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Local Agenda 21 (LA21) is widely regarded as a key tool for implementing sustainability policies since local authorities are closer to ordinary people and some local managers and politicians have the ability to adapt organisations to new managerial atmospheres and social demands. However, local governments tend to lack the right economic, human and knowledge resources. Consequently, in the search...
The political salience of demands from minority and regional groups for greater language rights increases across Europe. To draw more geographical attention to a particular aspect of these developments, this article identifies the main generic problems of converting demands for ‘linguistic rights’ into applied language policies. It does this by first outlining how the historic process of nation-state...
In the past decade geographers have critiqued the exclusivity of idyllic representations of rurality and sought to explore the diverse experiences of Other social groups in the countryside. This paper builds upon that small but significant strand of research which has highlighted the whiteness of representations of rurality and the consequences of this for racialised minorities. These debates have...
In spite of raising Asian per capita food production by 27% and making India food self-sufficient, the Green Revolution has received much criticism for its environmental and socio-economic impacts. Taking on board post-development critiques of ‘speaking for’ Third World ‘others’, this paper seeks to examine the Green Revolution from the points of view of people directly affected by it. Comparative,...
Conservation practitioners have scrutinized the credibility and effectiveness of community-based natural resource management, noting its romantic misconceptions about communities and their capacities. Early approaches failed to acknowledge the heterogeneity of collective agents, the synergy between decentralization and neoliberalism, or the need to affirm rural peoples’ entitlements to resources....
Tackling fuel poverty is central to the delivery of the Scottish Executive’s commitment to social justice. Many Scottish rural households are not linked into the mains gas network and rely on expensive alternatives, despite being surrounded by plentiful supplies of low-cost renewable wood biomass. A regional study was undertaken to establish the potential market for pelletised wood fuel, available...
The idealization of natural landscapes and peoples during colonialism, coupled with the popularity of sustainable development in the postcolonial era, has contributed to the expansion of conservation planning throughout the African continent. Concerns surrounding the promotion of national and international conservation agendas at the expense of local livelihood needs have generated interest in community...
The paper applies some of the principles of pragmatism to the environmental health crisis of arsenic pollution in the groundwater of Bangladesh. This hazard affects between 28 and 57 million people and it has been called “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history”. Such hyperbole aside, the authors consider the dysfunctional nature of central and local government in Bangladesh, which at...
Ecological Modernisation (EM) theorists argue that businesses in industrialised nations are ecologically restructuring in response to market signals, and that economic actors increasingly perceive a business case for sustainability. Whilst UK policymakers urge companies to undertake environmental measures voluntarily on the basis that it will be good for business, a qualitative study exploring the...
The inclusion of obesity within public health rests on a proven and accepted biomedical link between body weight and health status. Drawing on the 2005 controversy over annual death rates attributable to obesity in the US, this paper contends that uncertainty as to the causal mechanisms linking body weight and health are undermining the development of effective obesity prevention policies. Consequently,...
The rise of cultural industries is in part facilitated by the rise of leisure and entertainment in the advanced industrialized economies. This article explores one such example, taking ‘ethnic’ art, flamenco, and examining the role of consumption in shaping flamenco, both as an art form and as an industry. The global reach of the flamenco industry is assessed by focusing on two major markets, Japan...
Encouraged by government policies to promote city centre living and to increase residential land use on brownfield sites, there has been considerable repopulation of the city centre. Through detailed small-area census analysis of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea, supplemented by household surveys and key informant interviews, the research points to a range of population characteristics and...
Central Việt Nam is one of the most vulnerable areas in the country to natural disasters. In 1985 a major typhoon hit the Tam Giang Lagoon coastal area in the province of Thừa Tiên-Huế, Central Việt Nam, with severe impacts on the sampan dwellers who lived there on boats and fished for their livelihoods. Since then, the government has attempted to resettle them on land in order to decrease their vulnerability...
In October 2003, hundreds of thousands of Bolivians took to the streets demanding the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. After 20 years of neo-liberal policies – and the failures to improve the living conditions of the majority – the proposal to export natural gas via Chile was taken by the population as yet another step to sustain an unjust political order. Facing a direct challenge...
Community-based mapping has become a necessary tool for development work worldwide – its adoption is near hegemonic. Mapping community land, however, can have unforeseen consequences in part due to its tendency to render what are complex configurations of social-ecological relationships into two-dimensional form. I argue that one of the key limitations to commonly practiced community-based mapping...
The urban housing market of China has been transformed since the 1980s from a centrally-planned to a free-market system. This study aimed to (1) investigate the position of outdoor environmental quality in house-buyers’ preferences; (2) assess monetary values attributed to environmental externalities by the hedonic pricing method (HPM); and (3) test the applicability of HPM in China. The study area...
The Indian Ocean Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 generated a wave of private donations from Western countries – a paradigmatic case of generosity. However, more than a year after, a number of evaluation studies conclude that post-tsunami aid has achieved ambivalent results and that recipients of aid felt excluded from the reconstruction process, reduced to passive observers. This paper argues that there...
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