Introduction Urban green and blue space (UGBS) interventions, such as the development of an urban greenway, have the potential to provide public health benefits and multiple co-benefits in the realms of the environment, economy and society. This paper presents the protocol for a 5-year follow-up evaluation of the public health benefits and co-benefits of an urban greenway in Belfast, UK.Methods and analysis The natural experiment evaluation uses a range of systems-oriented and mixed-method approaches. First, using group model building methods, we codeveloped a causal loop diagram with stakeholders to inform the evaluation framework. We will use other systems methods including viable systems modelling and soft systems methodology to understand the context of the system (ie, the intervention) and the stakeholders involved in the development, implementation and maintenance phases. The effectiveness evaluation includes a repeat cross-sectional household survey with a random sample of 1200 local residents (adults aged ≥16 years old) who live within 1 mile of the greenway. The survey is complemented with administrative data from the National Health Service. For the household survey, outcomes include physical activity, mental well-being, quality of life, social capital, perceptions of environment and biodiversity. From the administrative data, outcomes include prescription medications for a range of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes mellitus, chronic respiratory and mental health conditions. We also investigate changes in infectious disease rates, including COVID-19, and maternal and child health outcomes such as birth weight and gestational diabetes. A range of economic evaluation methods, including a cost-effectiveness analysis and social return on investment (SROI), will be employed. Findings from the household survey and administrative data analysis will be further explored in focus groups with a subsample of those who complete the household survey and the local community to explore possible mechanistic pathways and other impacts beyond those measured. Process evaluation methods include intercept surveys and direct observation of the number and type of greenway visitors using the Systems for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities tool. Finally, we will use methods such as weight of evidence, simulation and group model building, each embedding participatory engagement with stakeholders to help us interpret, triangulate and synthesise the findings.Ethics and dissemination To our knowledge, this is one of the first natural experiments with a 5-year follow-up evaluation of an UGBS intervention. The findings will help inform future policy and practice on UGBS interventions intended to bring a range of public health benefits and co-benefits. Ethics approval was obtained from the Medicine, Health and Life Sciences Research Ethics Committee prior to the commencement of the study. All participants in the household survey and focus group workshops will provide written informed consent before taking part in the study. Findings will be reported to (1) participants and stakeholders; (2) funding bodies supporting the research; (3) local, regional and national governments to inform policy; (4) presented at local, national and international conferences and (5) disseminated by peer-review publications.

The deliberative futures workshop is both a method and a model of engagement that is designed to support transformative change, thinking ahead, and getting communities involved in shaping their future. It promotes collaboration with experts, stakeholders, and communities in a co-productive process that aligns with deliberative action research. The process seeks to be inclusive of everyone with a stake in the future by facilitating the development of multiple tools for their involvement in the planning and decision-making processes, following the deliberative principles of equality, inclusion, and reasoned argument. The deliberative futures workshop embraces a diversity of communication and practices that recognize the systemic turn in deliberative democratic theory. The various techniques proposed draw upon multiple experiences, voices, and perspectives with a view to increasing and enhancing the number of “deliberative” moments within the process.

The continued prevalence of car dependency is a concern worldwide due to known negative health, social, economic, and environmental impacts. Belfast is a city in the United Kingdom with high levels of car dependency and car use. The most successful interventions to reduce the complex problem of car dependency combine a range of approaches, but how the influencing factors work together and interact to successfully achieve a change in car dependency is poorly understood. This study aimed to better understand the factors that influence the high levels of car dependency in the Belfast Metropolitan Area. We worked with 17 stakeholders to co-design a causal loop diagram to understand the complex system of car dependency in the city. The causal loop diagram reflects a shared understanding of car dependency and highlights the various mechanisms that are important for reducing car dependency. Twenty-three factors under the four themes of policy, infrastructure, economics, and social norms were identified and four key feedback loops between these themes are discussed. It is shown how individual behaviour in relation to travel mode choice is influenced by system-wide factors that, in the Belfast context, make car use the easiest and most convenient choice for the majority.

Often perceived as a green nation, Ireland’s climate action reputation ranges from being regarded as a climate ‘laggard’ to being applauded as one of the first states to introduce supply-side ‘keep it in the ground’ (KIIG) legislation. In line with UNFCCC and IPCC advice, Ireland has committed to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 51% by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. However such ambitions have not yet translated into sufficient transformations required to achieve the goals of a Paris Agreement compliant pathway. Major challenges surround Ireland’s transition to net zero, for example, the country’s fossil fuel dependency means oil and gas (mostly imported) account for around 80% of primary energy while emissions from agriculture, transport and electricity generation are increasing, rather than decreasing. Ireland is failing to meet national and EU GHG reduction targets, has had to buy emissions quotas to comply with legal requirements, and its interim 2030 target is below the EU’s Climate Law ambition. Contradictory policies, especially those influenced by ROI’s neoliberal orientation, undermine climate action and mean Ireland struggles to achieve GHG reductions, despite the state’s climate change legislation and policies. Concentrating on supply-side climate policy, this article examines key issues hampering Ireland’s ability to reconcile its climate ambitious with policy and practice. Adopting a critical political economy analysis, we explore multi-level drivers of climate and energy policies, examining challenges like the war in Ukraine, which prompted the Irish state to re-consider where and how it sources gas and oil, in turn threatening existing KIIG measures. In critically analysing challenges and contradictions, we identify multiple ideological, political and economic factors, in particular, the neoliberal, globalised economic model influencing the State’s current unsustainable, risky and contradictory policy direction. We conclude by articulating specific barriers hampering Ireland’s climate ambitions that must be addressed to enable a just transition to a sustainable future.

Justice-oriented climate activism is proliferating. Many scholars aspire to deliver research that supports activism. However, measures of impact for research evaluation and funding purposes place little weight on the use of research by activists. Here we consider how academics and academia might effectively support and enable climate activism. We report outcomes from a series of online deliberative workshops involving both activists and academics from several European countries. The workshops were facilitated to create space for discussion, sharing of experiences and the development of proposals for the future. The outcomes take the form of a set of principles (a “minifesta”) for academic-activist engagement generated by the group. In discussing the process and outputs, we argue that a focus on inclusion can support politically transformative change of the scale and urgency required. We suggest that this also demands a shift in attitudes toward the role of activism and activists in collaborative processes. We further discuss the inevitable incompleteness of this process, arguing that incompleteness is, itself, a feature of inclusive engagement. We conclude that scholars working on climate issues in any discipline could benefit from increasing mutually supportive collaboration with activists; and that such collaboration and inclusion could help liberate democracy from authoritarian tendencies and market influences. Collaborative engagements generate legitimate, rich, and impactful outcomes even with the limitations posed by COVID19. We, therefore, commend both the model of engagement and the principles it generated for our colleagues and peers.

While a number of studies have estimated the economic value of existing urban green and blue spaces (UGBS), few studies have attempted to value the impact of new UGBS interventions. We set out to identify primary studies in both peer-reviewed and grey literature that conducted economic evaluations of UGBS interventions, and to critically assess the methods and tools employed. We searched seven bibliographic databases to identify peer-reviewed studies, and grey literature was identified through a series of targeted searches on databases that included EVRI, Google Scholar, Social Value UK, New Economics Foundation, and OpenGrey. Study quality was assessed using adapted versions of the Drummond checklist and Krlev's quality assessment framework. Forty five eligible studies were included in the analysis; most were of medium quality (n = 27), and a large proportion (n = 22) used cost-benefit analysis. We observed inconsistencies in relation to the selection of benefits, use of discount rates, and sensitivity analysis, as well as a general lack of stakeholder input. Further, we identified a range of different instruments and evaluation techniques, but no clearly defined methodological framework that studies adhered to. Greater consensus is needed on the application of methodologies used to value UGBS interventions if evaluations are to remain credible and inform future investments.

Introduction: Car travel is associated with increased risk of morbidity and mortality, physical inactivity, traffic collisions and casualties, and air and noise pollution. Effective interventions are required to reduce car use and change travel behaviour to sustainable modes. We conducted an umbrella review: 1) determine effective interventions and intervention components to reduce car use and change travel behaviour; and 2) determine where effective components are situated by level of delivery (micro-, meso-or macro-level).Methods: Five databases were searched (2000-2022) for reviews implementing a systematic re-view process. Data synthesis involved the identification of effective intervention approaches and components and the structuring of components by delivery level. Reviews' methodological quality was graded. Reviews were assessed for effectiveness ("negative", "null", "positive" or "inconclusive") and consistency of results ("consistent" or "suggestive").Results: Searches identified 20,451 records, with 18 included. Eight reviews (moderate quality) were positive consistent (n = 6) or positive suggestive (n = 2) and focused on active school travel (n = 5), walking for transport (n = 1), organisational travel plans (n = 1) and teen mobility (n = 1). One active travel review (workplaces, low quality) was rated positive consistent, with the remaining positive consistent/suggestive reviews having critically low quality: car sharing (n = 1); passive to active travel (n = 1); soft interventions (n = 1); car use reduction (n = 2); and walking school buses (n = 1). Other moderate quality reviews were inconclusive (promotion of walking and cycling (n = 1) and bicycle active school travel (n = 1)) and null consistent (behavioural interventions, n = 1). The majority of effective components were micro-level, with no investigations into intervention cost-effectiveness or inequalities.Conclusions: This review highlighted evidence to support active school travel, teen mobility, organisational travel plans and walking for transport as effective interventions. When combined,

As producers and gatekeepers of knowledge, and as providers of education and training, our universities play a key role in the reproduction of unsustainability. This article finds that they are, as currently organised, therefore complicit in frustrating and delaying action to address the planetary crisis. However, as highly resourced and influential institutions, they have an inherently transformative potential, should their resources and activities be redirected towards progressive social and ecological ends, which challenge rather than support the unsustainable status quo. This means that, as workers within these institutions, academics and researchers are faced with a choice: to be agents of this reproduction or to be advocates and activists for change. We argue for the latter. In doing so, we seek to build on the analysis and demands of emergent movements such as Fossil Free Research, Faculty for a Future and Scientist Rebellion in making the case for universities to show leadership on listening to the very science they produce on the planetary emergency, and act accordingly. Employing a green political economy critical analysis, the article suggests that, if they are to contribute to societal transformation, universities themselves must undergo transformations that explicitly and systematically reorient academic practices around social and ecological protection and priorities. Building on these findings, it lays out a series of normative and practical arguments for a broad programme of democratisation around three pillars of academic practise: (1) Research, (2) Education and (3) Outreach and engagement. However, any such processes will of course be difficult, especially given the wider neoliberal political and political economy context within which universities operate, as well as a conservative institutional culture which disincentivises dissent from “business as usual”. In the discussion that follows, we therefore anticipate and argue that advancing such transformative and innovative changes will initially involve individuals or small groups of academics willing to go beyond “academia as usual”.

This paper in using a novel application of the Delphi panel method, explores and consolidates the future visions of a low carbon and climate resilient future in Ireland through community-based visioning processes that emerged through co-created, deliberative approaches at local level. It embraces a visioning process that applies a transdisciplinary approach, which aims to match different visions and stakeholder needs, combining bottom-up and top-down perspectives. Community visions were articulated by means of a series of deliberative futures workshops facilitated by the transdisciplinary project research team. Through iterations of the Delphi feedback loop, the notion of deep and shallow agreement is explored to examine the spectrum of consensus to dissent around the co-developed future visions and pathways of climate action, articulated by the Irish community case study. This approach enables a critical exploration of the conventional science-policy-practice nexus through the use of innovative creative communication and engagement methods. Findings suggest that more deliberative forums which bring together a diverse range of stakeholders are needed to develop a shared vision for the future; the importance of language use and the creation of a shared vocabulary of climate action; and the power of civic imaginaries in helping to create useful future narratives.

Background Transition discourses are gaining prominence in efforts to imagine a future that adequately addresses the urgent need to establish low carbon and climate resilient pathways. Within these discourses the 'public' is seen as central to the creation and implementation of appropriate interventions. The role of public engagement in societal transformation while essential, is also complex and often poorly understood. The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding regarding public engagement and to address the often superficial and shallow policy discourse on this topic. Main text The paper offers a review of evolving literature to map emergent public engagement in processes of transition and change. We adopt a pragmatic approach towards literature retrieval and analysis which enables a cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral review. We use a scoping review process and the three spheres of transformation framework (designated as the practical, political and personal spheres) to explore trends within this complex research field. The review draws from literature from the last two decades in the Irish context and looks at emergence and evolving spaces of public engagement within various systems of change including energy, food, coastal management and flood adaptation, among others. Conclusions The results highlight the siloed and fragmented way in which public engagement in transitions is carried and we propose a more cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary approach which depends on bringing into dialogue often contrasting theories and perspectives. The paper also illustrates some shifting engagement approaches. For instance, nexus articles between the practical and political spheres suggest deeper forms of public engagement beyond aggregated consumer behaviour to align technological delivery with institutional and societal contexts. While most articles in the practical sphere draw largely on techno-economic insights this influence and cross-disciplinarity is likely to draw in further innovations. Nexus articles between the political and personal sphere are also drawing on shifting ideas of public engagement and largely stress the need to disrupt reductive notions of engagement and agency within our institutions. Many of these articles call attention to problems with top-down public engagement structures and in various ways show how they often undermine and marginalise different groups.

Existing research into nativist populist (NP) rhetoric has shown that elite outgroups can be used by politicians to further anti‐immigration agendas. The social identity functions of elite outgroups outside of cultivating anti‐immigrant prejudice, however, remain poorly understood. In addition, whether populist news media can be considered social identity entrepreneurs in their own right remains an underexplored topic. This study examines the rhetorical use of elite outgroups in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia from a social identity perspective, focusing on political leaders and newspapers op‐eds. Our findings demonstrate shared strategies across the countries and source types: (1) NPs depict elites as working through collusion to undermine trust in information production within society and vie for control of the ingroup informational influence; (2) NPs present themselves as nonelite and more ingroup prototypical on dimensions relevant to the elite collusion (being under attack and equally susceptible); (3) NPs contest ingroup norms through constructions of an anti‐immigrant consensus which is suppressed by elites. We conclude that social identity researchers should pay more attention to the rhetorical functions of elite outgroups in addition to cultivating anti‐immigrant prejudice, and that the media‐as‐identity‐entrepreneur is an important aspect of constructing shared social realities, and mobilizing support, within populism.

This article adds important post-growth and ecological-economic perspectives to the growing debate on Irish reunification by placing the planetary emergency at the heart of the political economy of the issue.An account is provided of overlapping and interlinked global ecological crises, and the case is made that any argument for or against Irish reunification is ill-informed and incomplete without an understanding and acknowledgement of our stark and unstable planetary future.Moreover, this contribution to the debate presents some post-growth political economy perspectives that identify

Natural environments, such as parks, woodlands and lakes, have positive impacts on health and wellbeing. Urban Green and Blue Spaces (UGBS), and the activities that take place in them, can significantly influence the health outcomes of all communities, and reduce health inequalities. Improving access and quality of UGBS needs understanding of the range of systems (e.g. planning, transport, environment, community) in which UGBS are located. UGBS offers an ideal exemplar for testing systems innovations as it reflects place-based and whole society processes, with potential to reduce non-communicable disease (NCD) risk and associated social inequalities in health. UGBS can impact multiple behavioural and environmental aetiological pathways. However, the systems which desire, design, develop, and deliver UGBS are fragmented and siloed, with ineffective mechanisms for data generation, knowledge exchange and mobilisation. Further, UGBS need to be co-designed with and by those whose health could benefit most from them, so they are appropriate, accessible, valued and used well. This paper describes a major new prevention research programme and partnership, GroundsWell, which aims to transform UGBS-related systems by improving how we plan, design, evaluate and manage UGBS so that it benefits all communities, especially those who are in poorest health. We use a broad definition of health to include physical, mental, social wellbeing and quality of life. Our objectives are to transform systems so that UGBS are planned, developed, implemented, maintained and evaluated with our communities and data systems to enhance health and reduce inequalities. GroundsWell will use interdisciplinary, problem-solving approaches to accelerate and optimise community collaborations among citizens, users, implementers, policymakers and researchers to impact research, policy, practice and active citizenship. GroundsWell will be shaped and developed in three pioneer cities (Belfast, Edinburgh, Liverpool) and their regional contexts, with embedded translational mechanisms to ensure that outputs and impact have UK-wide and international application.

The conjoining of civic republicanism and green politics is a new but timely response to understanding and navigating a path through and beyond our turbulent times. A green republican analysis our contemporary condition - climate breakdown, rising inequality, the crisis of representative democracy - sees the structural and ideological imperative (tyranny) of endless economic growth as one root cause. From a green republican perspective economic growth has now passed a threshold where it has become a threat, both to the sustainability/longevity of the polity, but also common goods and human flourishing. This paper identifies and analyses key components of the growth imperative, such as debt-based consumerism and non-democratic workplaces, as well as more widely discussed requirements of growth to externalise ecological and social costs, and growth's dependence on cheap and secure sources of fossil resources. It argues that these components of growth pose serious risks to liberty as nondomination, the securing and protecting of common goods, rough equality and securing the ecological conditions for the republic. Therefore, these 'green' concerns should be also concerns for republicans. The paper looks at one recent strategy that has been proposed to help move societies beyond climate breakdown and carbon-addiction - namely the 'Just Transition' discourse and set of policy proposals. The paper offers a green republican account of the Just Transition strategy for a post-or low carbon economy in which equality, justice and democratic participation are central.

Highlights Explores local climate praxis as transformative climate action with and in diverse communities across Belfast. Community climate action can tackle injustices, aid peace building and enable a just transition.

This paper addresses a research (specifically conceptual) gap in socio-technical transitions literature on transport decarbonization: namely, a lack of attention to the state as a defining and constitutive element of any system-wide transition processes. Adopting an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, it develops a conceptual framework that places the state and relations between it and key transportation actors as critical for understanding the dynamics of low-carbon public transport transformations. In so doing, it articulates two political economic dimensions that offer a more relational view of the nature and role of the state in transitions. These are firstly, an historical understanding of state approaches to transition interventions and regulation, and secondly the multiple sites and forms of power through which the state mediates transition relations. In light of the framework, it introduces the UK bus transition as a case study, and offers some preliminary insights on the role and function of the state in transportation transitions. On the one hand, a policy prioritization on 'greening the car' within the context of protecting 'business as usual' significantly limits bus-based transportation transition prospects. On the other hand, sub-national processes around devolution that embody logics of greater public control of bus networks are found to have transformative potential and questioning existing power relations. The paper concludes by identifying the importance of an interdisciplinary and problem-solving oriented transition research analysis.

In this chapter, John Barry addresses the dangerous orthodox fallacy of limitless economic growth and the need to think through the contours of a future ‘post-growth’ world. He sees a strong symbiosis between the demands of green political economy, republican-inspired arguments for workplace democratization, and critiques of the hedonist, instrumental view of work as a ‘disutility’. This is so because the foremost excuse for authoritarian managerialism and for blocking democracy in the workplace is efficiency and output maximization, that is, the productivist mantra of limitless growth directed towards consumption and profit rather than need. Against this, Barry argues that democratizing workplaces and production could, in facilitating the fulfilment of various internal goods of work (including cooperation, creativeness, personal autonomy, and democratic decision-making), counter ecologically damaging economic growth by fostering sustainable modes of human flourishing. Fostering sustainable modes of human flourishing also requires re-orienting debate away from understanding work solely in terms of formal employment and towards attention to the broader forms of unremunerated work that are vital to our social lives and ecology.

Reducing car dependency requires orchestrated multi-sectoral, multi-policy action in a complex landscape. Thus, development of proposed interventions to reduce car dependency should be informed by systems thinking, complexity science, and socio-technical transition theory. We aim to co-design sustainable systems-oriented intervention approaches to reduce car dependency in Belfast. The study includes seven integrated tasks-1: Map stakeholders and partnerships influencing car dependency using stakeholder network analysis; 2: A review of systematic reviews regarding interventions to reduce car dependency; 3: Map-related policies via analysis of policy documents and semi-structured interviews; 4: A participatory group model building workshop to co-produce a shared understanding of the complex system perpetuating car dependency and a transition vision; 5: Using Discrete Choice Experiments, survey road users to evaluate the importance of transport infrastructure attributes on car dependency and on alternative modes of travel; 6: Citizen juries will 'sense-check' possible actions; and, 7: Stakeholders will interpret the findings, plan orchestrated multi-sectoral action, and agree on ways to sustain collaborations towards the common vision of reducing car dependency. We expect to attain a systemic view of the car dependency issue, potential intervention approaches to reduce it, and a framework for their integration through the co-ordination of stakeholder actions.