Residential mobility trajectories and integration in Douala and Bafoussam,Cameroon

Abstract

This study examines how migrant households relocate their homes in two Cameroonian cities over the course of lifetimes or even generations. The central claim is that homeownership is the ultimate sign of integration into city life. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods (218 interviews, 30 focus groups and a household survey, sample size 686), the study argues that three key factors explain why people move: the quality of housing they can affords, the proximity to a workplace and the potential for homeownership. Three residential model trajectories are identified. The first describes a journey from being a new migrant who is a guest of family or friends in the city centre to being a married family with kids owning a home in the urban periphery. The second model continues that journey by returning back to the city centre in pursuit of more convenient, high-status home location (if finances permit). A third model describes moves to sites all over the city later in life as older individuals seek to maximize family income in the way they use multiple properties. Understanding residential mobility patterns has the potential to lead to a better public policies and more effective private investments in the housing sector.     

Using carbon finance to support climate policy objectives in high mountain ecosystems

Carbon markets and climate finance payments are being used to incentivize the mitigation of CO₂ arising from anthropogenic land-use change in forests, marine ecosystems, and lowland grasslands. However, no such consideration has been given to how these ‘carbon finance incentives’ might be applied to mountain grasslands and shrublands, ecosystems that contain a substantial amount of carbon. These incentives amount to more than US$350 billion per annum and could potentially support underfunded natural resource management (NRM) activities, which are urgently needed to address numerous stressors impacting these important ecosystems. In the mountain context, NRM activities could include adaptive grazing management, sustainable cropping, ecosystem preservation, ecosystem restoration, and engineered soil conservation measures. This article investigates the stressors, challenges, and priorities related to the NRM of carbon stocks in mountain grasslands and shrublands; why carbon markets and climate finance have not yet been utilized in this context; and, what is required to position mountain-based NRM activities as eligible for carbon finance incentives. Using surveys and interviews triangulated with a systematic literature review, the study found that carbon finance incentives are not well understood, both amongst mountain-focused experts and in the literature. The study also found the required technical methodologies, policy frameworks, and data to be largely undeveloped. This article proposes a top-down conceptual policy framework that can be used to develop key ‘enabling factors’ with the view of extending the eligibility of carbon markets and climate finance to NRM activities undertaken in mountain grasslands and shrublands in the same way that has been afforded to other ecosystems.

Policy relevance

This is the first study to explicitly highlight the important role that the mountain grasslands and shrublands might play in international climate policy, and how carbon finance mechanisms might support better NRM in these areas. It is also the first to investigate why these incentives have not been adopted thus far. The article concludes by proposing a novel top-down ‘carbon incentive enabling’ framework that could be driven by governments and mountain development focused organizations so as to capture some of the opportunities offered by carbon-based incentives, and help meet international climate policy objectives.     

Seismic microzoning of the area struck by Umbria–Marche (Central Italy) Ms 5.9 earthquake of 26 September 1997

The earthquake of 26 September 1997 in Central Italy is one of the largest seismic events of the last 20 years in Italy. Two main events that caused significant damage in a large area of Umbria and Marche regions and site amplification phenomena were recorded even at large distances from the epicenter. After the emergency period, a detailed study of the surface effects was necessary for the post-earthquake reconstruction, but in a way it should be carried out rapidly enough to allow urban planners to give instructions and codes to public administrators. A team of surveyors were trained to collect field information such as geologic and geomorphologic features and, where possible, pre-existing geotechnic or geophysic information. Information was collected and analyzed with the aid of dynamic codes to calculate the possible local site effects. A one-dimensional code, analyzing single soil columns, [Schabel PB, Lysmer J, Seed HB. , a computer program for earthquake response analysis of horizontally layered sites. College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Report PB-220. 1972, p. 207], as well as the two-dimensional codes working with finite or boundary elements, [Idriss IM, Lysmer J, Hwang R, Seed HB. , a computer program for evaluating the seismic response of the soil structure by variable damping finite element procedures. UCB EERC Report No. 73-16. 1973.] and [Sanò T. , un programma per il calcolo della propagazione delle onde sismiche. Technical Report SSN/RT/96/9. 1996, pp. 51.], were used and the results are presented as response spectra or amplification coefficients.     

Earthquake-induced ground failures in Italy

The National Catalog of Ground Failures Induced by Strong Earthquakes in Italy (CEDIT), is described. The catalog holds data on ground failures triggered by the earthquakes that occurred in Italy in the last millennium and which had a nominal epicentral intensity equal to or greater than VIII in the Mercalli–Cancani–Sieberg (MCS) intensity scale. The ground effects reported in the catalog are the following: landslides, fractures, liquefaction, surface faulting, and topographic changes of the ground level (subsidence, settlements, tilting, and so on). Each effect is described in terms of seismological parameters of the triggering earthquake, site coordinates and administrative code, lithology and kinematic type of the ground failure. The catalog represents a tool to assess the susceptibility of geologic materials to ground shaking, and to validate predictive models of seismically induced ground displacements (scenarios of earthquake-induced geologic risks). In the context of this study, a simple statistical analysis of the database yielded useful relations between the parameters of the triggering earthquakes and the related effects.     

The Danube River inception: Evidence for a 4 Ma continental‐scale river born from segmented ParaTethys basins

Before reaching the Black Sea, the Danube River passes through a string of Para‐Tethyan (Vienna, Pannonian and western and eastern Dacian) basins. The key question is, when and how did the Danube River become a continental‐scale river with a drainage similar to present? New data presented here show that the Late Miocene deepwater strata in the Black Sea have a significant sediment source and depositional style change at about 4 Ma. However, the presence of active Miocene basins within the Danube catchment raises questions about the timing of Danube River inception and whether the upstream palaeogeography would have allowed or disallowed delivery of large sediment volumes to the deepwater Black Sea. Stratigraphic analyses in the Pannonian and Dacian basins reveal a phase of coeval sedimentary fill of the basins along the Danube at about 4 Ma. This multi‐basin observation points to a concurrent basin‐fill model rather than the basin fill‐and‐spill or Messinian‐type lowstand models previously proposed for Danube inception.