111: Climate change and infrastructures of care

What does it mean to respond to climate change with care? And how might we do a better job of caring for the environment, for each other, and for ourselves?

This episode is the first of a series focusing on projects funded by the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods (EHL). In it, Jen and Matt talk to Dr Vanicka Arora, Lecturer in Heritage at the University of Stirling, and Dr Arno Verhoeven, Senior Lecturer in Design at the University of Edinburgh and Director for Sustainable Development at Edinburgh College of Art. Vanicka and Arno are both leading EHL-funded seed projects exploring “infrastructures of care” as they relate to climate change and sustainability.

Follow EHL on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/energy-homes-livelihoods/

Sign up to the EHL newsletter: https://energy-homes-livelihoods.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=95f64f8471e335ca66577e8ac&id=8f3acb33ed

Links:

Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods: https://www.energy-homes-livelihoods.ac.uk

Dr Arno Verhoeven: https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-arno-verhoeven

Dr Vanicka Arora: https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/1852699 

Emerging and Sustaining Infrastructures of Care: https://www.energy-homes-livelihoods.ac.uk/2024/12/02/emerging-and-sustaining-infrastructures-of-care

Culture and Sustainability: Exploring Stability and Transformation with the Cultures Framework (open access book by Janet Stephenson): https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-25515-1

Scottish Wildlife Trust Community Stories – The Isle of Eigg: https://community.scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/story/isle-of-eigg

Past Local Zero episodes on related themes:

Episode 24: Retrofit for the future: Jobs, skills and training for zero-carbon homes: https://www.localzeropod.com/episodes/retrofit-for-the-future-jobs-skills-and-training-for-zero-carbon-homes

Episode 69: Whole person, whole place - social relations and energy retrofit: https://www.localzeropod.com/episodes/69-whole-person-whole-place-social-relations-and-energy-retrofit

Episode 110: Adapting our homes and communities to a changing climate: https://www.localzeropod.com/episodes/adapting-our-homes-and-communities-to-a-changing-climate

Transcript

Arno: I would like to reframe sustainability not as a problem which requires a solution, but as a challenge which presents us with a whole variety of opportunities. But to do it carefully and in a considered and an attentive way to understand how we can maximise benefit for everyone.

Vanicka: To care is to work, is to act. It is not simply an intention to care, but caring is the doing of care.

Matt: Hello. Welcome to Local Zero with me, Matt Hannon. 

Jen: And me, Jen Roberts. 

Matt: So it's a bit of a special episode today: this is the first part of a series showcasing projects supported by the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods, or EHL for short. 

Jen: Now, EHL is a collaborative research alliance, which was established in 2023. It brings together scholars from across different disciplines and institutions, and also supports connections with practitioners from across industry, government, charities, and local communities. Its goal is to make it easier to share the information and expertise necessary to realise a more sustainable net zero Scotland by 2045.

Matt: And in this episode, we are focusing on the concept and practice of care, and how these relate to the climate crisis. We'll be exploring these ideas with our guests, Dr Vanicka Arora and Dr Arno Verhoeven. 

Jen: Vanicka is a Lecturer in Heritage at the University of Stirling, and the EHL-sponsored project that she's leading as part of the Alliance is titled “Emerging and Sustaining Infrastructures of Care”. The project is looking at how individuals, households, communities, and organisations come together to care for themselves and for the planet. 

Matt: And Arno is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Design at the Edinburgh College of Art, and he's leading an EHL-sponsored project called “Retrofit, Collectivisation and Infrastructures of Care”.

Jen: Before we dive into all of that though, remember you can follow Local Zero on LinkedIn to get all our news and to let us know your thoughts. Just search for Local Zero podcast. 

Matt: And wherever you listen, don't forget to subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode.

So Jen, today is all about care. We'll be hearing from Arno and Vanicka, our guests. I know Arno and Vanicka, um, as we, we met the first time about 18 months ago in the depths of January, 2024 at the Cairngorms in central Scotland, and the National Park there, at a place called Loch Insh, where we had the opportunity to meet a whole bunch of other like-minded researchers interested in sustainability, particularly sustainable households.

And there we started to develop some ideas for new projects, which were then subsequently funded through seed funding. And the two projects we'll hear a little bit more about today are from that programme, and actually came out of that get-together.

And I have to say, as I sort of dipped my toe into the world of care, I’ve started to think about climate in a very different way. But for you, when somebody says the word “care" and somebody then utters as the words “climate change", “sustainability” and “the environment”, is there anything particular that pops into your head? 

Jen: Classic, Matt, about 20 things pop into my head. I mean, the main thing that comes into my mind thinking about care to start with is just paying attention to, caring for, means sort of tending to, checking things are alright. You know, uh, I guess expressing a level of kind of emotional interest. But I guess there's two different levels. One is kind of just awareness of, so caring for the environment. Step one of that is, is being knowledgeable about it, being aware of it. And step two is taking action. And that's the sort of thing that this podcast is all about.

Matt: Yeah. 

Jen: The thing that probably most immediately sprung to my mind, actually, was thinking about the last couple of episodes that we've been doing around retrofit and adaptation, and thinking about caring for buildings in a different way.

Matt: Yeah.

Jen: And that probably links more into the sorts of projects we're going to talk about today. Is that about right? 

Matt: Yes. Yeah. I think, certainly, that there's gonna be a healthy dollop of caring for our built environment and crucially, the people that reside in it. And I think actually at the heart of this really is, is language, because “care” is a really emotive word. It's, it's also a word that is used in different ways, in different contexts.

So when I started to research this space or, or certainly supporting others to do this, I was thinking, when I think care, I'm thinking healthcare. I'm thinking social care. And I then I was thinking, well, you know, the relationship and the kind of nexus between these and climate.

And that's certainly a research space, uh, you know, the project that you're involved with, uh, and, and, and I, too – just systems – one of the case studies there is looking at social care in Wales and the climate impacts of that. So the logistics of moving from home to home across, you know, particularly in these rural areas is, is massive.

But of course, also, like, I think the most common context that I use, the term “care” is to my kids. So I'll be saying, saying things like, be careful. Or, “you need to care about this”. There's an element of advocacy there. You, you need to care for this. And I think that comes right back around to activism around the environment, but also increasingly as we see, under pressure going back to health and social care, activism about our social welfare, caring for others and caring, crucially, for ourselves.

Jen: Yeah. 

Matt: And as climate change bites, these things will become much more pressured again. 

Jen: Yeah. And I guess there's one of the things that you and I have kinda knocked around in the past as well, is thinking about why do people care and what really motivates care.

Matt: Yeah.

Jen: And for some care is motivated by looking after others. So you care for the environment, you care for the climate, because of the impact on people or because of the impact on particular species. But there's also, I find it always really interesting how people think about time and care in terms of, are we talking about the immediate – being careful right now?

Are we talking about caring in terms of a stewardship for future generations? Because ultimately, climate action is a form of care for future.

Matt: Yes.

Jen: You know, humanities as well as future planet, you know, so there's this really interesting time series of care and, and what's today, tomorrow, immediate, indirect and well, it's, I can imagine it's the kind of thing that once you start researching it or thinking about it too much, it becomes this huge plethora of, of thoughts. 

Matt: I, I guess at the, the heart of this is, you know, many of the kind of traditional schools around, um, environmental and ecological stewardship is that if we care for environment, by extension, we will be caring for ourselves and others.

Jen: Yeah.

Matt: Because at the heart of this, that the natural capital stocks and the ecosystem services that, that rely on those then provide all of these socioeconomic benefits. And if you don't care for the environment, in effect, you are then neglecting or not caring for these critical services.

Jen: Yeah.

Matt: So I think it's about trying to look through these issues through the lens of care. 

Jen: Yeah. 

Matt: And asking ourselves – and again, some may say, this said very ivory tower and very academic – but, but often, you know, the power of theory is to look at a problem, but through a different lens and to see it in a different light. To then explore other potential solutions or crucially problems that we wouldn't have otherwise seen.

And when we come – bringing it back to the built environment, which we'll talk a lot about today – I think it's fair to say, Jen, from many of the episodes we've covered on Local Zero, we're not doing a great job about caring for our, our built environment – particularly the homes that people live in – and the fuel poverty statistics bear that out.

And if we look at this as a space for care and a space where care is enacted between families, um, and, and beyond, maybe we do something differently. 

Jen: Yeah. Some of the work that we've been doing as part of the Strathclyde Active Mobility Hub is also understanding forms of care in terms of choices around movement.

And so you might have somebody choosing to walk or to cycle or to wheel… 

Matt: Yeah.

Jen: Rather than to drive, as an act of care. Uh, particularly if we're talking about the school run. So you are not driving as an expression of care for the environment, the pollution, the lungs of the children who are going to school. And that might be a much stronger motivator than any of the other messages and messaging that you can get around behavioural change. 

Matt: Yeah, and, and, and again, there's also then the implications this has across the piece. So I guess kind of taking a bit of a systems thinking lens, or at least you know, in the layman's terms, connecting, you know, actions in one sphere to implications or knock-on effects in another by doing some of the things you've talked about that can have direct impacts on some of the more traditional care spaces that we've talked about in terms of healthcare.

So if you don't drive your care, um, car don't drive your care – care! – don't drive your car, um, you know, maybe you aren't producing the same particulate matter and you know, nitrous oxide and PM2.5s and all the rest, and you're improving the air quality. And that actually not only has a direct, you know, impact on people's physical and mental wellbeing, but it also helps healthcare sector.

Jen: Yeah, absolutely.

Matt: So you know, I find these kind of, these caring, these caring behaviours that can care for our environment, but then have implications for what we consider to be traditional care spaces, really interesting. So if you take social care, care… 

Jen: Care cascade. 

Matt: Care cascade, wonderful.

Jen: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Social care, and you take particularly in the, uh, let's say elderly care, which, you know, care homes – wow. Just totally unlocked an entire, another space we haven't talked about. But if you've got, say, greener spaces for, you know, people to enjoy who may be infirm or have mobility issues, you know, the, the co-benefits that fall out of that and the caring consequences are massive.

So, yeah, I'm, I'm really excited about this space, and I think from a policy standpoint, I have been barking on about this for a long time. If we can tie sustainability, climate action to some of these care consequences, and make a direct line between those consequences and cost savings – such as the NHS and our healthcare sector – that is where it starts to become a no-brainer, even in the eyes of those who are maybe skeptical.

Jen: Yeah, and I guess the final thing maybe to talk about is I, I find lack of care utterly fascinating as well. I feel like I care so much about so many things that I find the absolute absence of care sort of just leaves you just going, well, what do you do with that?

What do you do when people just don't care? You know? And there's an interesting thing there around, actually, quite often we've been talking about uncertainty from some of the research that, that I've been involved in. You don't have an absence of care at all. You've got people who care very deeply, very intricately, sometimes very sensitively about different aspects, whether it's water, whether it's climate, air pollution, and so on.

So people care, but because of the, the system in which we live in, the society in which we live in, where they're not able to see the changes that they want to see. So, you know, it's not about this phrase of “winning hearts and minds” because they're already won; it's about actually having systems that allow for that transition. That is one aspect of things. The other aspect is when people just don't care. 

Matt: Or don’t know how to care. 

Jen: Yeah. 

Matt: Or, or maybe can't afford the, the time and energy to care for whatever reason.

Jen: Yeah yeah. They'll have other priorities that, that take their attention. 

Matt: Yeah. It does beg bigger questions about how our economy and society is structured. And motivations to care. Are we actually putting in place those motivations and incentives to, to care for one another and to care for others? So with that in mind, and with the sustainability crisis and climate crisis biting, I think we might need to bring in the guests to demystify some of these terms.

Jen: Yeah.

Matt: And to bring a little bit of coherence to what we've discussed already. 

Jen: Let's bring in our experts. 

Vanicka: I'm Vanicka Arora. I'm Lecturer in Heritage at the University of Stirling. 

Arno: I'm Dr Arno Verhoeven and I'm a Senior Lecturer in Design at the University of Edinburgh, as well as the Director for Sustainable Development at the Edinburgh College of Art.

Jen: Thanks so much for coming along both of you. I think a really natural place to, to start would be for you to just tell us a little bit about your EHL-funded projects and, and kind of how you came to become interested in the subject of care and the environment. Um, so how about I ask that of you first Vanicka, and then hand over to Arno?

Vanicka: Thanks, Jen. So this basically started, uh, when we, well, I received an email from one of my colleagues at Stirling, from the EHL, asking us to convene at, uh, Loch Insh in the Cairngorms, in the middle of winter. It seemed like an interesting way to learn about, uh, environmental issues in Scotland. So I went along. I've been working in the care and more the urban study space in Australia, uh, looking at issues of heat and sustainability. But I was curious to see what the reverse, uh, might look like. So I went along to this retreat and met a couple of other ECR there – early career researchers.

We didn't have much in common, subject-wise, uh, but, all of the issues that were sort of at the forefront of our minds seemed to match. So it was more about how can we get together academically than any real focused agenda. And uh, one of the things that we were really interested in talking about was how academics collaborate with the third sector in this space.

So my colleagues, uh, Fran Vaghi, uh, Carolina Rocha, Manas Murthy. Each of them has been looking at sustainability from their respective fields, uh, but in very different ways, where we were more interested in how academics and the third sector collaborate or not.

Matt: Uh, and Vanicka, maybe if I, if I may just press on that. What perspective were your other colleagues coming from? Are you talking about different sort of sectors, or systems? 

Vanicka: So different systems and disciplines. So I am a trained architect, but I work in heritage. Fran is an anthropologist. Uh, Carolina is a psychologist, and Manas is an urban designer. Each of us has very different ideas of, uh what sustainability needs from us, and what climate change or climate action might look like, or what needs to be the focus.

Uh, but equally in terms of the fact that people need to be at the centre of this conversation, particularly marginalised people – the people who haven't caused the crisis – and that the responsibility of addressing climate crisis needs to be, the conversation needs to be pivoted from a, "you must all individually do this", to “how can we do this in our different, different locations?”. So this was the starting point of how we all had similar leanings, but very different disciplinary, uh, ideas of how, what these leanings meant.

Matt: Perfect. Thank you. 

Arno: I arrived at Loch Insh simply out of curiosity. I knew a couple of people who were attending. Uh, it was a nice January opportunity to go out and see some people, uh, related to the role that I had just undertaken as Director for Sustainable Development. But I'd been working in, I suppose, an allied sector for a number of years, particularly energy and development, and I've become very interested in perceptions of energy and, and stories about energy, particularly that gap between whether we need a centralised system like the grid, uh, and it needs to be overhauled, uh, and made contemporary for, uh, the, the electrical transition; it needs to be decarbonised.

Uh, but in contrast to that is the, the, I suppose the, the individual nature of how people can adopt what I suppose I, I would refer to as a gung-ho attitude of buying solar panels and buying batteries and wiring up their house and to some extent going off-grid. So there, there's a tension between the autonomy of of, of doing it for yourself and the space of working collectively.

And before I came to the, the SRA, the EHL group, uh, at their first get-together, I had already been working with a number of colleagues who were engaged with collective notions of retrofit, with the perspective that retrofit is gonna be easier if we could do it together, both from a financial perspective, from a skills perspective, from an environmental perspective. 

But collectivisation was something that seemed to be very, very difficult. And the, the way that the council, at least in Edinburgh, had set up was responsibilities were falling towards individuals or collectives, but it was primarily people who were volunteers who were leading these kinds of initiatives to try and drum up support and build community engagement from the ground up. But that puts an awful lot of emphasis and, and, and stress on people to, to kind of pull together.

I think the other notion that, uh, we, we talk about energy and primarily we talk about energy generation, but we don't talk about energy conservation. We don't talk about reduction in energy demand as much as I think we could. We could be more conscious about that. And I think coming together a Loch Insh there was a number of ideas around, if we could fix the buildings so that they were, or that we lived in, or we worked in that were, so that they were more energy efficient and we could use less energy, we wouldn't have so much a requirement for the demand of energy that, that we currently face.

So, so there seemed to be a space here, but the, the core question for me is how do we get a nation to do this together. And so coming to Loch Insh, it was really wonderful to meet people like Matt and Kate Carter, who I already know here at Edinburgh, and a whole pile of others that, uh, are, are engaging in these kinds of questions also.

Matt: So I think this is a good point for us to start to map out and unpick what we mean by care, what we mean by infrastructures of care. I think you've both set the scene about how we've arrived at this point. Uh, Arno, you've already raised some really interesting questions about sort of autonomy versus collective action. But just if we begin at the very beginning, what do we mean by care? What do we mean by infrastructures of care?

Um, and I'm particularly interested 'cause I think most of our listeners will be coming to this from the perspective of knowing different care sectors, particularly healthcare. Also social care, um, and care in many different contexts. Jen and I spent quite a lot of time before you guys came in talking about our own perceptions of this. But yeah, maybe if we can begin with, with Vanicka here, how do you see and understand care? 

Vanicka: The theoretical, uh, ideas of care definitely comes from social care and healthcare – work that's been done quite a few decades ago. But for us, we started with the more feminist theory, uh, more science and technology studies, ideas of care where it's basically the broader network or the practices that help sustain everyday life and everyday wellbeing. And the peculiar thing about care is that it goes beyond the formal or the institutional.

So it goes beyond the more rigid, uh, infrastructures of policy of uh, just literally housing, critical infrastructures, like that. What we were particularly interested in is thinking about care practices as invisible forms of labour, and the idea that care can foreground the fact that to care is to work, is to act. It is not simply an intention to care, but caring is the doing of care. Uh, and I think that is an…

Matt: YA practice? Care as a practice?

Vanicka: A practice. Care is a practice. It's a verb. It is not a, a well-meaning or a well-intentioned idea. It is only in the doing of care are you practicing it. And I think that's something to hold on to as we move in the sustainability and climate action spaces. Uh, it's not enough to just have the intention to act, but it is the action that is caring. 

Matt: Yeah, that's really interesting: you might care about something, but it's not about putting that, that, that hypothetical or latent care into practice. 

Vanicka: Into practice. Exactly. Um, and in terms of infrastructures, to me, the metaphor of infrastructures, uh, is as important as the theoretical ideas that go behind critical infrastructure theory, which is to really think about infrastructures as networks. 

Networks that allow things to come to be. And infrastructures, much like care, uh, when they work well, they're invisible. So if your electrical grid is working, if your transport network is working, you do not notice it. You're only paying attention…

Matt: Tell me about it. I mean, we've Jen, Jen and I, Jen and I have gone through weeks of me having bad broadband. So yeah, this is very still very raw Vanicka, for me, yeah.

Vanicka: It is only when those infrastructures are frayed, or when they're not working, that we begin to pay attention to them. So in that sense, both care and infrastructures are background things that happen, and they take a lot of work to sustain. But this work is often under appreciated, uh, overworked. So people who care, uh, and the infrastructures of care that need to happen for climate action, or for sustainability, happen at max capacity, if that makes sense. 

Matt: Yeah, no, that's really interesting. Okay, so this kind of infrastructures ecosystem that sort of enables care. Arno, do you recognise those definitions? Anything different to add for your project or, or our project, I, I should say? Where are you, slash we, coming from on this?

Arno: I think, uh, when our group came together, the notion that that care came about was a bit of a, a revelation. I think it was an addition through some other conversations that we'd had, and it seemed like an interesting point of departure where we, none of us had really thought about care in the context of collectivisation, community, retrofit.

Which is often seen as a, a constructivist or, you know, as a problem solving space. Retrofit is trying to fix something that's broken. Where care was something, as we started to read more deeply – and all the things that Vanicka said really resonate with a lot of the work that we'd been reading about, uh, the social sciences and the moral implications of, and the political actions associated with care and care theory.

The idea that first off, you should be able to pay attention; you should notice that something is going on. And Vanicka mentioned, you know, when the infrastructure is broken, that's when you notice it. And as a designer, I'm often asked, oh, “so you, you make pretty pictures or, or you, you style things?” And it's actually, no, I, I do different stuff.

I, I reconfigure things; I move stuff around to see how things might work better. And for, for me, that space of the system is a place to reconfigure. So whether it's a system that involves, you know, retrofit or energy or social care, uh, it's moving things around to see how else it could be done. But the first step is to pay attention, is to watch it, to see what's going on, to immerse yourself in it.

But that, that requires you to, to start to, to have attentiveness, to be aware, to, to, to look, to see – and there's a tension or I suppose a, a kind of, there's a space to act. So, so to some extent, I totally agree with what Vanicka said, but I would add that space that you can act and not care. Which is, I think things we want to avoid – people who just act mindlessly.

But then you can care and not act. So you, you can feel that you have a resonance or you can have something that you're passionate about, but yet not necessarily, you know, pick up the tools and actually start to do something. So some of the theories around care are the notion that we can care about something.

But we also should probably care for something, which brings in the action. But that also then starts to unpick the notion that caring for something or someone outlines a kind of a transaction or a relationship, so that caring for someone involves someone having to receive that care. And that is a particular kind of, I suppose, an attitude or an approach.

So how is our care received as we are in the process of giving care for, or to, others? Uh, so it's become a real interesting space to look at retrofit in the sense of, to some extent it's caring for the building, it's caring about the environment, but it's also caring with the building, caring with the community through the community for the community.

It puts retrofit in a much bigger context that actually we are in this together. Uh, and we have to pay attention to where, where, where we need to put our effort and our energy to make things better. 

Jen: This has just sparked so many thoughts and ideas, just hearing the both of you talk through some of that. And actually one of them being around, you talked just then about the giving of care and then the kind of receiving of care.

And actually, when I've been thinking about care in regards to the environment, I've not thought about it in quite that way. But actually, the flip of that is to take environmental care – so to do things that care for the environment – is actually the opposite of that. In that it's like doing less harm, you know, because the receiving from the environmental perspective, it's not receiving care, it's, but receiving less harm from our activities.

So it's really fascinating. And the other thing that kind of cropped up: we have had a couple of conversations recently on the pod around water, and water provision, and caring for water. And just both of you talked about the kind of invisible infrastructures, and one of the things that we often hear people say is that people don't care about water, because it's in kind of invisible service.

It works how it's meant to. You turn on the tap, you get water for free and it's clean. Now, we know that that's not always the case, and it's very disruptive, just like those other, uh, infrastructures that you talked about. But with water, what, what we know from our research, from my research, is that people do care deeply about water, even though it is invisible.

And I guess I wanted to ask you about that as well – to say, well, do you find, can people care about the invisible, you know? It’s, it's not just about taking stuff for granted in terms of electricity or the ability to be warm. What are your views or thoughts on, on caring for the invisible or making the invisible visible or tangible in some way?

Vanicka: I think, uh the idea that water is invisible is interesting, because water isn't just an infrastructure: it is the fundamental affective experience, to be wet to quench thirst. And water also, it doesn't work quite the same way as perhaps electricity. So it's also about, uh, what do we feel affectively related to.

So in the case of buildings, for example the domestic home – you might not care for buildings in general, uh, but most people – and not all – but most people do care about the domestic, or the home, or the household, or the container within which we live our entire life. And that causes us to act. Like, the same way we don't think about water as infrastructure, but the home is also obviously infrastructure as well.

And when it starts to break apart, it really begins to influence our lives. Or when it is cold or when the ideas of comfort are no longer, uh, present for us. But it, it goes beyond that. There is a responsibility to look after things like water or the home, which comes from, "oh, these are the infrastructures I need to keep going”.

But equally there is an affect of, "I love where I live”, or “this is where I belong”. "This is part of my identity”, or “this is the relationship I have with water, because it connects me to nature, uh, and that is why I must care". So I think in each of these cases, the relation goes beyond extractive and, and that is what needs more highlighting or foregrounding in order for care practices and care networks to thrive.

Arno: I totally agree. I think what you said there, Vanicka, that I wanna pick up on is you spoke about identity, uh, and that I think goes back, Jen, to what you're speaking about. Can we care for the invisible? My identity, I would argue is very difficult to, it's, it's very difficult to concretise, um, my culture, my community: what is it that holds these things together?

Uh, my household: so there's the, there's the walls that support the roof under which I live with my family, and we have a rhythm. We have objectives, and we have patterns, and we have myths and we celebrate memories. All, all of these things are, I think people are, are really trying to care for. So there's a, there's a set of relations that we build and I, I think when care starts to slip, it's when the relations become too distant from our immediate proximity.

So I will care immediately about water when it doesn't come out at the right pressure from the shower. I will care immediately if it comes outta the tap and it's brown and I can't drink it. I will care for it when there's a drought or a flood. It's when those things are not, not evident that I, I tend to slip, but looking deeper there, there comes a point when I start to see water for, not just as an object that's useful for extraction 'cause I require it for drinking or washing, but actually it's a thing that sustains a whole kind of system of life. There's microbes in it, there's bacteria in it. It it requires us to do that first step of care, which is to pay attention. 

Matt: So in that context, Arno, what does this care lens offer us in that battle to tackle these various environmental and ecological crises, the climate crisis? What does this perspective offer us in terms of achieving sustainable development? I mean, there's, there's various things you've said there about that relationship, also Vanicka, about the infrastructures of care, enabling care. Um, why is this valuable? 

Arno: I think it's incredibly valuable because it's a different kind of frame. Uh, it's a way of framing our relationship to each other, to the world, to the environment. Framing is, I think, an important concept, and it has a long lineage in psychology, in cognitive science, but also in sociology. There’s an interesting take within design research where the, the aspect of design is often considered to be reframing. So it's understanding how we see the world and then we, we kind of shift something in it to see it in a, in a different way.

I think care – coming to understand that frame or that lens of care through which we see the world – allows us to see the world in a different way. And so it, it, there's an inquisitiveness, there's a curiosity and, and there's a gentleness, I think, to say, “well, care asks me, it affords me to say I need to pay attention”.

So I really have to watch what's going on. I have to really listen to what's going on around me. I, I think it's a very sensorial thing. I have, I have to be aware of what it feels like when it touches me. You know, a hug is a very caring gesture, but it's not just the act of doing it. Some people are very good at hugging and some people are very bad at it, but that's because, you know, it's not a skill, it's an attenuation to what's going on around you.

I think that space and that way of reframing this – rather than retrofit being a technical problem, I think it's a social problem. It's the fact that we care in very different ways. So the Scottish Government cares about meeting very, you know, stringent and aggressive carbon and climate targets. But I'm not sure that I'm gonna go over to the Scottish Parliament, uh, down at Holyrood and I'm gonna find a politician that's willing to give me a hug because I'm struggling with climate anxiety, 'cause I just don't know how to do it.

If there are any politicians who want to come and offer free hugs for those who are climate anxious.

Matt: Yeah

Arno: I'm, I'm happy to, I'm happy to broker that and set up some event for that. 

Matt: Yeah, I, and, and again, all or what a caring home or home environment looks and feels like. So, so Vanicka, the same question to you, I think: what does a care lens or caring lens offer us in terms of that sustainability push? 

Vanicka: I think picking off, uh, where Arno left, uh, which is, it's definitely decentres the technical and begins to centre the social. And I think that is the, that's the crucial thing that we need to acknowledge that climate action needs to be social. It needs to be socially embedded, it needs to be culturally responsive, and it needs to, uh, acknowledge the tensions – that not all humans are using energy in the same way.

Not all humans understand energy in the same way, and that not all humans have the capacity or the agency to do climate action in the same way. And I think a care lens can foreground the tensions that taking climate action might involve. Uh, because it's all very well to say that we must all care for this planet, but what does that mean?

What does that mean if I can't pay my heating bill? So to me, it's a pivoting of the conversation. Uh, so like Arno was saying, the net zero targets, they're abstract ideals if, if I'm living in a house which has mould every winter, which is too cold, um, but my energy bill is a real target. It is also about flipping the conversation to people where they're not thinking purely in, in this global target, which is so far removed from the lived reality of everyday life. And I think if we begin to think about this, and I think scale is, is a critical part of the care, uh, dialogue, which is to think about things where they are, think in place, uh, think local, think incremental.

It's not saying “let's not talk about the bigger responsibilities of larger corporations” and all of that, but it's really, you can't have the same conversation at a household level that you're having at a government level. And, and to me, a care lens looks at a difference in scale and can offer a granularity of action. Which other frames are often missing. 

Jen: Yeah. Can I just pick up on the question of scale there? What I'd really like to get a better sort of handle on, for me anyway, is who are we talking about caring here? Are we talking about us, you and me? Like, are we talking about something bigger than that? What scale of caring are we talking about?

What sort of actors are we talking about? And maybe the best way to actually ask that question is to ask, well how do we care currently? What examples can you give of care in that sense? 

Matt: Who should care? Yeah. Who's responsible for care? 

Jen: Yeah. Those tensions that Vanicka just started talking about. So, yeah, can you give a couple of examples of, of that scale or how, how care is currently enacted?

Vanicka: It's just in our, in our small seed grant project, uh, we started with the “who” was, uh, academics and community organisations working in the space. And let's say we start there as one scale where it, it begins from organisations that are working in cities like, uh, we had Transition Dundee, we had Transition Stirling, we had Stirling City Heritage Trust.

So we are talking about organisations with six to 10 people, annual budgets, uh, which are always precarious. And you have academics, a bunch of whom were ECRs, and in this network of people who are all talking about similar things and similar goals – the university should care, the national government should care about funding – but equally, how do we care for each other?

So how do we make an infrastructure of care in which we share the load or the burden, or share the invisible labour of caring for the same cause. And uh, it started with simply figuring out how do we make research projects less extractive. It's a small but seemingly complicated thing, because a year later, uh, I'm working with a couple of the other organisations.

Three of our ECRs have gone on to different roles, so they've shifted gears entirely. Two of the organisations no longer exist. So we are talking about really fraught scenarios where people are overworked, they're pushed beyond their elastic limits. Uh, so how do we then create an infrastructure which takes into account burnout?

Or takes into account the fact that despite wanting to care for a larger global environmental crisis, uh, each agency or each agent in this network has their own micro crisis to deal with? And to me, this example just brought to fore that unless we create redundancies, and unless we create a network that supports each of the nodes or each of the people in this network, it falls apart.

And that's what happens to a lot of community organisations. So this is just one example of the scale of which I'm talking about.

Jen: Yeah.

Vanicka: But I would imagine this would work at different scales. 

Jen: Yeah, sure. I mean this, you speaking there also makes me start thinking about self-care – this huge industry that's, you know… but actually a very care, an externally care-focused approach is entirely exhausting and can lead to burnout.

So that also brings in the concept of self-care in that, in that system of care and back, I guess down to research culture as well. But Arno over to you. What, when we're talking about scale here, how, how do we currently care? 

Arno: It's a tough question. Um, the example I think that comes directly to mind has to do with, following on from what Vanicka was talking about with organisations that existed two years ago who had a, a, a remit or a mandate, like a transition name your city or region.

They're funded by a a, a government – whether that's the Scottish Government or our local council to, to enact this, to, you know, create some kind of ground movement – and I think that's, this is even baked into Scottish Government guidance, that voluntary sectors are defined, volunteers are defined in a very particular way, but to rely on, on people to do community work, to do grounded work, to rely on volunteers, forgets the fact that the majority of volunteers still have jobs because they have to do the other things that they have to take care for in their lives. They have to pay the bills, they have to put food on the table. They have to, to build, you know, an equitable trust. They need to be gainfully employed.

So we're to some extent, we're asking people to do more with less. Now that comes back to the, who is the “we” that's asking, is it, you know, we're asking, uh, early career researchers to do a lot of extra work, extra free time with precarious employment, I hope that's quite a well understood phenomenon at this point, even though we're, we're not able to fully address it.

I think in terms of scale, there are, sustainability is such a complex problem and it isn't just about the material environment, it's also about the social good. It's also about, you know, making sure that there is prosperity for the planet, prosperity for the people, and prosperity for people of the future, that we're actually leaving enough of the planet so that others in future generations can also continue to prosper.

It requires us to care, but it also requires us to be, I think, very strategic and, and very direct to say: it's not a whole thing that I'm caring about. There are things where there will be trade offs and care, I think is the attentiveness of understanding the consequences of the choices I have to make.

But doing it in a, in at least in a careful manner, rather than simply saying “it has to be done at all cost”. Somebody's going, not going to be able to meet that cost. There will always be people that are outside of those definitions, those boundaries. So for me, the, the, the, the scale part is the difficult part, and it requires self-care because we have to know our own limits and our own boundaries because we will have to continue, to continue to work in the absence of, you know, some widespread solution that we can click our fingers and suddenly the problem's solved and we can carry on.

Because I, and I think part of the framing is, and this, this might be the contentious part that I leave with you, is I would like to reframe sustainability, not as a problem which requires a solution, but as a challenge, which presents us with a whole variety of opportunities, but to do it carefully and in a considered and an attentive way to understand how we can maximise benefit for everyone. 

Matt: That's a good point. So let's, let's dig into that and then look to wrap up. We've got a big, hairy problem in terms of various different crises – not just environmental, but economic and social.

One of the, I think, bug bears that many people have, particularly when you, you hear discussions around climate delay or delay of climate action, is that this caring responsibility has shifted from, let's, let's just in, in the round the state multinationals, da, da, da, onto the individual. Go back to water.

It's on you to conserve water. Now, I don't deny that, right? That's important, but it's a part of the problem. It's also about the water distribution companies. It's also about ensuring that we are sourcing water sustainably. It's also about building our homes and our streets in a way that captures that water and reprocess that water.

So I would hazard that a part of the problem, or part of the problem in terms of not solving the problem, is that we're putting that caring responsibility too much on the individual. So with that in mind – you may or may not agree with that, and I'd love to hear from you on that – but what do we do about that and how do we transition into a more caring space to tackle these problems? I Vanicka and anything in there that you want to come back on? 

Vanicka: No, absolutely. Uh, it is impossible to talk about optimism and talk about collective action when every collective action is also simultaneously resisting against institutional frameworks. Uh, so I absolutely agree with you that the idea that the responsibility to care is often seen as individual or at a micro scale. And I think that, that’s why we should circle back to the idea of scale. So while I was talking about the example – in order to make these infrastructures of care thrive institutionally, there needs to be a more acknowledgement of the labour that goes into climate action.

So when you're asking someone to be responsible for their water usage, or when you're asking someone to not take a car, then you need to think about the literal infrastructure to make that possible. Uh, and that needs to be reflected in institutional policy, uh, governance. So that kind of institutional infrastructure that needs for care infrastructure to thrive has to happen simultaneously.

And it can't simply be, “oh, you community organisations are doing such great work. Here's another tiny pot of money so that you can carry on for three more years. And keep going. We support you and we encourage you. Here's a small award, which means nothing”, but it needs to be in terms of big action. So my argument would be that the bigger the scale, the greater the, the responsibility to act, the responsibility to care is then that much more exponential.

So if you're talking about scale, while I, I do think we need to work on both ends of it, where in the meantime, we can't just expect people to give up and be like, "okay, these big corporations that are polluting are never going to stop. This big crisis is never going to end”. But rather, how do we make do, or how do we in, you know, Michael Cortio’s words of how do we have tactics to get along right now, while we try and solve the bigger problems which need a larger timescale?

Matt: Hmm. And, and these institutional infrastructures are hard if, if you've kind of lost that culture of caring or that tradition of care and which may have been eroded, you know? So that's really, really important. Arno, anything to come, come back on around, around that? 

Arno: I outlined that, uh, part of my job as a designer is to reconfigure things, but I think the fun part is to, to actually, you know, make a mess, uh, to really take things apart.

And to that extent, what I'm gonna say might sound, I don't know if it'll be controversial or if it'll be provocative, but I, I think, I think we have an opportunity to fundamentally rewrite our relationship to things, which will be difficult because I understand that there are trade-offs. There are corporations that our government needs to, uh, keep in this country because they create gainful employment for communities, but they do so often at the, the, the expense of the environment in which they're, they're working.

I would argue that like with things like water, energy, soil, land, food, uh, we could take a, a fundamentally different approach by looking at things more in a commons perspective, where we would be saying that actually we are one people, uh, we are one group and, and we, we need to be caretakers for this collectively.

And that we need to find ways to be radically, um, challenging the way that the individual system of capitalism encourages us, or actually almost, almost, I think, streams us or hems us into these destructive patterns. I think it's gonna take a very strong society to stand up and say, we want to do something fundamentally different.

But one of the things that I love about Scotland in particular is that you do see a lot of things, uh, happening. The island of Eigg, uh, one particular example in terms of their relationship to energy and how they manage their energy system. Community wealth generation that's taking place. The Scottish Government, I think, is in many cases at the forefront of these kinds of communing, uh, approaches, community practice, uh, empowerment of communities.

And it's not to say that I don't think they're doing it. I would just like to see it accelerated to a point where we could do much, much more of this so that we could afford the space of saying “my relationship to the world is intimately tied to my relationship to others”, and that actually having a caring approach to things, whether that's people, food, energy, air, fish in the sea – name your sustainable development goal – was something that was just baked into our DNA. 

Jen: Am really itching, just having heard those kind of almost provocations, um, there is just to kind of, to ask then, you know, if our approach to climate and sustainability today is not caring enough – I'm hearing from you it's not caring enough. There are caring people, there are caring infrastructures, but it's not enough. What needs to be done different, like how you must care change into the future? 

Arno: I think it's one approach. I know that systems thinking is, is uh, a very popular concept displacing the, the, so-yesterday design thinking. But I think, you know, we're on the advent of a, a systems of systems thinking, or a meta systems thinking, where we understand a system, but then we, we have to understand the relationships of systems to each other.

So understanding the environment might start with reframing our modes of education. Uh, which may mean less focus on writing and mathematics and facts of history, but actually getting kids out into the world where they can get their, their hands dirty, where they can understand the difference between worms and water.

Uh, where the rain comes from, uh, when, when it doesn't come, why is it not coming? Give them courses in meteorology when they're five years old. Everything that stands around us has been constructed. It is a social norm that we've developed. Our relationship to nature is, is to some extent also a social norm in the way that we bound things and say, “this is a park; this is nature", “this is a city, this is not”, “this is…” – we can rewrite all of those things, with courage and conviction, but I think it requires a collective of people, a common, if you will, to say that “this is not yours and mine, this is ours.

And that actually I, I understand where I end and you begin”. And it's not just a hard line or a distinction, it's a fluid space where sometimes it has to move so that we can help each other. 

Vanicka: I'd just like to riff off what, uh, Arno said exactly about communing, but equally about sectors. A lot of climate action and sustainability action takes place in “I’m in circular economy. I will do circular economy". “I am in building retrofit. I'll do this”. And governance works the same way. It works in, in the silos, but actually they're part of the same problem. And if you're thinking about networks, not only are we talking about networks of people, but I would argue networks of sectors to really, again, if we’re are talking about resources that are always scanty, then a sharing of resources cross sectorally, uh, might be one way to address some of the institutional problems.

Not all – this is not a magic solution – uh, but it's a kind of a plaster on a gaping wound where, fine, we have limited resources. Let's work together to see how easily one can connect a circular economy, community gardening, and uh, building retrofit, 'cause all three can actually be interconnected if you, if you just have someone clever enough. 

Arno: I think we have lots of people who are clever enough.

Matt: Just gotta get them together in the same room. 

Vanicka: And talking.

Jen: And funding. 

Arno: Maybe this is the podcast that does it, Matt, every, suddenly everybody's around the old, you know, the speaker listening to…

Matt: That's what we're hoping for. So I think Arno, Vanicka, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much. This has been a very illuminating discussion and, uh, I now have care on the brain, I think, and we'll have you back, uh, again soon to learn a little bit more about your whole research agenda on this space.

Matt: I thank you. 

Arno: Thank you. 

Vanicka: Thanks. Really nice to be here.

Matt: So Jen, another fascinating discussion. Uh, lots to chew over. Any key takeaways for you from that? 

Jen: Yeah. Where to start, Matt? I, I think one of the things that I took away, there's two things. One thing to me is how similar this care framing and care perspective is to our mission at SISC, the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities, in terms of unlocking that grassroots action

Matt: Yep.

Jen: And enabling that action of care. Um, if we talk about people having that will, that care, but not being able to deliver what they want to with that energy, then, then really that's what we're all about, right, at SISC.

Matt: Yeah.

Jen: So that really stuck out to me. And I think the other thing that stuck out and, and I, I, I have a suspicion it will be also playing on your mind, Matt, is about what, kind of framing of carelessness.

Matt: Yeah.

Jen: So I think we've explored in previous episodes, and today, that people do care in different ways, and I think that unearthing that care is, is a really important part of climate action and much, yeah, broader transition. But actually on the flip side of that, what does it mean to not care?

And actually is there a framing of carelessness, is there a recognition that certain actions, behaviours, responsibilities, feelings, and thoughts are actually an act of carelessness and the, the care cascade that we spoke about at the beginning and, and what that then leads to? So those are things that really, that stick out to me. Yeah. How, how about yourself? 

Matt: Well, yeah, I think that maybe two things. The first is the importance of language and the power of language in terms of encouraging us to think differently about the same problem. So I, I think it's not just about taking a care lens on this, but it's almost playing with the language that makes you think about it in different ways.

So there you talked about carelessness and I, and then I was thinking to myself, well, is recklessness the same? And I, I'm not sure it is. I think like recklessness suggests some kind of active, um, wanton kind of destruction of the environment. Are you actually almost gunning for that? Whereas the carelessness is almost, you know, this sense of neglect.

Jen: Yeah.

Matt: Uh, so, so yeah. So I think there's the power of language in this, and I think the second is about traditions of caring and cultures of caring. There was something I was listening to the other day, uh, another podcast called The Origin Story, and they were looking at the, um, deep-diving into GDP and, um, you know, they were talking about where some countries have gone full out for growth versus other countries like Japan, for instance, which have maybe, um, gone down more of a sort of steady state economy, haven't maybe pushed as strongly at that because there are – and this is their view, not necessarily mine – but there are stronger cultures around caring, um, or, or taking a more careful approach to the economy. And this makes me kind of think, well, if you look at the British culture as an example, can we still remember how to care for one another?

Can we still remember how to care for the environment? And if not, how do we relearn that and how do we then pass that on to future generations or, or amongst our community? So yeah, I'm, I'm very taken with that. Cultures of care, traditions of care, and if we've lost that, then I'm really very concerned about that.

But we then we must relearn how to do that and we, we must look to where it is that is present and, and, and very much alive. So lots to take away from this. So really, really, really interesting chat. 

Jen: Absolutely. So, thank you for listening to this episode of Local Zero. If you enjoyed the podcast, please help us bring it to more people. Hit the “share" button and tell a friend or a colleague about this episode. 

Matt: Yes, and if you're listening on Spotify, you can leave your feedback directly on the episode. If you're on Apple Podcasts, please do leave us a review. Five stars as always, please.

Jen: Of course. And if there's a subject or a project that you think we should be covering on Local Zero, we really want to hear about it. So please do drop us an email at localzeropod@gmail.com or send us a message on LinkedIn. Just search for local Zero podcast. 

Matt: And also if the pod has inspired you to do things differently, whether that's at home or at work, or somewhere in between, please do let us know. Email us at localzeropod@gmail.com. We're always keen to hear. But until then, see you next time. 

Jen: See you next time.