, such as the Threshold Limit Values that allocate rest schedules in response to heat risk. This paper presents a critical review of rest under heat stress, arguing that the recovery‐productivity calculus overlooks the dynamic, subjective and political nature of rest in the context of heat stress. This oversight (or lacuna) stems from the history of modern heat stress research, where the dominance of military‐based research and laboratory studies replaced field‐based studies with workers, influencing insights on occupational heat stress. Furthermore, heat research bears parallels to the historical study of industrial fatigue, highlighting how productivity concerns may become dominant. Drawing from critical heat studies and the anthropology of work, we incorporate an analysis of power and subjectivity into the study of rest, considering two forms: planned breaks and self‐pacing. Our focus is to develop the question of rest not as secondary or residual within the heat‐work relation—as productivity‐recovery centred framings construe—but as a nuanced practice that actively informs the success of heat governance. As rest becomes an ever more important tool in the climate‐changed workplace, this paper provides a basis to understand the practices that underpin its heat mitigation capacity and seeks to inform the effective uptake of rest‐based interventions.
