Developing ecotourism in First World, resource-dependent areas

Ecotourism, an economic diversification tool most commonly applied in the Third World as a means to protect ecosystems, preserve local cultures, and spur economic development, has recently been applied in First World resource-dependent areas. While ecotourism has traditionally focused on Third World ‘undisturbed’ protected lands, it has also been developed in their First World equivalents (i.e., old-growth forests) as well as in First World sites of past resource extraction and in places where current agricultural practices maintain cherished cultural landscapes. Forest County, Pennsylvania, a timber-dependent area, sought to diversify its economy by developing ecotourism based on its unique Allegheny hardwood forests, which are produced by timber harvesting. This ecotourism would encourage amenity-based, locally-driven economic development and maintain timber harvesting. While government and foundation supported ecotourism development efforts in areas dependent on resource extraction have incorporated some of ecotourism’s ideals, these operations have had mixed success. Such isolated areas, which have traditionally drawn visitors independently engaging in traditional outdoor recreation activities, have not been able to draw enough customers willing to pay for natural and cultural history tours. If ecotourism is to be successful, such areas may need further government support and destination branding to increase name recognition in order to counter the global orientation of the nature tour industry. For true community development, local collaborative efforts including resource and environmental interests are also required in which primary production is connected to processing and consumers through value-added and service sector activities such as tourism.     

Changing climate discourse and politics in India. Climate change as challenge and opportunity for diplomacy and development

This article contributes to the study of changing climate discourse and policy in emerging powers through a case study of climate discourse in India since 2007. Based on interviews with key actors in Indian climate politics and textual analysis, three general climate discourses – the Third World, Win–Win and Radical Green discourses – are identified. The discourses are characterised by different constructions of India’s identity, interests, climate change exposure and climate policy orientation. At the most general level, the article finds that there has been a general discursive shift from the Third World discourse to the Win–Win discourse, and that the latter discourse is in broad agreement with the dominant international climate change discourse of ecological modernisation and thus supports an alignment between Indian and international climate politics. We also find, however, that India’s domestic climate politics is marked by co-existence and tensions between the three climate discourses, producing a complex and at times contentious discursive politics over climate change, identity and development. The case study presented in this article moreover demonstrates how national interests are socially constructed and how changes in policy reflect changes in the dominant discourse.     

The changing nature and European perceptions of Europe's refugee problem

Many in Western Europe regard it as being in the grip of a refugee crisis. This paper considers this contention. It describes the main stages in the development of the current refugee crisis and argues that having established the agenda in the 1940s, Western Europe has been able to progressively distance itself from refugee episodes and define them as essentially problems of the Third World. The end of the Cold War and the growth in numbers of spontaneous, rather than quota, refugees have been considerable shocks to the West, which can no longer contain and distance itself from refugee flows. Shock has led Europe to overreact and become myopic in its view of refugee matters. In reality, figures demonstrate that Wetern Europe is not the centre of refugee generation, applications or resettlement. Despite this, governments have taken draconian unilateral and multilateral action to exclude not only Third World asylum seekers but also those from the East.     

Some problems associated with past mining at a mine in the Witbank coalfield, South Africa

 Mining in the Witbank Coalfield commenced at the turn of the century. Initially there was little environmental degradation associated with mining activities; however, in the late 1930s and early 1940s a pillar-robbing programme commenced. At one particular mine this has had marked effects on the environment. Primary effects include subsidence, the appearance of tension cracks at the surface and crownhole development. Secondary effects include spontaneous combustion of the coal worked, as air has been provided with ready access to the mine, accelerated subsidence due to the strength of many pillars being reduced by burning, and a marked deterioration in groundwater quality in the area. Spoil heaps also form blemishes on the landscape. These contain significant amounts of coal and have undergone spontaneous combustion. The deterioration in the water quality has led to the decimation of vegetation in some areas and the eradication of aquatic flora and fauna in a nearby stream. Received: 5 March 1997 · Accepted: 1 July 1997     

Using project food aid to help alleviate urban poverty - experience and issues

As urban poverty in the Third World worsens, an increasing proportion of World Food Programme (WFP) food aid is being used to support poor urban dwellers. WFP food aid has typically been used in three main ways in urban areas: as free relief after disasters (such as floods or earthquakes) have struck urban centres; as part of institutional feeding projects; and as support to urban renewal. While there have been some creative approaches to using food aid to help overcome urban poverty, the benefits have usually only been temporary. It has proved difficult to design food aid interventions for the urban poor that help to overcome the causes of poverty in sustainable ways. The challenge is to use food aid to help make permanent as well as temporary improvements in the lives and livelihoods of the poor.     

The new freely-associated states of micronesia: Their natural and social environmental challenges

The former United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) which has been administered by the United States since the end of World War II, has divided itself up into four separate political entities: (1) the Federated States of Micronesia, (2) the Republic of Belau, (3) the Marshall Islands Republic, and (4) the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The first three of these aforementioned entities are freely-associated states with the United States. This is a new form of political arrangement for these areas and it is also new for the United States. All of these areas have a colonial history of domination by Spain, Germany, Japan, and the US, and these colonial powers have all left legacies which the new states have to deal with. There are also a number of natural environmental factors — such as vast distance and the limited store of natural resources - which are constraints that the new states have to face and overcome with the help of the former colonial powers and the rest of the world. Whether or not these new states can be successful in their continued economic and social development at a pace rapid enough to bring sufficient foreign capital, depends on their own energy and also on the nature and quality of the outside assistance.     

采煤对地下含水层的影响研究--以河南焦作矿区为例

大规模煤炭开采导致了地下水环境演化轨迹严重偏离天然状态的演化方向,引发了诸如地下水位下降、降落漏斗形成和扩展、水质恶化等一系列的地下水环境问题,并反作用于矿区的经济发展和居民的生产生活,使矿区陷于生态环境恶化、经济发展迟缓的境地。究其根本原因,就在于大规模煤炭开采造成了矿区含水层结构变异,进而导致了区域含水介质发生非均质性变化,最终影响了地下水循环演化态势。因此,开展含水层变异研究,揭示采煤对区域地下水环境演化的影响,显得尤其重要。以焦作矿区为例,通过野外调查、资料收集等工作,研究了采煤前后含水层环境的变化,阐明了采煤活动对地下含水层的影响。     

The Green Revolution re-assessed: Insider perspectives on agrarian change in Bulandshahr District, Western Uttar Pradesh, India

In spite of raising Asian per capita food production by 27% and making India food self-sufficient, the Green Revolution has received much criticism for its environmental and socio-economic impacts. Taking on board post-development critiques of ‘speaking for’ Third World ‘others’, this paper seeks to examine the Green Revolution from the points of view of people directly affected by it. Comparative, historically-informed research in three villages for which 1972 baseline data exist reveal that the Green Revolution has ensured, in the words of one marginal farmer that ‘nobody sleeps with an empty stomach nowadays’. Most villagers associate the Green Revolution with increases in living standards and weakening community-based wealth hierarchies. Nevertheless, socio-economic inequalities between certain Scheduled Castes and other villagers are still very apparent.     

Groundwater abstraction and contamination in Lithuania as geoindicators of environmental change

Groundwater abstraction not only affects subsurface water, but also causes changes in the hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. There are certain symptoms of these environmental changes that might be designated as geoindicators. Geoindicators related to groundwater abstraction and contamination in Lithuania have been classified into three groups related to: (1) the decline/rise of groundwater levels, (2) the deterioration of groundwater quality, and (3) the intensification of water-rock interaction. On the basis of hydrogeological and hydrological investigations carried out over many years, different environmental impacts of intensive groundwater use are demonstrated. The most important among them are the formation of depression cones, intensification of groundwater pollution, saltwater encroachment, and the intensification of karst.     

Political ecology in North America: Discovering the Third World within?

Political ecologists working in many other parts of the world are now heading north, or simply going global, posing a series of important questions related to theory, methodology, politics, and policy along the way. This special issue, contains papers originally delivered at a conference held at Rutgers University in 2003 that addressed this phenomenon. The papers collected offer case studies that reveal the First World as subject to a host of processes that can be insightfully understood via a political ecology perspective. First, globalized production and consumption regimes have created new linkages that demand synoptic analyses of often far-flung research sites. Second, the painful coincidence of deindustrialization and a radical restructuring of agricultural credit and price support systems have devastated North American and European heartlands, effectively producing “Third World” conditions in many depressed rural areas. Third, migration streams originating in Latin America, Africa and many parts of Asia have brought sizable Third World populations into the spatial heart of capitalism. Fourth, the belated recognition of some indigenous claims to resources, especially in Canada, and fierce opposition to others, have reopened questions of (internal) colonial domination. Finally, we see the burgeoning First World political ecology literature as the culmination of what Louise Fortmann has called “the long intellectual journey home” for many scholars who originally carried out research on/in the Third World. All of these factors have combined to help political ecologists discover suitable analytical terrain in the First World.     

Assessment of groundwater quantity and quality and saltwater intrusion in the Damghan basin,Iran

This study describes the groundwater quantity and quality conditions in the Damghan aquifer in Iran. The quantitative analysis of data obtained from observation wells indicates overexploitation of groundwater during recent years, which has resulted in deterioration of water quality. The mean water level has declined about 7.4 m between years of 1966 and 2010. The hydrochemical facies of water collected from sampling wells were investigated though Piper and Chadha diagrams, and the general dominant type of water in the study area was determined as Na-Cl. The quality assessment examined the suitability of groundwater for drinking and irrigation purposes. Compared to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for drinking water, all regions were found to have unpotable groundwater. Furthermore, unsuitability of groundwater for agricultural applications due to high salinity was observed through analysis of major quality indicators. The saltwater intrusion was investigated by ionic ratio analyses and was determined to be the main factor contributing to high salinity and deterioration of the groundwater quality in the Damghan basin.     

The future relevance of medical geography for health planning,health and development in the third world

Conclusions: the Future Relevance of Medical Geography in the Third World This article has deliberately ranged widely and suggested various research themes to which medical geographers interested in health and development might turn their attention. The International Geographical Union Commission on Health and Development established in 1988 suggested a research agenda which includes many of them (see IGU Commission on Health and Development, Circular Letter No. 1 published in GeoJournal 17, 4, 659–660 (1988)). The achievement of even part of such an agenda will call for close international collaboration in research amongst medical geographers and allied disciplines.Increasingly, medical geographers are gaining applied experience in health and health care in the developing world. They are obtaining breadth and depth of knowledge and are now, for example, cogniscant of financial matters such as those involved in the cost explosion in health care worlwide which has particularly sinister implications for the health of Third World countries (Josephg and Phillips 1984). They, too, are now increasingly comfortable in dealing with epidemiological and demographic data. Geographers now no longer focus solely on phenomena such as distance decay or environments for disease. They are aware that human resources, intelligence, aspirations, attitudes and finance are all potent variables influencing successful health care and health in populations.In the future, therefore, the wide-ranging ambit of medical geography will increasingly become relevant to health and health care research in the Third World. Contributions of value will emerge both from those geographers adopting more socio-political stances and those adopting a more empiricist approach. However, it is the holistic nature of geography, with its wide academic links, and the courage of geographers to research in new topics and gain sound understanding of them which will increasingly be recognized. The days of extempore contributions to political, policy and practical debates on health and development are now largely past. Well researched, solid and sound medical geography contributions will, it is hoped, forge ahead.     

吉林省农安县地下水资源评价与可持续利用研究

地下水资源是我国北方地区水资源的主要组成部分,对地下水资源全面科学的调查和评价,是解决水资源问题的基础性工作.农安县缺水由来已久,其中水质性缺水、资源性缺水和工程性缺水并存.近年来,由于过量开采地下水,局部地区出现了降落漏斗、含水层疏干、地下水水质恶化等环境地质问题.本文用回归分析法计算了研究区地下水允许开采量,分析地...     

城市地下水开发引起的环境地质问题刍议

随着我国城市建设的快速发展,对水资源的需求量越来越大,地下水作为城市供水的重要组成部分,其开采量逐年增长。同时,在地下水开发利用的过程中还产生了一系列的环境地质问题,如地表沉降、塌陷、裂缝,海水入侵,地下水水质下降等,这些问题严重威胁着城市的可持续发展及居民的正常生活。文章描述了我国地下水资源开发的现状,探讨了因地下水的过量开采所导致的环境地质问题,对地下水的开采量进行了分析,最后提出了解决这些环境地质问题的建议。     

Lake Müggelsee —the use of lake water and its consequences

Lake Müggelsee (Groer Müggelsee) — the largest lake in the area of Berlin — is the main drinking water reservoir for Berlin (East), but also a center of numerous recreational activities and fishing. The use of the lake and its catchment area has continuously increase during the past decase and has caused a substantail deterioration of the lake water quality. Mass development of algae has become a limiting factor to all future utilizations of the lake. Since the beginning of this century up to the seventies the lake water has shown signs of a permanently growing eutrophication, e.g. the content of particulate matter in the lake water has nearly doubled. During and after World War II the lake quality (Secchi depth and seston content) improved remarkably due to a reduced input of nutrients.According to time series analyses of buoyant seston and meterologica elements the development of blue-green algae seems to depend more on weather conditions than on the nutrient content of the lake water.Therefore, a certain probability of blue-green algae blooms will remain, also in the case of reduced nutrient input. Phosphorous is the main cause for eutrophication. It was responsible for distinctly higher mass developments of algae during spring and autumn in the past two decades. As a consequence, comprehensive measures are to be taken to reduce phosphorus inputs into the Spree river and lake Müggelsee, e.g. by the substitution of P in detergents, construction of tertiary sewage treatment plants and a substantially reduced application of fertilizers in agriculture.     

Crystalline Rock Aquifers: Their Occurrence,Use And Importance

Only recently has significant attention been paid to groundwater in hard rocks. The reason is probably the normally limited yield of water wells in such lithologies. Their importance for water-supply has increased, especially in the Third World, during recent years. In shield areas in temperate regions, hard rocks have been important for rural water supply for a long time. The relatively new attention to hard rock hydrogeology is also due to the fact that crystalline rocks are vulnerable to acidification and that several countries plan to use deep repositories in crystalline rocks for spent nuclear fuel. Added to this, new hydrogeological investigation methods for fractured aquifers have come into use in pre-investigations for rock installations. This paper gives a brief overview of the occurrence and properties of aquifers in crystalline rocks, and also examines some practical aspects of their use.     

Environmental impact on groundwater of Maheshwaram Watershed,Ranga Reddy district,Andhra Pradesh

Maheshwaram watershed is situated in Ranga Reddy district of at a distance of about 30 km south of Hyderabad. The watershed has an area of 53 km² and has hard rock aquifers with semi-arid climate. The study area has been expanding at a fast pace and now has the distinction of being one of the fastest growing urban centers, facing the problem of groundwater depletion and quality deterioration due to the absence of perennial source of surface water and also due to over exploitation. Human activities involving industrial and agricultural development and the inadequate management of land and water resources have, directly or indirectly resulted in the degradation of environment viz. water and soil.     

生态环境损失价值计算初步研究——以张掖地区为例

生态环境损失价值计算是绿色国民生产总值计算的重要部分,是可持续发展国民生产总值核算的基础工作。黑河流域各种生态环境问题十分突出又各有特点。这些生态环境问题均因水资源的不合理开发利用引起。采用环境经济学的研究方法,从可持续发展的角度对生态环境损失的价值估算进行了初步尝试,并以张掖地区为例进行了实证分析,得到1995年张掖地区与水有关的生态环境损失价值约占当年国民生产总值的3%。     

Recent immigration to Italy: Character,causes and consequences

During the 1970s Italy changed from being a country of mass emigration to one of mass immigration, taking over from Germany the role of Europe's main recipient of immigrants from less developed countries. By 1991 the officially registered foreign population in Italy stood at 860,000; however, clandestine migrants push the real figure above 1 million. Italy was generally unprepared for this immigration and policy has been slow to evolve. Analysis of residence permit data show that the immigrants come increasingly from Third World, especially African, countries, and that there is a relative concentration in the north of Italy. One third of the immigrants are Moslem. Employment data are scarce but indicate that around two–thirds are involved in low-grade service sector activities (street-trading, domestic service, hotel work etc.). There is a high degree of occupational specialisation amongst certain national groups (Senegalese street-hawkers, Tunisian fishermen, Filipino domestics etc.). The immaturity of the immigration is also revealed by marked gender and age assymetry. Five main causes are suggested as being behind the immigration: ease of entry; Italy's increasing prosperity; segmentation of the Italian labour market, opening up specific niches for immigrant employment; dominance of push factors from the countries of origin; and the demographic collapse in Italy. Within Italy, the reaction to immigration has not been very favourable. Opinion polls indicate that Italians have mainly negative and stereotyped views of immigrants and there is disturbing evidence of growing racism. Further inflows of immigrants are likely, whatever policies Italy attempts to put in place.     

Limits to “counter-neoliberal” reform: Mining expansion and the marginalisation of post-extractivist forces in Evo Morales’s Bolivia

The expansion of resource extractivism in Latin America in the last decade has been related to previous neoliberalisation processes, which opened-up mineral exploitation to transnational firms and granted investors favourable conditions. Extractivism, however, expanded equally (or more) in countries which have undertaken “counter-neoliberal” reform—as it is most clearly the case for Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Building on regulationist approaches and strategic-relational state theory, this paper analyses recent changes in the governance of Bolivian mining. It contributes to understanding how and why the Morales governments’ objectives to initiate a transition towards a more plural and diversified economy—informed by social movements—have not been achieved to date. We make three interrelated claims. First, the expansion of mining has been enabled by the maintaining of institutional arrangements for mineral exploitation established during neoliberalism, favouring transnational firms and self-employed (“cooperative”) miners over state-owned and community-managed operations. Second, despite the new government’s improved legal framework for the promotion of environmental and indigenous rights, the mining sector has continued to benefit from de facto lax environmental regulation, which constitutes an indirect incentive to expansion at the expense of ecologies and indigenous–peasant livelihoods. Third, the state has played a central role in weakening social resistance to mining expansion, by demobilising those social forces—particularly peasant–indigenous organisations—whose proposals and demands conflicted most clearly with extractivist development. We suggest, therefore, that analysing changing state–society relations is central to understanding the counter-neoliberalisation of resource governance and its limits.