Ed Brown

Loughborough University | Lough · Department of Geography

Achieving universal access to clean cooking requires a significant mobilization of capital to close the current funding gap of around US$7 bn per year. The clean cooking landscape has changed considerably with substantial innovation in terms of technology, business models, and services. The transition towards higher-tier, modern energy cooking (MEC...

This paper is a review of research undertaken, and subsequent policy change enacted, in the years 2018 to 2022 regarding the integration of cooking loads and needs into modern energy planning. Building on an earlier paper which described how the dominant global approaches to tackling the enduring problem of biomass-fuelled cooking was failing, and...

All the papers in this Special Issue situate their research in the context of a failing clean cooking strategy and the potential contribution of electricity to this [...]

Globally, 2.6 billion people still cook with biomass, resulting in interlinked health, environmental and drudgery challenges. The uptake of improved biomass cookstoves has barely kept up with population growth, yet SDG7 hopes for universal access to modern energy by 2030. This paper explores a potentially transformative new approach to facilitate a...

We define and discuss the clean cooking conundrum in Africa, home to most of the world's population still reliant on polluting and unsustainable cooking technologies. We explore the technology options that meet both the competing needs of various SDG7 targets on energy access, including clean cooking and the challenge of achieving net zero carbon d...

Results-based financing (RBF) programmes in the clean cooking sector have gained increasing donor interest over the last decade. Although the risks and advantages of RBF have been discussed quite extensively for other sectors, especially health services, there is limited research-documented experience of its application to clean cooking. Due to the...

The Higher Education (HE) systems of Chile and the UK are compared in terms of the 'massification' (Altbach, 1989) and the relevance and adequacy of the private-public provision mix. Dissimilar, each country has tried to build social inclusion into HE outreach at the same time as allowing participation of the private sector. Also included in the re...

The decentralization of governance is increasingly considered crucial for delivering development and is being widely adopted in sub-Saharan countries. At the same time, distributed (decentralized) energy systems are increasingly recognized for their role in achieving universal access to energy and are being promoted in sub-Saharan countries. Howeve...

For the past 40 years, the dominant ‘policy’ on cooking energy in the Global South has been to improve the combustion efficiency of biomass fuels. This was said to alleviate the burdens of biomass cooking for three billion people by mitigating emissions, reducing deforestation, alleviating expenditure and collection times on fuels and increasing he...

This report summarises the findings from four Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) held in Zambia, with the aim of informing the development of a battery-supported electric cooking concept, eCook. It is part of a broader programme of work, designed to identify and investigate the opportunities and challenges that await in high impact markets such as Zamb...

This report presents a gendered analysis of how the eCook concept might fit into the Tanzanian context, with the aim of informing the development of a battery-supported electric cooking concept, eCook. It is part of a broader programme of work, designed to identify and investigate the opportunities and challenges that await in potentially significa...

The eCook Zambia Design Challenge aimed to facilitate the participatory design of eCook (a battery-supported electric cooking concept), allowing the generic concept to evolve around Zambian cooking practices. For more information, visit ELStove.com

The aim of this global study is to support a strategic long term mix of interventions that seek to pre-position research and knowledge on eCook such that when the pricing of components and systems reaches viability, donors, investors, private sector and civil society can take rapidly eCook to scale. The objectives of the study are to locate, quant...

Whilst the rapid spread of solar photovoltaics (PV) across Africa has already transformed millions of lives, it has yet to have an impact on the main energy need of poor households: cooking. In the context of falling global PV prices, recent advancements in battery technology and rising charcoal/fuelwood prices in severely deforested regions, the d...

In 2007, on the cusp of the economic crisis, a paper was published in Growth and Change (June 2007) entitled “Shadow Europe: alternative European financial geographies”, which began to tackle the idea of shadow finance in Europe and the size and inseparability of what was regarded as “shadow” from “normal” financial flows. A number of the observati...

Few areas of international development research have seen as much transformation over recent years as those relating to energy access and low carbon transitions. New policy initiatives, technological innovations and business models have radically transformed the configuration and dynamics of the sector, driven by the urgency of ongoing climate chan...

This recommendations paper outlines the proposed role of District Energy Officers (DEOs) in Malawi as a conduit for the Government of Malawi to facilitate the decentralisation of a sustainable energy policy to district level. If developed sensitively and effectively and resourced appropriately, the implementation of DEOs in Malawi could help to str...

Rural community energy projects in the Global South have too frequently been framed within a top-down technologically-driven framework that limits their ability to provide sustainable solutions to energy poverty and improving livelihoods. This framing is linked to how energy interventions are being imagined and constructed by key actors in the sect...

Recent years have seen growing academic interest in the rapid transitions taking place within energy systems across the Global South as energy access issues have risen up national and international ‘development’ agendas. In particular, there has been optimistic reflection around how technological developments might provide opportunities for Souther...

This paper aims to identify and understand the challenges that may confront the scaling up of a proposed battery electric cooking concept (Batchelor 2013), eCook, which offers the potential for emission free cooking, with time/money savings and broader environmental benefits from reduced fuelwood/charcoal consumption. By drawing on the literature o...

The call for social science to engage with energy infrastructures and users to enable low-carbon transitions that benefit the poor in the Global South is welcome, but its urgency risks epistemic distortion. The theme of “community” in the social studies of energy needs critical reflection, disambiguation, and interrogation with empirical case studi...

Energy access is one of the major impediments in popularizing renewable energy based energy solutions for rural areas of the developing countries like Bangladesh. Despite the success of Solar Home System, energy availability for economic activities are still limited. Very small scale solar PV based grid systems, less than 10 kW, named as nano-grid,...

This article examines recent institutional thinking on the green economy and the implications of official understandings and structuration of a green economy for the global South. Assertions about the transformative potential of a green economy by many international actors conceals a complexity of problems, including the degree to which the green e...

A concept paper, along with cost estimations, is presented proposing the development of very small sized solar PV grids, which we have termed nano-grids. These grids allow the incorporation of developmental activities such as irrigation, along with household usage of electricity. It is argued that the developmental activity should be chosen in such...

Within the context of an exploration of the recent financial geographies literature, which laments the lack of attention paid to the dynamics and impacts of financial globalisation in Latin America and the global South, this paper examines the links between exclusion from formal financial services provision for low-income sectors across Latin Ameri...

Purpose – This introductory paper aims to serve a dual purpose. First, it seeks to trace some of the key elements of this emerging agenda in critical corruption studies and the major directions in which the field has moved since 2006, exploring some of the connections between dominant discourses of corruption and anti‐corruption and the upheavals w...

Purpose – The concept of corruption is frequently represented as relating to social practices that violate established rules and norms. This paper, however, seeks to demonstrate that corrupt practices are often only possible because they in fact draw on existing institutional mechanisms and cultural dispositions that grant them a certain social app...

Throughout the region, historically there has been a distinct lack of long-term planning in regard to the economies of Latin America. This in turn has resulted in a distinct lack of urban planning and the subsequent uneven concentrations of rapidly-growing urban populations that have lead to the current generation of megacities. These mega-cities a...

There are two literatures that explicitly describe spaces of flows that constitute contemporary globalization: world city network analysis and global commodity chain analysis. We explore the possibilities of their integration by returning to their common origins in world-systems analysis. Each model is described and critiqued and it is argued that...

This paper begins by exploring the ongoing debates about corporate involvement in UK universities and the broader marketization of the higher education sector of which it is but part. Following this, we move on to consider whether higher education institutions might also be conceptualized as corporations in their own right and whether the current p...

This paper provides a contextual and historical backdrop for this special edition by exploring cross-sectoral debates about the potential impacts of the GATS negotiations and their place within the broader political economy of North-South relations. It traces the historical background to the negotiations as part of the formation of the World Trade...

This paper sets out to trace some major points of convergence between an emerging literature on the political geographies of corruption-super-1 and current attempts to develop a renewed research agenda in the geographies of global finance-in this case in a specifically European context. In particular, we offer some preliminary observations on the n...

Representations of Nicaragua’s political health during the Alemán administration (1997–2001) were highly polarised. On the one hand, the period saw considerable inflows of international funds destined for governance reforms, the introduction of a range of anti-corruption measures and detailed governmental treatises and proclamations on how Nicaragu...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set out an agenda for promoting collaboration between researchers in critical geography and critical management studies. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is divided into two main sections. In the first, a detailed discussion of the nature of critical perspectives in the two traditions is advanced wh...

This paper explores the limitations of the dominant neoliberal perspective on governance and institutional reform, with a particular focus upon anti-corruption initiatives. Over recent years, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have been promoting a specific discourse on corruption that separates it from its historicity and the specific...

This paper presents a critique of current thinking on the causes and impacts of corruption and the measures designed to combat it. It begins by exploring the evolution of the current preoccupation with corruption and traces the growth in international initiatives designed to tackle the issue. It then moves on to consider the assumptions underlying...

Central America is a region without a world city. Traditionally, the region’s national projects have been based upon openness to the world economy: how do the region’s contemporary transnational projects connect to the world economy under the new conditions of openness that is contemporary globalization? Focusing upon advanced producer services, th...

About the book: Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) are an important feature of contemporary development, yet they are often evaluated in the terms set out by lenders themselves, ignoring the wider implications of SAPs. Structural Adjustment attempts to situate SAPs in a wider development context featuring case material from the UK, USA, Ghana,...

During the Reagan and Bush presidencies the goals and impacts of US interventions in Nicaragua (and the Central American isthmus more generally) were painfully obvious to most critical observers. The 1990s, in contrast, have seen the Clinton administration adopt a much lower profile, although the US has remained a key influence on political events...

This paper is concerned with the articulation of ‘popular’ alternatives to the dominant Neoliberal ideological consensus which has established itself in Latin America over recent years. It focuses in particular upon the legacy of the Nicaraguan Revolution, situating the FSLN's (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional) current attempts to articulat...

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This paper explores the complex series of problems facing the Latin American ‘left’ in the articulation of a coherent alternative to the increasingly dominant neoliberal ideology in the region. It grounds the evolving debates around this theme within the context of a series of important contemporary global and regional processes. The most important...

This is a conference paper. Corruption has been one of the major international concerns of the past decade. It is an issue that affects all countries, rich and poor, in different ways and to differing degrees. Exactly how corruption affects particular societies has, however, been the subject of some discussion in the literature. The major internati...