Blockchain technology is emerging as a plausible disruptor of waste management practices that influence the governance of plastics. The interest among the waste management community in the potential and fundamental changes to complex resource management associated with blockchain adoption parallels recent research in other sectors, such as finance, health, public administration, etc. During any comparable period characterized by a step-change in positive coverage of an early-stage technology, it can be challenging for actors to access a grounded, evidence-based oversight of the current state of practice and make informed decisions about whether or how to adopt blockchain technology. The current absence of such a systematic overview of recent experiences with blockchain initiatives disrupting waste practices not only limits the visibility of these experimental efforts, but also limits the learning that can be shared across waste plastics researcher and practitioner communities. This paper contributes with a current overview of blockchain technology adoption in the waste management sector, giving particular attention to implications for the governance of plastics. Our study draws on both primary interview data and secondary documentation data to map the landscape of current blockchain initiatives in the global waste sector. We identify four areas of blockchain use that are beginning to change waste management practices (payment, recycling and reuse rewards, monitoring and tracking of waste, and smart contracts). We conclude by outlining five areas of significant blockchain uses, implications, and influences of relevance to the development of circular plastic waste governance in both research and practice.

Fuel subsidies are policy instruments that have historically been used to assist the poor in affording energy for essential household activities. The subventions have, however, been the subject of considerable criticism that they in practice exacerbate inequalities and enrich fuel producers and well-to-do households that do not require support from fuel subsidies. When efforts to resolve tensions across different stakeholder needs lead to unintended, undesirable, and differential impacts across groups and across different time horizons, a policy dilemma emerges. Actors looking to understand or inform fuel-subsidy reform face an analytical challenge in knowing how to effectively frame important interlinkages and identify strategies for intervention. This policy brief responds to this analytical challenge in understanding interlinkages that frame these policy dilemmas by using John Kingdon’s multiple-policy stream framework to analyze how the Indonesian government navigated its energy subsidy reform policy dilemma during 1998–2016. It shares lessons on how the country has managed this situation and discusses implications for further domestic reforms. The Indonesian experience may provide useful insights and lessons for other developing countries looking to navigate the multiple interlinkages across fuel-subsidy dilemmas.

Digital technologies’ development and their ubiquity has significantly changed the way information is collected and shared. These changes are also observed in the ways that knowledge and information used to design and implement Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) policies are increasingly made accessible via digital platforms. Lacking, however, are evaluation frameworks to measure the performance and effectiveness of public information systems used for STI policy work. This limits what we know about what aspects work for whom, when, and why. As a response to this gap limiting our collective capacity for improving their utility, this paper presents an assessment framework tool for STI policy-focused digital knowledge platforms. Our proposition is informed by theoretical lessons from the areas of work on Knowledge Infrastructures (KIs) and Next Generation Repositories (NGRs), and practical experiences from policy professionals working in STI policy domains. The tool’s architecture is structured around three interdependent thematic pillars of performance in the production, aggregation, distribution, and maintenance of knowledge in digital information platforms: the communities pillar, the technical systems pillar, and the sustainability pillar. To test the design and utility of our proposed evaluation framework, we applied it on a digital platform of STI policy instruments maintained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Global Observatory for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (GO-SPIN) platform. We conclude with reflections on future areas for evaluation framework development.

This chapter describes scenario building with local stakeholders from industry and healthcare, including clinicians, policymakers and regulators, to identify interlocking scope for intervention towards sustainable health improvement. Scenario building is highly collaborative and envisages different possible futures to answer ‘what if’ policy questions. The chapter explains how to build scenarios using participatory mapping of cross-system linkages, and describes two cancer care innovation exercises: one describes collaborative scenario building on how to tackle pain management gaps in Tanzania; the second documents collective envisaging in Kenya of how to improve access to essential cancer care commodities, needed to support dignity and ability to work.