230037 FPR Research Practice 2: Researching the interplay between environmental and social policies (2019W)

The course will be connected to the project: "BALANCE - Balancing climate and social housing policies in the transformation to a low carbon society: Designing integrated policy mixes for Austria". The project is funded by the Austrian Klima- und Energiefonds (2018-2020).

SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT
By ratifying the Conference of Parties (COP21) Paris Agreement and adopting the EU 2030/2050 climate targets, Austrian climate policy has set out on an ambitious pathway towards low carbon transformation. Reducing current carbon emissions by up to 95% until 2050 will fundamentally change the way Austrians live, as product chains and consumption patterns have to turn from fossil fuels to renewable energy and from a paradigm of material growth to sustainable lifestyles. For this historical endeavour to be successful, policy fields need no longer be conceived as isolated silos, but should be harmonised and balanced in order to leverage synergies and to cushion detrimental side-effects.
BALANCE aims at designing low carbon policy mixes that reconcile the climate and social policy arenas in the domain of private housing. Housing, on the one hand, contributes significantly to Austria’s carbon emissions (Umweltbundesamt 2016) and, on the other hand, is pivotal for reducing inequality and poverty (BMASK 2017). The housing domain showcases typical dynamics where the aims and impacts of climate and social policy intersect.
BALANCE will design low carbon policies for the housing domain that reach climate targets without cutting back on the social agenda. This requires that in order to be environmentally effective, policies should not only comply with the EU climate targets ( 40% carbon emissions until 2030 and -80% to -95% until 2050) but also ensure that current levels of poverty or inequality do not worsen or even improve.

AIMS OF THE COURSE
This one-year Research Lab (two semesters) lies at the intersection of Social and Climate Change Policies. In the Summer Semester, the following steps are planned:
• Theory: content-related discussion of the topic;
• Methods: research design, planning of the quantitative survey;
• Fieldwork: first steps for the implementation of the research project.
The theoretical background will be provided by different approaches to energy poverty, welfare states and environmental states (Gough 2016), environmental justice perspectives (Jenkins et al. 2016) and social and psychological theories aimed at explaining pro-environmental behavioural change.

During the course, we will cover various steps that are part of every research process. These include: literature reviews, from theoretical concepts to analytical approaches, operationalisation of theoretical concepts, research questions´ design, primary and secondary data collection, data analysis and reporting of findings (including presentations).

The Research Lab follows a practice-based approach and assignments aim at providing an active contribution to the research project.