Journal of Innovations

Vol. 4, Issue 4

Backloading the Future: Governing the Temporal Commons in Urban Clean-Cooking Transition

AUTHOR(S)

Jeremiah Thoronka

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces the concept of the temporal commons to explain why clean-cooking transitions are often delayed, uneven, and reversible despite ambitious long-term targets. The temporal commons refers to the shared future that becomes vulnerable when present actors defer costs, dilute accountability, and displace harms forward in time. Building on commons theory, institutional temporality, and narrative-practice approaches, the paper distinguishes three related dynamics: temporal misalignment across institutions, infrastructures, and households; backloading as the deferral of costly action; and the temporal commons as the governance object placed at risk. Empirically, the study draws on a six-month narrative-driven ethnography of household cooking-energy practices in Kigali (January-July 2025), including 20 life-history interviews, participant observation, 15 transect walks, 10 focus groups, and 120 policy and programme documents. Findings show that households do not simply adopt fuels; they reorder cooking practices through sensory time, reputational time, safety-learning time, hybrid optimisation, and relational diffusion. The paper proposes a Narrative-Practice Temporality Framework linking institutional horizons, infrastructural lock-in, and household temporal orders. It concludes that protecting the temporal commons requires anti-backloading design, credible sequencing, procedural learning infrastructures, and practice-aligned transition governance. 

DOI

https://doi.org/10.62470/1d263091

CITE THIS ARTICLE 

Thoronka, J. (2026). Backloading the Future: Governing the Temporal Commons in Urban Clean-Cooking Transition. Journal of Innovations, 4(4), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.62470/1d263091