Mobilising generosity, framing geopolitics: Narrating crisis in the homeland through diasporic media

This paper provides an account of the humanitarian interventions enacted by the Croatian–American diaspora during the secessionist conflicts in Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Whilst undeniably an act of generosity towards ‘distant strangers’, actions such as these also represent a much more complex reality – they are an outcome of a complex set of relations and processes, in which the ethical choices of individuals become bound up with nationalist ideologies, geopolitical questions and, crucially, knowledge and understanding of distant events. In particular, this paper considers the ways in which generosity is mobilised through the framing of Balkan geopolitics through diasporic media. In so doing, it becomes possible to deepen the dialogue between work on geography and ethics on the one hand, and critical geopolitics on the other. In particular, the paper argues that due attention needs to be paid to the ways in which such ‘networks of concern’ are constructed in a variety of banal and mundane ways.     

Intellectuals and geopolitics: The ‘cultural politicians’ of Central Europe

This paper investigates the role of intellectuals in the production of geopolitical discourses. It analyzes how the cultural capital of humanist credentials and artistic aura functions to authenticate and legitimate geopolitical claims. Drawing empirically from Central Europe and especially Estonia, I argue that intellectuals are central to the production of a particular ‘cultural’ concept of geopolitics - the notion that foreign policy expresses the state’s and the nation’s identity. As cultural capital gives intellectuals a special license to speak about culture, it constitutes an essential component in geopolitical discourses in Central Europe.The paper contributes to Europeanist geography by clarifying the mechanisms through which Central Europe is cast externally and internally as a place particularly imbued with culture and identity - a place whose integration with the EU and NATO represents its cultural ‘return’ to Europe. It takes us beyond the romanticized notion of intellectuals - especially the formerly dissident ones - as ‘speaking truth to power’, and offers a more subtle account of their role as producers of power discourses.Beyond Central Europe, the paper underscores the political and cultural milieu of geopolitical claims and the specific structures of legitimacy through which these claims are justified and normalized. A nuanced understanding of the role of ‘culture’ in geopolitical discourses requires that we closely examine the cultural and moral capital of intellectuals. This would also enable us to better delineate human agency in the production of geopolitics.     

Moments in everyday/distant geopolitics: Young people’s fears and hopes

The everyday implications of a volatile geopolitical climate are increasingly recognised, but far less is known about how people’s emotional geographies are affected by geopolitical change. This paper offers a critical examination of how some young people in different parts of the world navigate fears and hopes that might be considered ‘global’ in nature, and those that might be considered ‘everyday’. We report from participatory research conducted with young people from a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds living in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. We examine how personal fears and hopes intersect with wider anxieties about youth, urban crime and terrorism. The research suggests that global-everyday emotions are not separated out in young people’s analyses. They are critically reflexive about wider discourses of fear, while undertaking the day to day business of navigating what are sometimes challenging emotional topographies.     

Climate justice and the Caribbean: An introduction

Climate change is affecting Caribbean nations in a significant manner. Yet there is limited research on the varied effects on these island states and the ways in which adaptation has occurred. This paper introduces the idea of climate justice for the Caribbean region, highlighting a series of papers focused on climate justice concerns.     

The shifting geopolitics of higher education: Inter/nationalizing elite universities in Kazakhstan,Saudi Arabia,and beyond

This article examines recent higher education projects in two resource-rich, developmental states: Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. These projects are indicative of broader trend across Asia to move beyond previous national universities, toward a state-initiated model of the globally competitive university, which is designed to become an regional hub for elite education. Drawing on a range of qualitative methods, I consider the geopolitical context in which these projects have been conditioned and materialized, with a focus on how they are legitimated by policy-makers in the two case countries. By reframing discussions about the globalization of higher education in terms of a geopolitics of higher education, I argue that the cases of Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia are not exceptions set outside of the hegemonic liberal system, but that they are ‘mirrors’ of recent internationalization agendas undertaken by elite Western universities. Through considering localized discourses of promoting knowledge-based economies, I consider how elites simultaneously work with and reconfigure globally-hegemonic discourses, and specifically how these elite university projects are part of broader authoritarian political configurations in Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia.     

Climate (in)justice,vulnerability and livelihoods in the Caribbean: The case of the indigenous Caribs in northeastern St. Vincent

This paper examines climate justice from the perspective of three remote indigenous Carib communities located in northeastern St. Vincent, amidst their vulnerability to climatic hazards. The study contributes to the growing body of literature that explores the impacts climate-induced changes are having on Indigenous peoples through its explicit focus on this distinctive social group. The paper entails a detail case study of the particular ways the recent onset of two consecutive extreme weather events have impacted livelihood activities in these traditional farming villages. Primary data were collected in the aftermath of a severe drought that was followed by Hurricane Tomas in 2010, using a mixed method approach involving a questionnaire survey of 311 households, 70 unstructured interviews and 2 focus group sessions held in each of the three communities. The combined impact of these extreme weather events not only brought to light how exposed and sensitive these communities are to climatic hazards, but also illustrated some of the underlying issues driving vulnerability at the local scale that must be dealt with if climate justice is to be achieved. We argue that the factors driving vulnerability within these communities are partly a function of centuries of economic neglect and political marginalization and are also strongly related to the communities’ characteristically lower-socio economic status, geographic location, heavy reliance on land-based resources, coupled with a range of cognitive barriers that affect residents’ capacity to adapt to a changing and variable regional climate regime.     

We are not all the same!: Comparative climate change vulnerabilities among fishers in Old Harbour Bay,Jamaica

There is a general consensus that Small Island Developing States are among the most vulnerable to experience climate injustices. Vulnerability studies of climate change effects on communities have often focused on differences between communities given these climate injustices. However, there is a need to also focus on vulnerability within communities, referred to here as comparative vulnerabilities. Climate justice therefore becomes even more important with more focused attention given to the nuances within groups that fall within the vulnerable category. This article examines comparative vulnerabilities for the fishing community in Jamaica. A survey of 241 fishers from Old Harbour Bay, the largest fishing village in Jamaica, was conducted to examine the level of vulnerability of different fishers to climate change. A vulnerability index was constructed for the community and then comparative vulnerabilities were determined based on socio-demographic characteristics. Overall for the sample 46.9% of respondents would be considered as experiencing a comparatively high level of vulnerability to climate change. Climate change vulnerability was influenced by a number of socio-demographic variables with unique profiles emerging for groups that can be ranked as low, moderate, and high vulnerability. The paper therefore argues that within vulnerable populations there are comparative vulnerabilities based on economic factors and social capital, which must be taken into consideration for adaptation strategies to be implemented. Given these comparative vulnerabilities a more targeted approach to coping and adaptation strategies can then be taken. This will assist in building resilience of these communities that must now adjust to a new normal with climate change effects currently occurring.     

A review of observed and projected changes in climate for the islands in the Caribbean

Observed and projected changes in climate have serious socio-economic implications for the Caribbean islands. This article attempts to present basic climate change information—based on previous studies, available observations and climate model simulations—at spatial scales relevant for islands in the Caribbean. We use the General Circulation Model (GCM) data included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) and the UK Hadley Centre regional climate model (RCM) data to provide both present-day and scenario-based future information on precipitation and temperature for individual island states. Gridded station observations and satellite data are used to study 20th century climate and to assess the performance of climate models. With main focus on precipitation, we also discuss factors such as sea surface temperature, sea level pressure and winds that affect seasonal variations in precipitation. The CMIP3 ensemble mean and the RCM successfully capture the large-scale atmospheric circulation features in the region, but show difficulty in capturing the characteristic bimodal seasonal cycle of precipitation. Future drying during the wet season in this region under climate change scenarios has been noted in previous studies, but the magnitude of change is highly uncertain in both GCM and RCM simulations. The projected decrease is more prominent in the early wet season erasing the mid-summer drought feature in the western Caribbean. The RCM simulations show improvements over the GCM mainly due to better representation of landmass, but its performance is critically dependent on the driving GCM. This study highlights the need for high-resolution observations and ensemble of climate model simulations to fully understand climate change and its impacts on small islands in the Caribbean.     

IUPA: a tool for the evaluation of the general usefulness of practices for adaptation to climate change and variability

A prototype multi-purpose index is proposed for use in the evaluation of practices for adaptation to climate variability and change. The Index of Usefulness of Practices for Adaptation (IUPA) allows the user to assign weights and scores to a set of user-defined evaluation criteria. Individual criterion scores are aggregated into a final index value. Both the final value and the individual parameter scores provide useful information for improved decision making in the context of climate change. An innovative aspect of IUPA is that guidance is given to the user through the inclusion of recommendations on evaluation criteria and criterion-specific weight factors. These have been defined by a panel of experts from the Latin-American and Caribbean Region (LAC). Application of the index is demonstrated for an existing adaptation practice from the Coquimbo Region, Chile. The IUPA tool is recommended for use in the evaluation of adaptation practices in their design, implementation and post-implementation phase. It is practical for a quick first assessment or when limited financial resources are available, making the tool especially useful for practitioners in the developing world. The index is flexible both from the perspective of its construction and use. Additional expert opinions can easily be included in the future versions of the tool.     

Tropical cyclone risk perceptions in Darwin,Australia: a comparison of different residential groups

Different individuals and groups perceive risk differently. This can significantly affect risk management and mitigation practices and requirements. This paper presents findings from a study of tropical cyclone risk perceptions in the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. Primary in-depth interview data and other secondary data are analysed, focussing in particular on wind damage, storm surge and life safety risk perceptions of residents since Cyclone Tracy, which impacted in 1974, and perceptions of future climate change as it relates to tropical cyclone risk. The analysis reveals that a number of perceptions prevail. In particular, the study reveals a wide difference of perceptions between short-term residents (Group 1) and long-term and expert residents (Group 2) in relation to wind damage, storm surge and life safety risk. It also reveals a large division between laypersons (Group 3) and expert residents’ (Group 4) perceptions of climate change risk as it relates to tropical cyclone risk. The author recommends that flexible, multiple and integrative management and mitigation approaches are required to deal with such different perceptions and divisions in the resident population.     

Undoing environmental justice: Re-imagining equality in the Rosia Montana anti-mining movement

In this paper we outline the limitations of Environmental Justice theory when it comes to explaining and theorising the politics of contemporary environmental movements. Justice, we argue, needs to be understood not as a formalised and preconceived ‘thing’ to be delivered or applied but as an open egalitarian ideal that movements across the world continuously redefine in embodied and performed ways which are historically and geographically distinct. Drawing upon the fifteen year long anti-mining struggles of Rosia Montana, Romania, we explore the tension between seeking ‘traditional’ forms of justice (i.e. dialogic consensual politics) and putting forward more radical demands for socio-ecological change, in which representation and recognition are seen as insufficient practices for distributing justice. Visibility (rather than recognition) and egalitarian politics (rather than distribution) become the quilting points of struggles of many contemporary environmental movements, equality can only be enacted (or staged) through praxis that disrupts the distribution of the sensible experience and exposes the arbitrariness and incompleteness of power. We argue that in order to analyse and theorise the praxis of contemporary environmental movements, it is imperative for geographical literature to engage with post-foundational theory, and ‘un-do’ pre-conceived ideas and theorisations of (environmental) justice.     

Undoing violence, unbounding precarity: Beyond the frames of terror in the Philippines

Geographers’ interest in the productive intersections between fear and issues of (counter)terrorism has flourished in recent years. These studies have been important in their critical analyses of geopolitical relations by exposing how fear has been driving unjust policies and violent initiatives. However, I suggest that these lines of inquiries often neglect the localized playing out of fears, particularly how such sentiments can potentially stimulate actions and affect the practices and progress of politics at different geographical scales.This paper addresses the aforementioned lacuna by scrutinizing how fear is bounded up with the geographical extension of the US-led ‘war on terror’ to the Philippines in the post 9/11 era. I argue that the framings of terrorism in the country have allowed the government to manipulate fear to justify destructive strategies for the eradication of imminent ‘threats’. However such initiatives are not only counterproductive to rooting out the sources of terror but also aid in the (re)production of violence. Not assuming the inevitability of such elegaic outcomes, I showcase the efforts of the Philippines communist ‘rebel’ group, Rebulusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa ng Mindanao (RPM-M), in repudiating official terrorism discourse by emphasising instead issues of state-induced vulnerability and marginalization. This in turn allows fear to be transformed into other modalities of emotions that are central to the formation of coalitional resistances to the arbitrary effects of state violence and its vicissitudes.By illuminating the constitution of (non)violence through emotions, there is an inherent wish to disrupt the natural conjoining of fear, terror and violence dominating contemporary geopolitical imaginations. Crucially, the implications of emotions for the thinking and doing of nonviolence augments a concrete pathway for operationalising a radical praxis of peace and justice that explicitly eschews a resort to force.     

Evolution of India’s monsoon climate through geological times

Using the theory of plate tectonics and a concept of climate analogs, the paper speculates that a monsoon type of climate with warm and wet summer and cold and dry winter might have first appeared over the northern part of India when during its northward drift across the Tethys Ocean (now the Indian Ocean) it was located over the subtropical belt of the southern hemisphere some 60 million years before present (BP). The monsoon climate gradually evolved and extended to other parts of India as the Indian plate after crossing the equator about SO million years BP moved further northward and collided against the north Asian plate giving rise to the Himalayas along the northern boundary of India some 40 million years BP. Recent studies suggest that despite short and long period fluctuations, no major secular change or trend has taken place in the monsoon climate of India since then.     

The radical geopolitics of US foreign policy: the 2003 Iraq War

This article presents an approach termed “radical geopolitics” that addresses two of critical geopolitics’ blind spots, namely, its lack of attention to the causes (the “why”) of policy and its neglect of political economy. In particular, it examines the respective roles of the geopolitical and geoeconomic factors that drive policy. The argument draws on David Harvey’s “logics of power,” modified and reformulated into a “geoeconomic logic” and a “geopolitical logic” through which postwar American foreign policy may be interpreted. The former logic arises out of capitalism’s tendency to expand geographically and the latter out of politicians’ need to maintain credibility internationally as well as from electoral pressures at home. A discussion of the Iraq War illustrates the approach and illuminates issues overlooked by critical geopolitics analyses, in particular: Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003? And what was the role of oil, if any, in motivating the invasion? It is argued that Iraq was invaded to control its oil (but much less to use it for US consumption, and still much less to generate profits from it), and to maintain American credibility. Radical geopolitics should not be seen in opposition to critical geopolitics, but rather as seeking to supplement its analyses through discussion of issues which have received less attention.     

Mundane diplomacies for the practice of European geopolitics

This paper offers a practice-based account of diplomacy given that diplomats are central to the production and circulation of geopolitics. We contend that there is a changing geography of diplomacy underway from state-centred to “integrative diplomacy”, prompting the need for reorganisation of the modalities that shape and regulate state presence. Such reorganisation brings with it the challenge of fashioning new pathways of diplomatic engagement to counter the disordering of routinized mundane diplomatic practices, alongside new possibilities for diplomatic space to be used by various actors and interests. In sum, the move to integrative diplomacy commands closer academic attention to the contemporary geographies of diplomatic practice, and how these practices are transacted in diverse spatial settings, sites and domains, under conditions of multiple contestation of state authority and legitimacy. Using extensive European empirical materials, we argue that the ways in which diplomats devise, trial, make claims and counter-claims about geopolitical representations are ripe for practice-based analysis. We do this through an exploration of diplomacy’s geographical dimensions, that is, its everyday spaces and places, orderings and transactions and show how practices can go awry in the move to integrative diplomacy.     

A subaltern critical geopolitics of the war on terror: Postcolonial security in Tanzania

Currently, hegemonic geographical imaginations are dominated by the affective geopolitics of the War on Terror, and related security practice is universalised into what has been called “globalized fear” (Pain, 2009). Critical approaches to geopolitics have been attentive to the Westerncentric nature of this imaginary, however, studies of non-Western perceptions of current geopolitics and the nature of fear will help to further displace dominant geopolitical imaginations. Africa, for example, is a continent that is often captured in Western geopolitics - as a site of failed states, the coming anarchy, passive recipient of aid, and so on - but geopolitical representations originating in Africa rarely make much of an impact on political theory.This paper aims to add to critical work on the so-called War on Terror from a perspective emerging from the margins of the dominant geopolitical imagination. It considers the geopolitical imagination of the War on Terror from a non-Western source, newspapers in Tanzania.     

Global methane emission through mud volcanoes and its past and present impact on the Earth's climate

Mud volcanism is an abundant, global phenomenon whereby fluid-rich, low-density sediments extrude both on land and offshore. Methane, which generally exceeds 90 vol% of the gas phase, is emitted at high rates during and after emplacement of the mud domes and is known for its high global warming potential (GWP). This comprehensive estimate of the annual contribution of mud volcano degassing assesses the significance of mud volcanism for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A first-order estimate for the earlier, pre-anthropogenic volume of methane released through mud volcanoes further supports their profound effect on the Earth's climate since at least the Paleozoic (570 Ma).