Recent debates in rural development suggest a growing interest in integrating landscape-based knowledge into participatory decision-making. This study contributes to this discussion by examining how landscape—understood as the interplay between human actions, natural processes, and soil systems—can be …

Met het Programma Energieparticipatie (PEP) streven de Groninger Energiekoepel, Grunneger Power en de Natuur- en Milieufederatie Groningen ernaar om een lokale energietransitie te creëren waarbij de bewoners van de provincie Groningen eigenaar zijn van en regie hebben over de energievoorziening. In het …

Rural regions are facing specific challenges, such as demographic ones. For example, younger people often move towards more urban regions, which results in an older and dwindling population, which could lead to less facilities and broad prosperity. These challenges ask for specific sets of policies focused …

"The transition to a sustainable energy system demands not only technical innovation but also social engagement and collaborative governance. This paper presents a case study from Zoetermeer, a mid-sized city in the Netherlands, where the number of citizen-led energy initiatives grew from four to fourteen …

Background Positive Energy Districts, which incorporate energy planning at the district level, are a pioneering concept for sustainable, smart and climate-neutral urban development. This concept supports creating communities that generate more annual energy than they consume. To this end, integrative …

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This study focuses on top-down and bottom-up processes within the field of energy transition. It aims at gaining insights into the ways that a more balanced approach can be achieved, by taking into consideration the (mutual) interests, barriers and expectations of the municipality and local citizen initiatives. …

The Middle East and North Africa region has been absent form stocktaking exercises on social accountability initiatives (SAI), an umbrella term to designate citizen-led tools aimed at socio-political change. We argue that this sidelining is unwarranted, given the proliferation of participatory governance …

This chapter offers a working definition of social accountability as any citizen-led action beyond elections that aims to enhance the accountability of state actors. We view social accountability as a broad array of predominantly bottom-up initiatives, aimed at improving the quality of governance (especially …