Security,Development, and Fear In Guatemala: Enduring Ties and Lasting Consequences

This paper investigates the long‐term ties between security, development, and fear in Guatemala. I argue that as the development apparatus in Guatemala has long been structured around violence and security concerns, development encounters in the contemporary era continue to be shaped by fear. The confluence of multiple mechanisms of fear, including the legacies of violence, surveillance, and coercion, structure development encounters in profound ways. Drawing on semistructured interviews with development practitioners, I examine their perceptions of fear's impact on development encounters at the local level to highlight the problematic culture of fear rhetoric, which serves to obscure practices through which lived experiences of fear are reproduced. Emphases on social cohesion, solidarity, and behaviors which “better contribute” to development work to mask the racialized elements of these discourses and ultimately serve to silence and delegitimize indigenous demands for structural change and justice in the country     

Imaging vulnerability: the iconography of climate change

This paper explores the iconography of climate change in contemporary climate action campaigns in the UK. I aim to show how sample images are simultaneously scientific denotations of global warming and cultural connotations of danger and vulnerability. I further demonstrate that while similar images are associated with different agendas and geographical visions, they attach to a shared discourse of vulnerability that has Western (colonial) roots. The paper concludes with an overview of possible ways for climate action campaigns to effectively convey their political messages without recycling colonial visions of the world.     

The Victorian Bushfires of 2002–03 and the Politics of Blame: a Discourse Analysis

This paper identifies contrasting environmental discourses on bushfire from the public debate that followed the Victorian fires of 2002–03. Submissions to the inquiry into the 2002–03 Victorian bushfires provide a particularly rich source of documentation. It is argued that environmental events such as bushfire only become political issues, or problems, when they are constituted as such through environmental discourse. Through the analysis, three contrasting discourses on bushfire are identified—here labelled the ‘conservationist’, ‘ruralist’ and ‘wise use’ discourses. In examining how different ‘constructions’ of bushfire have led to conflict, each discourse is shown to consist of a range of actors who draw on shared storylines. Having established a better understanding of the different attitudes, beliefs, interests and values that underpin debates about bushfire, the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the prospects for compromise among the discourses and the potential for improved land and fire management outcomes.     

CLIMATE ENVELOPES OF MIRE COMPLEX TYPES IN FENNOSCANDIA

Peatlands are characteristic features of the Fennoscandian landscape, about one‐quarter of the land surface being classified as peatland. The aim of this work was to determine the extent to which the distribution of four main mire complex types (aapa mire, blanket bog, palsa mire, raised bog) can be modelled on the basis of climatological parameters. Additionally, the relative importance of different climatological variables in influencing the distribution of different mire complex types was scrutinized using the variation partitioning method. Variation partitioning is a novel statistical approach that provides deeper understanding of the importance of different explanatory variable groups for geographical patterns than traditional regression methods. The variation in the distribution of mire complex types was decomposed into independent and joint effects of temperature, precipitation and spatial variables. The distributional limits of aapa mires, palsa mires and raised bogs were primarily associated with thermal factors, whereas moisture regime also played an obvious role for blanket bogs. A considerable amount of variation in the distribution of mire complex types was accounted for by the joint effects of explanatory variables and may thus be causally related to two or all three groups of variables. Although the present distribution of mire complex types corresponded well to the contemporary climate in Fennoscandia, our results indicate that the climate envelopes of palsa mires are narrow. Thus, they can be expected to be extremely sensitive to changes in future climatic conditions.     

Swedish Forests in the Bioeconomy: Stories from the National Forest Program

Abstract

The concept of a bioeconomy has been placed central in formation of a Swedish National Forest Program (NFP). Drawing on Hajer’s conceptual framework of storylines, we present a discourse analysis of the working group reports underlying the establishment of the NFP strategy. We ask what stories about Swedish forests come to dominate the NFP process, how well they reflect the commitment of balancing economic, social and environmental interests, and what role the concept of a bioeconomy, has on the formation of these stories. Storylines of Swedish forests in the bioeconomy unite wider European discourses on the bioeconomy and climate change with historical Swedish forest policy discourses, revitalizing a discourse coalition comprising the state and the industry. Particular to the Swedish discourse is the strong emphasis on creating consensus around a single story of the forest-based bioeconomy.     

风蚀气候侵蚀力研究进展

风蚀气候侵蚀力是土壤风蚀方程中的气候因子，计算模型经多次修正后已基本发展成熟，广泛应用于干旱半干旱地区风蚀气候条件评估与响应机理分析及其与风沙地貌、风沙灾害的相关性研究等方面，其中风蚀气候侵蚀力对区域气候变化的响应研究是当下的热点问题。目前，风蚀气候侵蚀力研究仍存在计算模型不完善、研究区域发展不平衡、气候变化响应分析不全面、风沙地貌及风沙灾害相关性争议较多等问题。未来应进一步从构建区域校准性计算模型、计算并分析沿海地区风蚀气候侵蚀力、综合分析风蚀气候侵蚀力对气候变化的响应、建立风沙地貌及风沙灾害相关的综合性风蚀气候评价指标等方面开展风蚀气候侵蚀力的研究。     

Academic publishing as 'creative' industry, and recent discourses of 'creative economies': some critical reflections

This paper continues recent discussions on the (geo)politics of the production of academic knowledges, in relation to the recent rise of narratives of 'the creative economy'. Creativity and the 'creative industries' are increasingly common components of urban economic development discourse, especially following the release of a set of key books – most notably Charles Landry's The Creative City (2000), and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) – that have become popular among economic development planners and cultural policy makers. This paper focuses on the traffic of these books, and their authors, beyond the Anglo-American core. It also briefly discusses policy discourses interpreted from these texts. It is principally, though, a critique of the ways in which academic knowledges circulate, stemming from theorization of academics as creative producers, and of knowledge production as part of the creative economy. The article seeks to critique the means by which particular northern economic knowledges become normative, framed as universal and 'global', and are distributed and absorbed via intellectual 'scenes' and an academic 'celebrity' circuit.     

Out there and in here: studying Eastern Europe in the West

This paper seeks to explore the challenge of studying geographies of Eastern Europe in Western Europe. It reflects on the growing relationships – imagined and material – between Eastern and Western Europe and engages in contemporary debates over 'relational geographies' to make a case for geographies which imagine our plural, European spatial connections, which connect different parts of the continent and which encourage the re-examination and renegotiation of ideas across East and West in the post-Cold War world. In these ways, the paper borrows from postcolonial frameworks and the ongoing reassessment of area studies to call for studies of Eastern and Western Europe which reinvigorate our "sense of Europe".     

Regional variability in relationships between climate and dengue/DHF in Indonesia

Since 1970, the worldwide distribution, frequency and intensity of epidemics of dengue and dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) have increased dramatically. In Indonesia, as elsewhere, the geographic distribution and behaviour of the two main vectors – Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus – and the consequent transmission dynamics of the disease are strongly influenced by climate. Monthly incidence data were examined in relation to monthly data for temperature, rainfall, rainfall anomalies, humidity and the Southern Oscillation Index for 1992–2001. Focusing on eight provinces, significant Pearson correlations were observed between dengue/DHF incidence and at least one climate variable ( r  = ±0.2 to ±0.43; P  < 0.05). Multiple regression analyses showed that 12.9–24.5 per cent of variance in incidence was explained by two or three climate variables in each province ( P  < 0.1–0.01). Rainfall appears to be the principal climatic agent affecting the geographic distribution and temporal pattern of incidence while temperature appears to play a critical role in outbreak intensity. Wide regional and temporal variations in the strength and nature of the observed associations led to the identification of three groups of provinces where increases in dengue/DHF incidence were variously associated with increased rainfall, decreased rainfall and/or high susceptibility to climate variability. Although climatic factors play an important role in explaining the timing and intensity of dengue/DHF outbreaks, a wide range of other factors specific to local environments also appear to be involved – information that may assist in the prediction and mitigation of regional dengue/DHF outbreaks.     

区域土地生产潜力对全球气候变化的响应评价——以中国北方农牧交错带中段为例

由于气候变化的不确定性,尤其由于区域对气候变化响应评价工作直接关系到区域气候变化对策的制定和区域发展,进行针对气候变化的响应研究比气候变化的影响评价研究更具现实意义。气候变化对区域土地利用会产生一系列的影响,这种影响作用下的区域的反应-相应的变化、必要的适应性调整和适应能力-即是对气候变化的响应。以敏感度和适应能力度量的脆弱性作为衡量区域对气候变化响应的指标,增强了不同研究工作的比较性,正在日益为有关学者接受,并在全球开始研究工作。本文对应用脆弱性理论进行区域气候变化响应研究做了有益的探索。选择气候变化的时间、空间变化明显的中国北方农牧业交错带的中段作为研究案例,分别对农牧业土地生产潜力相对气候变化的敏感度和区域对气候变化的适应能力进行了定量和半定量的计算与评价,从这两个方面给出脆弱性的表述作为对研究区域土地生产潜力对全球气候变化的响应评价。     

Social Mix and the Problematisation of Social Housing

Social housing in Australia is at a significant juncture. High levels of housing stress, increasing levels of socio-spatial polarisation and reduced government funding are posing complex policy challenges. Social mix policies are one response to these challenges, arising from the problematisation of social housing estates as socially excluded. This problematisation is examined through case studies of two Sydney social housing renewal projects: Telopea and Riverwood North. Drawing on interviews with government, private-sector and not-for-profit housing practitioners, the paper identifies two distinct discourses of social exclusion within this problematisation—culture of poverty discourse and equity discourse—that shape the implementation of social mix. These discourses reveal that implementing social mix is more complex than simply managing the cohabitation of residents in different tenures. Rather, the practice of social mix is embedded within discourses about the nature and causes of social exclusion. These discourses, in their turn, inform the multiple and sometimes conflicting aspirations pursued through social mix policies.     

城市新区作为“家”的表征与实践——以鄂尔多斯康巴什新区为例

本文基于表征与非表征的研究视角,分析了以鄂尔多斯康巴什为代表的中国城市新区作为“家”的表征与实践过程。研究发现：针对康巴什新区,外部媒介与地方政府以表征手段建构了截然不同的“家”的意象。其中,BBC、Times等外媒将康巴什新区描绘成充满荒凉景观的“鬼城”和不健康的中国城市居住空间,而在地方政府的重构中,康巴什新区则充满了生态栖居必备的城市景观并成为了先进的城市文化空间。而作为“家”中的居住者,康巴什居民“家”的营建经历了从陌生到认同的渐进过程,这一过程包含了日常生活实践中的空间转换与情感边界的构建。不同行动者共同塑造了康巴什新区多元的、充满矛盾意义的“家”的空间身份。本文旨在丰富中国快速城市化背景下“家”的地理学研究视角与类型,回应“鬼城”话语对地方政府主导的城市化“无家”的质疑,亦是城市新区社会文化研究的有益拓展与补充。     

Drought, desiccation and discourse: missionary correspondence and nineteenth-century climate change in central southern Africa

This paper examines the role that representatives of the London Missionary Society in central southern Africa during the nineteenth century may have played in the development of geographical debates concerning the long-term desiccation of the African continent. Observations on climate included within missionary documents are used to reconstruct a chronology of intra-decadal climatic variability for the period 1815–1900. This reveals six drought periods and seven wet phases that affected large areas of the region, but identifies no evidence for progressive desiccation. The chronology is then used as a framework within which to view missionary perspectives on drought and desiccation. Major influences upon the development of desiccationist theory appear to include the prevalence of contemporary moral economic explanations of climatic variability, as well as the uptake and acceptance of indigenous understanding of climate change. Significantly, many of the key observations by eminent missionaries used as supporting evidence for progressive desiccation are identified as having been made during periods of severe drought. This is used to suggest that the most widely propagated evidence for desiccation may, therefore, simply be the end-product of periods of short-term drought rather than long-term climatic deterioration.     

The Struggle to be Temperate: Climate and "Moral Masculinity" in Mid-Nineteenth Century Ceylon

This paper examines a particular type of imperial literature, the writing of the plantation in mid-nineteenth century Ceylon. These writings, by and for the male planting community, were written to recruit, instruct and entertain, and drew upon discourses of tropicality and moral masculinity. But discourses are constrained by the material conditions under which they are put into practice. Consequently, writings about a place such as highland Ceylon recognised the divergence of this place from the archetypal tropics. Accounts, nevertheless, remained within the conceptual grid that Livingstone (1991) has termed the "morality of climate." These texts were also pervaded by the discourse of moral masculinity. More particularly, the narrative structure of these writings was inflected by the masculinist adventure novel, which was cross-cut by concerns of race, class, religion and nationality. The tropical highlands were represented as an adversary that presented a moral test of the planters' manhood, race and class.     

Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006

The journalistic norm of 'balanced' reporting (giving roughly equal coverage to both sides in any significant dispute) is recognised as both useful and problematic in communicating emerging scientific consensus on human attribution for global climate change. Analysis of the practice of this norm in United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) newspaper coverage of climate science between 2003 and 2006 shows a significant divergence from scientific consensus in the US in 2003–4, followed by a decline in 2005–6, but no major divergence in UK reporting. These findings inform ongoing considerations about the spatially-differentiated media terms and conditions through which current and future climate policy is negotiated and implemented.     

1904～1907年拉萨气候特征再分析

通过对以《有泰拉萨天气日志》为主的历史文献资料的深入挖掘 ,作者分析了 1 90 4年 2月 9日～ 1 90 7年 4月 1 7日拉萨的气候特征 :气候温暖 ,暖冬现象显著 ,而且 1 90 5年气温高于 1 90 4年 ;干旱气候占主导地位 ,间有多雨期 ;天气多变 ,多风 ,有雾 ;水灾、雪灾、干旱等自然灾害严重。拉萨与全球同时段的气候变化大体一致。     

Relationships between Genetic Diversity of Vascular Plant Species and Climate Factors

Genetic diversity is crucial for plants to respond to global climate change, and exploring relationships between genetic diversity and climatic factors may help predict how global climate change will shape the genetic diversity of plants in the future. So far, however, the extent and magnitude of the impact of climatic factors on the genetic diversity of plants has not been clarified. We collected data from 68 published papers on two widely used measures of genetic diversity of populations (average expected heterozygosity (He) and average observed heterozygosity (Ho)) and on localities of populations of 79 vascular plants, and extracted data on 19 climatic factors from WorldClim. We then explored the relationships between measures of genetic diversity and climatic factors using linear regressions. He of plant populations was significantly correlated with climatic factors in 58.7% (44) of the 75 species that used He as a measure of genetic diversity, and Ho was correlated with climatic factors in 65.1% (41) of the 63 species that used this genetic diversity measure. In general, Mean Temperature of Wettest Quarter, Precipitation Seasonality, Precipitation of Driest Quarter and Temperature Seasonality played a vital role in shaping He, and Ho was mostly correlated with Precipitation of Warmest Quarter, Mean Temperature of Wettest Quarter, Precipitation of Driest Quarter and Precipitation of Driest Month. Also, the proportion of the significant correlations between genetic diversity of populations and climatic factors was higher for woody than for herbaceous species, and different climatic factors played different roles in shaping genetic diversity of these two growth forms. Our results suggest that climate may play an important role in shaping genetic diversity of plant populations, that climatic change in the future may alter genetic diversity of plants, and that genetic diversity of different plant forms may respond to climatic change differently.     

COMMODIFYING THE ATMOSPHERE: ‘PENNIES FROM HEAVEN’*?

The atmosphere may be the most valuable resource on Earth and is worth orders of magnitude more to society than it costs as a hazard. However, the atmosphere, and information about the atmosphere, are increasingly being transformed from being considered as part of a global commons to being conceived of as a global commodity to be bought and sold. There are three basic types of atmospheric commodity: firstly, the material atmosphere itself; secondly, the physical properties of the atmosphere; and thirdly, data or information or predictions about the atmosphere. The global expenditure on national meteorological and climatological services and research has now been surpassed by the value of new economic instruments such as weather derivatives and climate emissions trading. Atmospheric scientists, climatologists and physical geographers need to be critically aware of what the consequences, both positive and negative, of these developments for science and society might be. This is particularly the case as climate change is increasingly providing new discourses for companies and governments to exploit as the atmosphere becomes a tradable green resource. This paper attempts to construct an initial critical framework of analysis drawing from broader literatures on the commodification of nature.     

'Hell on earth and paradise all at the same time': the production of smallholding space in the British countryside

Summary This paper begins to develop an analysis of the geography of smallholding, as a contribution to developing interest in cultural geographies of farming and the nature of the 'post-productivist' countryside. The paper uses evidence from a survey of UK smallholders to suggest that they are in a paradoxical position in relation to ideas about 'real' farming, production and consumption, leisure and work. Smallholder identity is revealed as constituted through ideas about 'nature', food, family, community, work and rural space. The paper concludes by suggesting a framework of ideas for future intensive research into smallholding and its links with farming cultures and rural social and cultural change.