2018 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
The Role of Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships in Addressing SDG 7 and its Interlinkages
| Project/Area Number |
18F18780
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| Research Institution | Keio University |
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Principal Investigator |
蟹江 憲史 慶應義塾大学, 政策・メディア研究科(藤沢), 教授 (90326463)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KATRAMIZ TAREK 慶應義塾大学, 環境情報学部, 外国人特別研究員
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-10-12 – 2021-03-31
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| Keywords | Energy / SDGs / Governance / Low-Carbon / Sustainable / Transformation / 2030 Agenda |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In this Fiscal Year 2018 (1 Sep 2018 - 31 Mar 2019), the fellow reviewed recent literature on governance and sustainable energy transition in developing countries, with a special focus on the regions of the Middle East and South East Asia. Besides making use of official documents and secondary literature, he attended two relevant symposiums at UNU and Europa House in Tokyo, respectively. Further, he started planning the first round of fieldwork in Jordan and Lebanon; he scheduled interviews with local and national actors directly involved in the energy sector as well as those involved in projects that not only address SDG 7 but other SDGs. Before starting the fieldwork, he presented his ongoing research and fieldwork plan to his colleagues at UNI-IAS. The presentation and the discussion that followed served as a useful opportunity for refining the research questions. He successfully conducted the first round of fieldwork in Lebanon and Jordan during the second half of February. He also conducted interviews with a wide array of stakeholders involved in low-carbon energy transition development and other related projects from the government, private sector, NGOs, and academia. He investigated the governance linkages between national-local policy for energy transition, and the perspectives of actors on the current transitions’ trajectories and whether and how such trajectories are considered good development pathways aligned with the aspiration of the SDGs. He is in the process of manually transcribing all the recorded interviews.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
In Fiscal Year 2018 (1 Sep 2019 - Mar 2019), he reviewed the literature on governance and sustainable energy transition in developing countries, with a special focus on the regions of the Middle East and South East Asia. He also conducted one round of fieldwork in Lebanon and Jordan where he recorded over 22 interviews with a wide array of stakeholders. Initially, he had planned to only focus on literature review during this period, and he did not expect to conduct fieldwork at this early stage of the research. However, following fruitful discussions with his supervisors and current researchers at UNU-IAS, he realized that it was important that he start collecting first-hand data through fieldwork to answer some of the research questions and deepen his understanding of the research problem. Overall, he is satisfied with the fact he was able to analyze the policy environments regarding low-carbon energy transition development in both countries within this period. He managed to collect qualitative data for writing one or two academic articles in FY2019.
Additionally, he had many opportunities to talk about his research in the context of the 2030 Agenda during this period. In particular, he was invited to deliver three lectures (one in Okayama City Hall and two at the Faculty of Law in Meiji-Gakuin University) on issues related to energy, environment and the SDGs. These events resulted in stimulating discussions with professors and other participants in a way that informed his ongoing research.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In Fiscal Year 2019, he plans to continue his analysis of the policy environments including the mechanism and measures that are steered by the governments and other actors involved in the transition in the selected countries as planned. Before adding new case studies from South East Asia, he will first need to build a conceptual framework to analyze the acquired data comparatively. He, therefore, will focus on reading theoretical background literature. In May 2019, he will attend the Pathways for Sustainability Summer School for Ph.D. and early postdoctoral researchers at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton, the United Kingdom from May 12-24. Further, he is scheduled to present a new article based on his fieldwork in Jordan and Lebanon at the International Political Science Association conference on Global Risk, Security and Ethnicity (10-11 August 2019) in Nagasaki, Japan.
During the summer, he plans to prepare two more rounds of fieldworks in South East Asia and the Middle East to be conducted by the end of Fiscal Year 2019 and early Fiscal Year 2020. Due to language barriers, he believes it will be difficult to collect information on existing low carbon energy transition projects in South East Asia. Establishing connections and scheduling interviews with policymakers and stakeholders in this region will particularly be challenging. He thus intends to rely on local coordinators such as graduate students who can help in establishing the contacts in advance.
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