Doing NGO Work: the politics of being ‘civil society’ and promoting ‘good governance’ in Cambodia

Two fundamental pillars of what it is to be a contemporary NGO and ‘do’ development work are being a part of and promoting civil society, and extending ‘good governance’. This article will provide insights into how supposedly universally applicable concepts and models for NGOs to ‘improve’ post-conflict ‘developing countries’ are incorporated into different social and cultural landscapes. Ethnographic fieldwork highlights some of the particularities of governance, as well as everyday challenges of doing NGO work in a remote province of north-eastern Cambodia. In the context of an authoritarian government, where kinship relations cross-cut all aspects of society, NGOs can be understood as embedded in neo-patrimonial networks rather than as a separate and autonomous realm of society as classic liberal theory understands ‘civil society’. Fear also plays a significant role in configuring peoples’ attitude towards authority and is rarely acknowledged in the project of ‘good governance’ which simplistically tends to see post-colonial governments situated on a linear trajectory which will eventually, with significant NGO interventions, reach advanced liberal democracy status.     

The impacts of urbanization on soil erosion in the Loess Plateau region

1 IntroductionThe Loess Plateau region covers an area of 62.4(104 km2 and lies in the center of northern China. Urbanization and economic development have been quickened in recent decades. Both the number of towns established and scale of cities have increased. Although the pace of urbanization has been accelerated, the eco-environmental control in urban areas still lags behind relatively. Moreover, the construction and development of cities damaged the already vulnerable eco-environment to …     

Comment on ‘Concerning “The economic evaluation of implementing a GIS‘”

Abstract

A fragmentation index has been implemented as a region based GIS operator to describe the spatial distribution of thematic classes in one data layer within map regions defined in another data layer. It has been applied to integrated analysis of digital maps and classified remote sensing data, for estimation of landscape complexity within watersheds and for detection of logged forest stands. The properties of the fragmentation index, when applied in this manner, are discussed. The fragmentation index is suggested as a valuable means of describing image characteristics of spectrally heterogeneous map regions.     

Reconstruction of ‘technological pasts’: an appraisal of the ‘work history method’

To use the ‘work history method’ which is described in this article implies systematic collection and statistical treatment of information on technological change based on oral tradition. Important changes in the respondents' careers arc registered and, based on this information, a picture of the technological development at village level is constructed. The method, as applied in the two case studies of technological change in Sri Lankan and Malaysian fisheries, is described step by step. Finally, the limitations of the method and the possibility of gaining new knowledge through its use are described.     

Elite discourses of regional identity in a new regionalism development scheme: The case of the ‘Mountain Region’ in Norway

Norway's regional structure is under debate as questions about territorial boundaries, scale, scope of tasks and responsibilities, and decision-making structures have become an issue in Norwegian politics. This tendency of changing the scale of public action with regard to governmental structures, economic politics, welfare, and civic society has been termed ‘new regionalism’. New regionalism often comes under criticism of being too neo-liberalistic or too economically orientated, leaving in its wake debates of democratic accountability and the neglect of ‘soft factors’ (i.e. socio-culture, identity, consciousness, and participation). In this article the authors investigate whether new democratic or semi-democratic regional organisations as advocated by new regionalist schemes require identification amongst the local population in order to be successful and enduring governmental structures. Further, it is shown how too simplistic understandings of the social processes, and their inherent power aspects, involved in the implementation of the new regionalist development scheme ‘Mountain Region’ distort the undertaking. The authors find that a more complex relational and contextual understanding is in demand, one in which regionalisation is not only recognised as a process which diffuses across time-space, but also takes an asymmetrical place across society's social fabric, and one where ‘soft factors’ such as ‘regional identity’ are not sidestepped.     

Human’s digital footprints on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: Variations during festivals and impacts on nature reserves

Mobile internet and wireless communication technologies have produced unprecedented location-aware data. Such big geospatial data can be used as a proxy measure of the ‘digital footprints' left by us on the planet and provide a valuable opportunity to understand the dynamic and short-term human disturbance on the nature at fine scales. This study investigated the spatiotemporal variations of human's digital footprints on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau using smartphone-users-generated Tencent's location request data. The results showed that human's digital footprints cover less than 5% of Qinghai and Tibet, exhibiting either a U-shaped or an N-shaped temporal change pattern during the major festivals. Spatial changes of the digital footprints manifested a transition process from dispersion to concentration in Xining and Lhasa. Human disturbance assessment of seven large nature reserves on the plateau showed that the Qinghai Lake is the most disturbed one as shown by 14.6% of its area is stained with human digital footprints and the areal average of footprint intensity is 1.59, and the disturbance was significantly escalated during the National Day holiday. By contrast, the Qangtang and Hoh Xil are the least affected nature reserves with the two indices less than 1% and 0.1, respectively.     

Do perceptions of the Red‐tailed Hawk indicate a human‐wildlife conflict on the island of La Gonave,Haiti?

The Caribbean subspecies of the Red‐tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis solitudinus or B.j. jamaicensis) is the largest native carnivore on the island of La Gonave, Haiti, and the island's apex predator. On other Caribbean islands, raptors have been persecuted by local people typically because of their depredation of livestock. In addition to possible persecution from humans, Red‐tailed Hawks on La Gonave face challenges from island‐wide timber overharvest and rapid land‐cover changes. To better understand the human‐apex predator relationship on La Gonave, we surveyed islanders about their perceptions of, and interactions with, the Red‐tailed Hawk. According to 121 respondents from 10 villages, La Gonavans do not hunt, kill, or consume Red‐tailed Hawks. Our study revealed a notable absence of negative perceptions of the hawk by respondents despite intense hawk depredation of domestic chickens. While the chicken depredation may lead outside observers to consider the human‐hawk relationship on La Gonave as representative of a human‐wildlife conflict, our interview data do not support that conception. Our findings reflect an important conversation in related contemporary scientific literature about what constitutes human‐wildlife conflicts across various cultures. Despite tolerance by residents, Red‐tailed Hawks on La Gonave remain threatened by habitat degradation.     

The risk of occurrence of erosion processes on the western slope of the Tom’-Yaya interfluve

We assessed the level of geomorphological risk associated with the occurrence of erosion processes on the western slope of the Tom’-Yaya interfluve (West-Siberian Plain). We suggest the technique for points-based risk assessment in technogenically modified and naturally occurring geomorphological systems. Using the Luchanovskii area as an example, we identified the zones of increased, moderate and low risk levels.     

‘Borehole Race’ and the Dilemma of Governing the ‘Ungoverned’: Understanding the Urban Political Ecology of Groundwater Exploitation in Nigeria

Groundwater exploitation is an essential aspect of the numerous processes of transforming the urban natural environment for human gains. We use the political ecology of borehole exploitation in Nigeria’s urban environment to understand the micro-and macro-level processes mediating the transformation and changes in urban “groundwater scape”. The fieldwork processes depend on field counting of borehole distribution, in-depth and semi-structured interviews, and a review of secondary literatures. We argue that the social and environmental changes arising from the exploitation of groundwater bespeak the active and continual manifestation of the interplay of combustible interests and power friction among institutional agents within the permissible range of the natural environment. Such dynamic power relations engender a pattern of socio-natural transformation consistent with Swyngedouw’s notion of urban metabolism- “a series of interconnected heterogeneous and dynamic but contested and contestable processes of continuous quantitative and qualitative transformations that re-arranges humans and non-humans in new and often unexpected ways”.     

The impacts of the district-level administrative restructuring on urban polycentricity and balanced regional development北大核心CSCD

Administrative division adjustment as an institutional support for spatial governance is an important measure to optimize resource allocation, and it has profound effects on promoting balanced regional development. Based on the panel data of 272 cities in China from 2013 to 2021, this study used the spatial difference-in-differences method to explore the impact of district-level administrative restructuring, a special type of administrative division adjustment, on balanced regional development, and further analyzed the mediation mechanism of urban morphological polycentricity. The results show that district-level administrative restructuring is not only beneficial to promoting balanced regional development in local regions, but also has positive spatial spillover effects on neighboring regions. Mechanism analysis show that under the background of administrative division adjustment, urban form is an important driving factor for balanced regional development. Specifically, district-level administrative restructuring can reduce regional development inequality by improving the level of urban morphological polycentricity. Heterogeneity analysis show that the impact of district-level administrative restructuring on balanced regional development varies across regions. Compared to the western region, the positive effects of such restructuring on balanced regional development are more significant in the eastern and central regions. The restructuring has significant promotional effects in large cities and medium-sized cities, while the effects in mega-cities, super-large cities, and small cities are not significant. In the future, we should prudently carry out administrative division adjustment and urban spatial transformation according to the development conditions of different cities, and promote the construction of urban polycentricity by district-level administrative restructuring according to local conditions, in order to promote balanced regional development. © 2023, Editorial office of PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY. All rights reserved.     

Maximising efficiency,marginalising equity: a genealogy of Australian wheat export market deregulation and ‘the good farmer’

ABSTRACT

The Australian government deregulated the wheat export market in 2008, ending 60 years of statutory wheat marketing by the Australian Wheat Board (AWB). In this article, I explore the discursive shifts which contributed to this change. I adopt a genealogical approach to this research, by collecting and analysing policy documents produced between 1983 and 2012, to understand how truths—such as efficiency, competition and the ‘good farmer’—were constructed and reproduced to facilitate wheat export market deregulation in Australia. Through analysing the case of wheat export market deregulation, and the process by which this shift was made possible, this article contributes more broadly to research examining the neoliberalisation of Australian rural industries, and the discursive construction of norms, values and identities to facilitate these changes.     

Improving understanding of the spatial dimensions of biophysical change in atoll island countries and implications for island communities: A Marshall Islands’ case study

Using coarse-scale approaches, existing national assessments of vulnerability and adaptation highlight physical land instability as a major threat to atoll island nationhood. However, such evaluations are bereft of detailed, ground-truthed analyses of the physical impacts of climatic change on reef islands, treating islands as homogenous in both biophysical and social characteristics. The distinct geomorphic context of two proximate reef islands (Jeh and Jabat) in the Marshall Islands was examined through conventional land survey techniques. A template documenting the nuances in island topography was used to evaluate simple inundation scenarios, reflecting current and future sea-level changes under storm surge conditions. The variations in local scale community exposure to inundation were discernible. The study highlights the importance of treating coarse-scale assessments with caution and underscores the need for continued commitment to resolving variations in community experiences to environmental change. Notions of risk and exposure are complex and embedded in both the biophysical and social contexts of each island community. Despite a number of targeted urban vulnerability studies in the Pacific there remains a need for efforts to document localised differences in experience to better inform contemporary adaptation efforts.     

Modelling the impacts of cropland displacement on potential cereal production with four levels of China’s administrative boundaries

Cropland displacement, as an important characteristic of cropland change, places more emphasis on changes in spatial location than on quantity. The effects of cropland displacement on global and regional food production are of general concern in the context of urban expansion. Few studies have explored scale-effects, however, where cropland is displaced not only within, but also outside, the administrative boundary of a certain region. This study used a spatially explicit model (LANDSCAPE) to simulate the potential cropland displacement caused by urban land expansion from 2020 to 2040 at four scales of the Chinese administration system (national, provincial, municipal, and county levels). The corresponding changes in potential cereal production were then assessed by combining cereal productivity data. The results show that 4700 km² of cropland will be occupied by urban expansion by 2040, and the same amount of cropland will be supplemented by forest, grassland, wetland, and unused land. The potential loss of cropland will result in the loss of 3.838×10⁶ tons of cereal production, and the additional cropland will bring 3.546×10⁶ tons, 3.831×10⁶ tons, 3.836×10⁶ tons, and 3.528×10⁶ tons of potential cereal production in SN (national scale), SP (provincial scale), SM (municipal scale), and SC (county scale), respectively. Both SN and SC are observed to make a huge difference in cereal productivity between the lost and the supplemented cropland. We suggest that China should focus on the spatial allocation of cropland during large-scale displacement, especially at the national level.     

‘A land history of men’: The intersection of geomorphology,culture and heritage in Cornwall,southwest England

Relationships between landscape-scale geomorphology and aspects of the human environment (including heritage and material cultures) are best examined in landscapes with a strong geomorphological imprint of past climatic and environmental changes, and where human activity has been present for a long period of time. In Cornwall, southwest England, a strong geomorphological signature is imparted by weathering of granite bedrock under cold Quaternary climates, and a strong cultural and heritage imprint is manifested in material and nonmaterial ways through archaeology, art, literature and folklore, and is illustrated in this paper through examples of Bodmin Moor (north Cornwall) and West Penwith (west Cornwall). Landscapes of Bodmin Moor include wide valleys with underfit rivers and upland summits with prominent tors, resulting from granite weathering and slope processes during the Tertiary and Quaternary. Pollen records show how human activity has changed on the moor over time, with a peak of settlement during the Bronze Age, and expansion of grazing into the Iron Age. Daphne du Maurier's novels, set on or adjacent to Bodmin Moor, emphasize the moor's relationship to unstable and intense human emotions and crises. In West Penwith, which is geomorphological similar to Bodmin Moor, geomorphology–culture relations are demonstrated in different ways but through a similar sense of place and regional identity. The St Ives School of early 20th Century art, including the local artist Peter Lanyon and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, draws inspiration from the local land and seascapes. The oral traditions and folklore of Zennor emphasize the importance of witchcraft and superstition that are in part founded on the wildness of upland summits and stormy coastline. Across West Penwith, tin mining and the mining trade exerted a strong impact on regional socioeconomic and cultural development from the Bronze Age until the end of the 19th Century, seen through settlement patterns, scientific innovation and Nonconformism. Today these geomorphology–culture relations are memorialized in the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site.