Campus sustainability at the edges: Emotions,relations, and bio-cultural connections

The university campus is often considered a key site for the development of environmental sustainability initiatives. At the same time, the concept and practice of sustainability has been critiqued for its lack of conceptual clarity and its proneness to co-optation by neoliberal institutions and organizations. Using a just sustainabilities framework, this article strives to respond to this tension by exploring the possibility of a campus sustainability at the edges, one that is interested in engaging the broader socio-spatial context of a university as well as in tapping into the emotional and relational realms of fostering more sustainable socio-ecological assemblages. Through a case study analysis of the Philadelphia Urban Creators (PUC), a youth-led organization operating within the Temple University-North Philadelphia interface, I find that grassroots sustainability actors possess important knowledge for understanding how sustainability can be a tool for restoring emotional affinity with the environment as well as for enacting transformative socio-ecological change in the urban university context and beyond. Through these explorations, my purpose is twofold: (1) to envision a more diverse, inclusive, and meaningful campus sustainability model that seeks to confront urban crises such as gentrification, racialized poverty, and mass incarceration, and (2) to incorporate emotion and affect geographies into the just sustainabilities research agenda.     

Vernacular heritage and evolving environmental policy in Australia: Lessons from the Murray–Darling Outreach Project

The interface between environmentalism and neoliberalism in industrialised nations is dynamic and evolving with each of these significant socio-political movements exerting influence on the other. In the context of Australian environmental policy, ideas of heritage, sense of place and belonging are increasingly invoked to support the current policy emphasis on the role of regional communities for realising goals for land and water conservation and environmental restoration. To explore the broader meaning and consequences of these developments, we focus on the manner in which ideas of heritage are employed and evoked within the Murray–Darling Outreach Project, a collaboration between the Murray–Darling Basin Commission, a key natural resource management agency, and the National Museum of Australia. The Murray–Darling Outreach Project has the aim of increasing community involvement in local environmental issues by promoting ideas of vernacular heritage.     

The first fossil mayfly nymph (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) from the British Isles

Mayflies are very rare in the British fossil record. The first nymph to be found, Schistonotorum wallisi gen. et sp. nov., is described from the non-marine Lower Cretaceous of southeast England. This Early Barremian find is from the Upper Weald Clay Formation at Smokejacks brickworks, Surrey. It is preserved as an adpression in concretionary sideritic ironstone from the upper insect bed exposed in the northeast face of the pit. The palaeoecological significance of this record is discussed.