Local, state, regional, and federal roles in coastal nutrient management

A number of local, regional, state, and federal programs are in place that strive to protect and restore coastal waters and habitats, and which specifically address eutrophication and nutrient over-enrichment. There are, however, no easily implemented and reliable methods or sources of data and information for citizens, coastal managers, elected officials, and agency staff who are responsible for managing a coastal area to determine sources of nutrients and potential impacts to coastal waters. Coordination among federal and local agencies remains inadequate. In the few examples of successful coastal nutrient management programs, effective nutrient management strategies are often partnerships of national, regional, and local efforts. The recent National Research Council (2000) examination of issues and management options calls for development of a National Coastal Nutrient Management Strategy, coordinated between national, state and local programs, academia, and the private sector. The proposed National Coastal Nutrient Management Strategy includes recommendations for local programs to consider in developing an effective nutrient management strategy, such as setting goals for restoration, determining nutrient reductions needed to meet goals, and monitoring results. The proposed strategy also identifies priority actions which federal programs should consider, including identifying gaps and overlaps in existing and proposed national programs for all aspects of nutrient over-enrichment; increasing accessibility to data, information and expertise on nutrient over-enrichment causes, effects, and management options; and setting clear guidelines for nutrient loads. A nationally consistent monitoring program and targeted research, specifically for atmospheric deposition, seasonal variability of nitrogen and phosphorus enrichment effects, the role of specific nutrients in the occurrence of harmful algal blooms, and economic impacts of nutrient over-enrichment were also identified as priority needs.     

Representing the imagined city: Place and the politics of difference during Guangzhou’s 2010 language conflict

In this article we investigate local citizens’ place politics and discourses of place identity during the 2010 language conflict in Guangzhou, China. Drawing on geographical scholarship on the relational construction of place and the progressive politics of difference, we conceptualize place as an assemblage of trans-local connections and disparate trajectories which constitute the radical hybridity of any particular place. In concretizing a relational rethinking of place into a local politics of difference, we suggest that Doreen Massey’s thesis of a global sense of place provides an important epistemological basis for destabilizing the normative local/non-local boundary in order to realize a relational constitution of place-based cultural identity and subjectivity. Based on a social and political campaign against state-led hegemonic language standardization, the 2010 language conflict in Guangzhou is a socially and culturally constructed process in which the Guangzhou locals’ imagination and representation of place and identity are reproduced within a local geometry of social relations involving the state language policy, the local community and the city’s migrant population. Both exclusionary and progressive discourses of place identities have been articulated in this process of re-negotiation and re-imagination of place-based identities. This paper acknowledges that some place-bounded politics may demonstrate a counter-hegemonic dimension and are therefore not inherently regressive. But we also contend that any place politics needs to ask which elements are to be welcomed and which can be excluded in a fluid regime of politics within specific networks of social relations. The cultural boundary of insiders/outsiders must be constantly re-negotiated and rendered relational with the attentiveness to ethical responsibility towards otherness.     

The politics of urban entrepreneurialism in Glasgow

North American literature on the changing role of the local state these past two decades has been dominated by the view of a transition from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism. Associated with the transition has been the emergence of a New Urban Politics (NUP). Within a political economy framework. the NUP has been rooted in the material redistributive effects of the transition. This paper explores the character of this NUP, as experienced by one British city, and highlights some fundamental differences with the established political economy reading. Our argument, based upon the city of Glasgow, draws attention to two distinctive features. First, the institutional structure of urban governance in Glasgow differs from that of cities in the United States. In Glasgow, it has been the Left controlled local Council which has orchestrated the transition to entrepreneurialism, rather than the North American model of a coalition between local capital and the local state. Secondly, the transition in Glasgow has been marked not by a significant transfer of local state revenue from service provision to local economic development, but by a symbolic reorientation of the local state as marked by the central importance of large place marketing hallmark events. These events represent the city in ways which differ from traditional ‘self’ identities. Consequently, the transition has evoked a political response which has focused upon the symbolic posturing of the local state rather than the material consequences of the shift. In focusing upon local identity, the politics of urban entrepreneurialism in Glasgow points to a dimension of conflict which has received inadequate treatment in accounts of the NUP to date.     

The evolving narrative of the Darfur conflict as represented in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The New York Times</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Washington Post</Emphasis>, 2003–2009

News media influence local to global interactions between people, societies, and governments by producing place images. Representations of Africa in Western news media are heavily imbued with colonialist notions of cultural geography. In particular, Western news media have represented conflicts in Africa as ‘tribal’, a trope that erases geographic and historical context, and discourages actions that could prevent or reduce violent conflict. To determine if ‘tribalism’ remains important in coverage of African conflict, we use framing analysis to evaluate news on Sudan’s Darfur region in The New York Times and The Washington Post during 2003–2009. We find that these newspapers predictably relied on stereotypes related to tribalism to simplify Darfur’s geography and make the conflict meaningful to intended readers. Tribal portrayal of African war is inherently political, and, problematically, neither newspaper recognized that their use of the tribal narrative was parallel to the views of both the Sudanese government and external observers that challenged the actions of the Sudanese government. However, we also found that stereotypical representations became less prominent over time, apparently because reporters found that the initial, simplistic framing of the conflict did not match their encounters with geographic reality. We emphasize the decline in stereotypical tropes, because this suggests behind-the-scenes negotiation about representations in these news organizations. Recognizing voices that challenge stereotypical portrayals is necessary to developing place images that are geographically more accurate.     

Ethnoscapes, entertainment and ’eritage in the global city: segmented spaces in Singapore’s Joo Chiat Road

This case study considers the early development and recent changes that have occurred in the vicinity of Joo Chiat Road, Singapore, which can be described as a ‘linear activity corridor’ linking the districts of Geylang, Katong and Marine Parade, immediately east of Singapore’s urban core. Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has declared Joo Chiat to be a ‘Conservation Area’, reflecting local-born Peranakan and Eurasian cultures, with similar status to other more central historic sites such as Chinatown, Kampong Glam, Little India and Emerald Hill. But the story of Joo Chiat has evolved along a somewhat different trajectory from the more prominent, tourism-related, heritage areas, with a multiplicity of interactions operating at the margins of the planning process. This has led to the spatial infusion of potentially discordant, globally related, ‘entertainment and recreational’ activities into an area of established urban identity and multiple attachments. When a policy of police containment was found to be inadequate in protecting local residents from undesirable impacts, changes were eventually brought about through a combination of neighbourhood activism and local political initiative. Through detailed land use inspections, press reports and strategic interviews, backed up by secondary sources, the study highlights the impingement of marginalised, potentially disruptive ‘global’ elements into a local heritage conservation area, and the importance of strong neighbourhood identity and community involvement as active components in the process of conflict resolution.     

Resilience at the periphery: Insurgency,agency and social-ecological change under armed conflict

Armed conflict has played an increasingly important role in the transformation of key social and environmental systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Accelerated resource flows and environmental change dynamics intersect with conflict processes in ways that are substantial and yet inadequately understood. Drawing on research along the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan’s embattled province of Nangarhar, we employ a coupled systems approach for understanding the ways in which social-ecological processes shape and are shaped by armed conflict. Based on field surveys, geospatial analysis of land and forest change, and participatory research among local communities, government agencies and military actors, we identify several causal processes linking conflict and dynamics of social-ecological change in the context of multiscalar geopolitical processes. We focus attention on four inter-related elements: (1) transitional modes of resource governance relating to armed militia groups and state intervention, (2) forest changes related to illegal logging and trade networks, (3) the erosion of upper-montane rangelands through encroachment and changing pastoral responses to conflict, and (4) significant land use changes in the agricultural sector toward the cultivation of opium poppy. Our research highlights the importance of center-periphery relations, the problematic nature of local agency, and the ways in which local social-ecological elements—here, particularly, timber and opium—become political objects within competing narratives of (in)security and ongoing state formation.     

Changing conflict resolution institutions in the Ethiopian pastoral commons: the role of armed confrontation in rule-making

Pastoralist access and use of common grazing resources in the Horn of Africa increasingly include armed confrontation over diminishing resources and reduced access. This comes about as traditional customary institutions (sets of rules) for commons management become compromised due to the presence of outside influences and actors which significantly change both resource availability, and conceptions about who is subject to traditional rules governing commons – particularly rules associated with exclusion. At the same time a combination of local knowledge regarding what happens to open access commons (degradation), a reluctance to give up control of commons and associated ways of life, and armed conflict as a viable alternative for exclusion rules, provide for combative situations and large costs. While a great deal of valuable work has been accomplished regarding the derivation of effective institutions to better manage commons, situations of armed conflict can seem particularly distant from effective rule-making, because few institutions can endure the stresses of armed conflict. Recent developments in Ethiopia however suggest an unexpected proximity between armed confrontation and the prospect for commons management rule-making. With examples from the Afar, Somali and Karamojong Cluster pastoralists, this paper examines the ingredients for rule-making in combative commons situations. Specific coincident forms of state recognition, donor flexibility, perceptions of the cost of conflict, and the local to international reaction to these, are examined for their utility and limitations in the provision of a facilitating context for institution derivation for commons management.     

“This is a Montreal Issue”: Negotiating responsibility in global production and investment networks

While geographers have increasingly focused on how global commodity and production networks create new ‘geographies of responsibility’ there has been little empirical work considering how responsibility is worked into management systems and social activism in such networks. Drawing on literature from global production networks, geographies of responsibility and other literatures, this paper explores the dynamic and contested ways in which concepts of responsibility can play a role in network regulation. Both foreign direct investment and commodity networks (here referred to as ‘global production and investment networks’) are subject to complex negotiations and compromises involving corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives as well as shareholder activist, human rights, labor, and environmental activism. This is illustrated by reference to conflicts in Canada over Alcan, Inc.’s investments from 1993 to 2007 in the Utkal Alumina Project in Orissa, India. The project involved significant socio-environmental conflict. In Canada, Alcan’s investment was met by civil society campaigns that tested the company’s commitments to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The case study suggests revising theories of geographies of responsibility. While foreign direct investment can create new relationships between distant others, these are fluid and contingent and not necessarily desirable. Rather than see networks as a source of responsibility we should work to ensure that the relationships that networks foster be structured to ensure our deeper values are respected.     

Weak ties, immigrant women and neoliberal states: Moving beyond the public/private binary

This paper engages with the vacillations in provincial and federal gender specific service funding in Canada between 2001 and 2007. I connect this state scale analysis to local settlement experiences of Sikh immigrant women living in a small British Columbia community. Using the concept of network analysis, particularly the idea of weak ties, I offer a corrective to the overly positive appraisals of strong ties and institutional completeness. I argue that experiences of settlement, especially in cases where women face various forms of domestic violence, are shaped by the articulation of neoliberalism and patriarchy. This analysis contributes to the ongoing reformulation advanced by feminist geographers with regard to the public/private binary. In its place this case study reveals the multiple public and private intersections and continuums that exist, and how the recognition of these geographies can assist in building effective public resources to tackle the challenges faced by some immigrant women.     

Environmental destruction as a counterinsurgency strategy in the Kurdistan region of Turkey

We examine environmental aspects of the conflict between the Turkish state and the insurgent Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or PKK). Since the early 1990s, several civil society groups have claimed that the Turkish army burned forests and destroyed other livelihood resources in the Kurdistan region of Turkey as it evacuated settlements. We report the results of a case study of destruction in Tunceli, eastern Turkey, undertaken in order to evaluate support for such claims. We demonstrate the use of geospatial techniques in case-specific approaches to the study of armed conflict. Through the analysis of satellite images, we verified eyewitness reports and confirmed that substantial burnings did indeed take place in the study area between 1991 and 1994. We argue that this destruction was not irrational or wanton, but that it was part of a strategy used by the Turkish army in the early 1990s that aimed at actively transforming the war environment.     

Nucleation and growth rates of homogeneously condensing water vapor in argon from shock tube experiments

A special shock tube process combining a reflected expansion wave with a weak shock wave is analyzed and calibrated. The process is employed to transfer water vapor carried in argon into a known supersaturated state for a short period of time (0.5 ms). During that period steady state homogeneous nucleation takes place followed by condensational growth. Nucleation and growth rates are measured by a 90° Mie-light scattering technique in the temperature range 200–260 K. The results are compared with existing theoretical models.     

Does post-disaster aid promote community resilience? Evidence from federal disaster programs

Climate- and weather-related disasters have become increasingly frequent and costly, resulting in substantial government spending on disaster assistance. Yet less is known about the effectiveness of disaster aid in enhancing community resilience to future disaster risks. This study examines multiple post-disaster aid programs implemented by the US federal government to support state and local governments as well as households and private businesses. Specifically, we estimate the risk-mitigating effects of these disaster-related programs by linking program spending with reported economic losses from flooding. Our empirical analysis utilizing panel data at the county level finds that low-interest disaster loans lead to the largest reduction in subsequent flooding damage, and grants targeting public infrastructure restoration and flood control measures also reduce future flooding losses. Results suggest a limited loss-mitigating effect of disaster cash aid given to private individuals. These findings provide important implications for federal disaster policy design and suggest that more efficiency gains could be realized by redistributing funds and streamlining processes across programs and agencies.

     

How to speak for aquifers and people at the same time: Environmental justice and counter-network formation at a hazardous waste site

A common source of conflict at hazardous waste sites in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program is the accuracy of scientific investigations and representations produced to inform cleanup decisions. Liable firms often produce these technical representations themselves, and communities surrounding sites frequently argue that such “voluntary” investigations are compromised by conflicts of interest. In order to challenge the representations of powerful firms, locally situated actors often develop trans-local connections with expertise and equipment concentrated at distant centers of calculation. Although some interpret the spatial politics of such connecting in terms of “jumping scales,” another important spatial dimension of this network construction is differential positioning. In a conflict over groundwater models at the St. Regis Superfund Site in Minnesota, the counter-network that emerged to challenge the owner’s representations of the site positioned some actors as “outsiders” and others as “insiders.” This differential positioning enabled the counter-network to balance the need to demonstrate the reliability and impartiality of its claims with the requirement to maintain its accountability to local public interests. I argue that these requirements result from the prevalent view of the science-policy interface, which assumes a rigid separation between science and politics. Nonetheless, the conflict over groundwater at St. Regis reveals how at the science-policy interface, speaking for things and speaking for people are thoroughly entangled.     

The politics of identity: Ethnicity, minority and nationalism in Soviet Estonia

Identity has become one of the core concepts of political geography. This reflects the wide recognition of a post-structural conception of society and space, as well as the acknowledgement of the political character of identity. The present article focuses on the politics of identity, and discusses the politicized forms of identity as related to the Soviet state building policies and the Estonian spaces of resistance. It will be argued that neither identity nor the political demand in Soviet Estonia can be viewed in isolation from their historical and social contexts. Both Soviet state politics and the Estonian spaces of resistance reflected the prevailing conceptions of past and the contemporary political realities. This article examines those preconceptions of the political and territorial development in Soviet Estonia, and also illustrates the interdependent character of state politics and non-state activism. The first part of the article concentrates on the Soviet state building practices – the use of power, symbols, education – and the second part examines the various forms of non-state activism of Estonians.     

Hydrocarbons, popular protest and national imaginaries: Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context

This paper examines contemporary struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Ecuador and Bolivia. Our comparative analysis illustrates the ways that petro-capitalism, nationalist ideologies, popular movements and place conjoin in the governance of oil and natural gas. In the case of Ecuador, state employees drew on their labor relations and political training to oppose the government’s efforts to privatize the state oil company. In Bolivia, urban popular movements opposed the privatization of the hydrocarbons industry and its domination by foreign firms. In both cases, hydrocarbons struggles involved the production of imaginative geographies of the nation and it hydrocarbon resources, which in turn drew on historical memories of nationhood. Whereas neoliberal political and economic restructuring sought to re-organize national hydrocarbons companies, redraw concessions, and draft new resource extraction laws, hydrocarbon movements aimed to counter these processes by re-centering hydrocarbon governance within a populist vision of the nation-state. In contrast to analyses of resource conflict in the environmental security and resource curse literatures, the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia demonstrate that such struggles cannot be reduced to models of opportunity structure, war profiteering, or resource scarcity (or abundance). Rather, these cases show that political economy and cultural politics are inseparable in the context of resource conflicts, which involve struggles over the meanings of development, citizenship and the nation itself.     

Wild horses and the political ecology of nature restoration in the Missouri Ozarks

From 1990 to 1996, the National Park Service and residents living near the Ozark National Scenic Riverways in south-central Missouri clashed over the federal agency’s intention to remove 25-30 wild horses from the protected area. The struggle was carried out in various legal and legislative arenas, the media, and in community protests and meetings. The dispute ended only with Congressional approval of the 1996 Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Management Act, which included an amendment ordering an end to any removal efforts.This article focuses on the contested social constructions of the horses themselves. To government scientists and managers, the animals represented a feral and exotic species with no legitimate place in agency-mandated ecosystem management and restoration scenarios. To many local members of the Missouri Wild Horse League, which contested the removal, the horses had critical historical and cultural importance as icons of regional identity, history and personal experience, and as core symbols of communities increasingly politically and economically marginalized.Local disputes with environmental groups and agencies concerned with Ozark ecosystem preservation and restoration have become more pronounced and numerous over the past two decades. This article approaches citizen opposition to environmental agendas not as an anti-environmental movement, but as a contemporary effort of marginalized groups to identify sources of economic, political, and social loss, and symbols of local identity and power. The wild horse issue reveals wider structural divides, and thus speaks to the question of which social groups shall have the power to impose their visions of the landscape and political economy.     

Flood hazard management in the United States and the National Flood Insurance Program

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) both provides flood insurance to floodplain occupants and encourages local communities to adopt floodplain land-use regulations. As well as providing the core of the federal non-structural flood hazard management effort, the NFIP is a central element in both state and local activities. A major issue influencing the success of the NFIP in curbing flood damages is its treatment of properties built before the adoption of floodplain regulations. The potential for using the NFIP to encourage floodproofing and influence post-flood hazard mitigation must be fully explored.     

Wave Attenuation at a Salt Marsh Margin: A Case Study of an Exposed Coast on the Yangtze Estuary

To quantify wave attenuation by (introduced) Spartina alterniflora vegetation at an exposed macrotidal coast in the Yangtze Estuary, China, wave parameters and water depth were measured during 13 consecutive tides at nine locations ranging from 10 m seaward to 50 m landward of the low marsh edge. During this period, the incident wave height ranged from <0.1 to 1.5 m, the maximum of which is much higher than observed in other marsh areas around the world. Our measurements and calculations showed that the wave attenuation rate per unit distance was 1 to 2 magnitudes higher over the marsh than over an adjacent mudflat. Although the elevation gradient of the marsh margin was significantly higher than that of the adjacent mudflat, more than 80% of wave attenuation was ascribed to the presence of vegetation, suggesting that shoaling effects were of minor importance. On average, waves reaching the marsh were eliminated over a distance of ∼80 m, although a marsh distance of ≥100 m was needed before the maximum height waves were fully attenuated during high tides. These attenuation distances were longer than those previously found in American salt marshes, mainly due to the macrotidal and exposed conditions at the present site. The ratio of water depth to plant height showed an inverse correlation with wave attenuation rate, indicating that plant height is a crucial factor determining the efficiency of wave attenuation. Consequently, the tall shoots of the introduced S. alterniflora makes this species much more efficient at attenuating waves than the shorter, native pioneer species in the Yangtze Estuary, and should therefore be considered as a factor in coastal management during the present era of sea-level rise and global change. We also found that wave attenuation across the salt marsh can be predicted using published models when a suitable coefficient is incorporated to account for drag, which varies in place and time due to differences in plant characteristics and abiotic conditions (i.e., bed gradient, initial water depth, and wave action).