Predatory cities: unravelling the consequences of resource-predatory projects in the global South

In this paper, we outline a framework to study what we have termed “Predatory Cities”, using the artificial offshore island of The Pearl in Qatar as a case study. By focusing on the nexus between urbanisation and resources, we will argue that the master-planning of new cities in the booming global South implies both the access and cheap exploitation of a set of, on the one hand, intangible and, on the other hand, tangible resources that exceed the traditional boundaries. Our point of departure is that the cheap appropriation and exploitation of alien architecture images and resource networks for the making of new, master-planned cities has become a necessary, but highly unsustainable, strategy to survive an increasingly competitive global offering of new destinations.     

20世纪下半叶中国地理环境的巨大变化--关于全球环境变化区域研究的思考

全球环境变化研究越来越重视全球问题与区域问题的结合,强调全球环境变化的问题应主要通过区域研究来解决。资源环境问题已经成为全球环境变化研究的一个重要内容。20世纪下半叶,强烈的人类活动与全球变化背景叠加,使我国地理环境发生了巨大变化。主要自然过程与环境要素的变化包括:全球变暖背景下气候带的明显摆动,降水南增北减使南方洪涝增加、北方干旱日趋严重,巨大的物质和能源需求与日趋严重的环境污染,天然水文过程的重大改变。在地理格局变化方面,工业化过程带来的产业与经济格局变化,改变了人口格局和城市格局以及自然资源供需格局,地表景观格局因此而发生显著的改变。资源环境已经从发展的条件演变为制约我国国家安全的一个关键因素。对中国地理环境特征与资源环境问题认识上的不确定性是未来社会发展的潜在威胁。对此,需要从全球的视角开展深入的研究。     

德国全球变化研究中的人文方向

随着研究的不断深入,人文因素在全球环境变化研究中的作用愈来愈被显现出来。任何研究机构都应充分重视人为驱动因子以及由此产生的各系统之间的相互作用。其中,人文地理学在全球变化研究中具有十分重要的作用。本文概要介绍了德国全球变化研究中的人文领域,从中可以看出自然科学与人文科学交叉渗透的重要性     

弹性、脆弱性和适应——IHDP三个核心概念综述

弹性、脆弱性和适应是全球环境变化人文因素计划( IHDP) 中三个非常重要的核心概念。 由于各自学科研究传统的差异, 不同学科在使用这些概念时其含义有很大差异, 有的甚至是不可 比的。本文主要根据《Global Environmental Change》2006 年第3 期发表的IHDP 学术委员会专题 研讨会成果, 结合UNU 关于脆弱性的研究成果, 重点介绍了这三个核心概念的演变以及相互联 系等方面的最新研究进展。     

Assessment of coastal vulnerability to environmental change in Jiangsu coastal plain

Assessment of coastal vulnerability to future environmental change has been emphasized in coastal nations or regions. The Jiangsu coastal plain, located to the north of the Yangtze River Delta in China, is most vulnerable to sea level rise and exacerbating coastal hazards. This paper develops the method of delimiting vulnerable scope and assessing coastal vulnerability through field observations and sampling and by applying remote sensing and GIS, which are suitable for great river delta and coastal plains with large area, relative complex micro-geomorphology and the protection of seawall. Applying this method, the coastal vulnerability of the Jiangsu coastal plain to relative sea level rise (approximately 50 cm up to the year 2050) and exacerbating storm surges have been assessed. The results show that, up to the year 2050, the Jiangsu coastal plain will probably lose 12.8 % of tidal flats (about 5.8×104 hm2) and 7.9 % of cultivated land (about 7.2×104 hm2). Meanwhile, 2.0 % of population, 3.8 % of original value of fixed assets, 3.2% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 40.3 % of salt industry and 5.8 % of aquiculture respectively will be affected due to coastal environmental change.     

Assessment of coastal vulnerability to environmental change in Jiangsu coastal plain

1 IntroductionCoastal areas, with dense population and high urbanization, are highly sensitive to global environmental change. The impacts of coastal environmental changes, such as sea level rise and related disasters exacerbation on socio-economic development of coastal areas, have become a matter of public concern. To study the vulnerable scope and degree of impacts of sea level rise and related exacerbating coastal hazards can provide a scientific basis for lessening the potential losses th…     

Foreword to the special issue: climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in the Arctic

The Arctic climate is changing, carrying wide-ranging implications for indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants, businesses, industry and government across the circumpolar region. The latest scientific assessments indicate that change is happening faster than previously thought, and that the Arctic will continue to experience dramatic climate change in the future. This special edition of Polar Research brings together nine papers on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in the Arctic, providing important insights on the nature of the risks and opportunities posed by climate change in the circumpolar region, highlighting opportunities for policy response and providing insights on how to conduct effective climate change research with Arctic communities.     

Livelihoods and the transformative potential of cities: Challenges of inclusive development in Rustenburg,North West Province,South Africa

Urban geographers increasingly incorporate the potential of so‐called informal livelihood activities to provide resources that can be creatively managed in the transformation of urban space, particularly to the benefit of less well off and marginalized residents. This paper reports a case study in Rustenburg, North West Province, South Africa, where city managers began to promote inclusive development in the early 1990s, just prior to the formal dismantling of the apartheid system. The findings reveal that Rustenburg's urban transformation process, over a decade later, continued to reproduce repressive practices that limit the informal livelihood activities of the urban majority. Apparently efforts of well‐meaning city managers to implement a sustainable and inclusive development process are often rendered futile at the point of actually defining the constituents of urban socioeconomic transformation.     

Land-cover change and human–environment interactions in a rural cultural landscape in South Africa

This paper presents an historical analysis (1974–97) of associations between land-cover change and socio-economic factors for three villages in a former bantustan region of South Africa. The notion of social–ecological systems is used as the conceptual framework for this analysis, in which the former bantustan region of Bushbuckridge is posited as a cultural landscape. The local landscape showed distinctive modifications over the study period, broad trends including the growth of human settlements and the decrease in woodland cover. However, changes were not uniform across sites, and the direction and magnitude of changes in land cover were often nonlinear and site-specific. Analysis of associations between biophysical and socio-economic changes at different scales revealed a range of important interacting forces such as population growth, drought, shortages of land, grazing and wood resources, weakening institutional governance of natural resources, and the diversification of livelihood strategies, including the sale of fuelwood, concurrent with declining employment security and cattle ownership. Evidence suggests a possible erosion of resilience in these social–ecological systems at various scales, with important implications for socio-economic development and sustainable resource management.     

Assessing vulnerability to climate change and socioeconomic stressors in the Reef Islands group,Solomon Islands

This article assesses the vulnerability to climatic and socioeconomic stresses in the Reef Islands, Solomon Islands, an atoll island group in the Southwest Pacific. Climate change and the associated sea-level rise are often seen as the most pressing challenges to atoll communities, yet this study aims at critically re-assessing this view by placing climate in the context of a range of other internal and external stressors affecting local livelihoods, including population growth, inadequate land use practices, and lack of economic potential, as well as external factors such as poorly developed infrastructure, economic marginalization and weak governance of Solomon Islands. Findings suggest that some of these non-climatic stresses are currently – and in the short term – more important determinants of local vulnerability than climate change and sea-level rise. Certainly, these stresses are likely to be exacerbated by different elements of climate change in the short, medium and long term, but generally speaking climate change does not appear to be a major driver of the current changes in the islands. On the basis of these observations, the possible adaptation options, relevant to different time scales, are discussed.     

History and the question of causation: North Atlantic lessons on environmental and social change

Dealing with processes of environmental change in an anthropological perspective inevitably implicates people. With people come notions of society and history, complicating matters of causation. In this article, I shall present two empirical cases from Icelandic history and current Greenlandic society. These cases shed light on the natural–social entanglements in a long-term historical perspective and in a highly charged present, respectively. My ambition is to open up for a renewed sense of causation in the social domain in view of the manifest complexities with which we are faced in the present era of globalization and rapid social changes. The reasoning is ethnographic rather than conceptual, if not exactly letting the cases speak for themselves, then at least avoiding both linear explanation and other normative stands on causation.     

Urban re-generations: afterword to special issue on the politics of urban greening in Australian cities

ABSTRACT

‘Urban re-generations' is written as an afterword to the special issue of Australian Geographer on ‘The Politics of Urban Greening in Australian Cities'. The collection prompts a deep questioning of reparative and regenerative work associated with greening, green spaces and green infrastructures. The climate-driven 2019-2020 bushfire crisis and COVID-19 have amplified the visibility of the more-than-human connectivity of our cities and the deep underlying structures of social and environmental inequity underpinning a variety of urban green spaces and agendas. Inspired by the articles in this special issue, the afterword explores how we might call back the grammars and practices of regeneration from their service to the neo-liberal, settler-colonial city and instead nurture reparative de-colonial practices that aid in the collaborative work of re-composing, becoming into better relation with, and working in modes of situated historical and cultural difference, with green and just cities.     

Explaining complexities of environmental management in developing countries: lessons from the Fiji Islands

Development assistance agencies have long urged developing countries to adopt environmental management techniques used in industrialized countries. They have ascribed shortcomings in the way developing states use those techniques to insufficient training, environmental matters being poorly integrated into economic decision making, other institutional weaknesses and lack of capacity. These reductionist explanations ignore the influence that socio-political and economic factors may have on state environmental management. They afford only a limited understanding of environmental practice in the Fiji Islands, a South Pacific archipelago and republic. The attempts of Fijian chiefly élite to maintain their power base – achieved through political participation in the state and economic development activities as much as through maintaining the communal system – shape the state's environmental management practices. Those practices have far less rational and democratic bases than one would expect either from the underlying logic of the techniques used (such as environmental impact assessment, environmental planning and protected areas), or from the way those techniques are applied in western, industrialized countries.     

中国生态脆弱区全球变化风险及应对技术途径和主要措施

自工业革命以来,全球环境发生深刻变化。生态脆弱区生态系统稳定性差、抗干扰和自我恢复能力弱,在全球变化背景下,自然资源供给能力下降、土地退化、生物多样性减少、灾害频发,生态系统面临巨大风险,亟需开展生态脆弱区全球变化风险应对研究。本文重点对中国典型生态脆弱区全球变化风险来源、全球变化对生态脆弱区的影响、全球变化风险应对等研究进行总结,并提出未来全球变化应对策略,以期促进中国典型生态脆弱区生态系统对全球变化响应的深入理解,提高生态脆弱区应对全球变化的能力。生态脆弱区全球变化风险源于环境变化对自然、社会、经济复杂系统的影响。全球变化对生态脆弱区的影响是显著的,以气候变化为主要标志,人类活动为主要驱动力,引起极端气候事件、灾害频发、土地退化、植被生产力降低、生物多样性减少、冰川冻土消融和水资源格局改变等环境问题,并在未来全球变化持续影响下可能加剧,而生态建设工程的实施显著改善了生态环境。今后应加强自然、社会、经济系统耦合,加强资源环境要素监测和全球变化风险评估与预警等方面的研究。     

Environmental justice in urban greening for subtropical Asian cities: the view from Taipei

Whilst an extensive body of literature exists on the environmental justice implications of urban greening in North America, Europe and to an extent Australasia, there are fewer analogous studies for tropical zone Asian city contexts. Given increasing global interest in the potential for urban greenspace to contribute to resilience in the face of environmental change and the higher vulnerability of Asian cities to environmental shocks, this is a notable gap. In response, this paper evaluates the contours of environmental justice debates within urban greenspace planning for one subtropical Asian city—Taipei. Through analysis of newspaper reporting on urban greenspace planning within Taipei, the potential and limitations of greenspace planning in contributing to equitably delivering benefits from urban greenspace towards resilience are assessed. Findings suggest that claims to environmental injustice in greenspace debates within Taipei follow broadly similar lines to controversies in Europe and North America. Nevertheless, the need for specific knowledge to understand the different ecosystem services provided by tropical zone ecosystems, and the potential for conflicts over greenspace versus development to be heightened in dense Asian city settings, are highlighted as potential areas where environmental justice debates in an Asian urban greening context may differ from Western cities.     

全球变化下中国南海诸岛珊瑚礁热压力临时避难所研究

选取第五次耦合模式比较计划(CMIP5)模式中较适宜于南海海表面温度(SST)模拟的加拿大地球系统模式(CanESM2),并获取其在IPCC RCP2.6、RCP4.5和RCP8.5温室气体排放情景下模拟的2006-2100年南海SST数据。基于南海诸岛珊瑚礁和线性回归方法分析了RCPs情景下的珊瑚礁区夏季SST上升趋势,并基于热周指数(DHW, Degree Heating Weeks)及年白化时间指数分析了RCPs情景下的南海诸岛珊瑚礁热压力临时避难所,主要得出以下结论:①RCPs情景下,明显变暖的珊瑚礁海域均为南沙群岛;②年白化时间不晚于全球珊瑚礁平均年白化时间的珊瑚礁像元占南海诸岛总珊瑚礁像元的比例,在RCP2.6、RCP4.5和RCP8.5情景下分别为17%、29%和42%,均分布在南沙群岛;③RCPs情景下,较高纬度的西沙群岛、中沙群岛和南沙群岛北部为未来南海诸岛珊瑚礁热压力临时避难所。     

全球环境变化对我国区域发展的可能影响评述

随着环境问题的日益突出,全球环境变化的区域响应已成为我国全球变化研究的优先领域和热点问题之一。国内外学者就全球问题与区域问题的结合达成共识:全球性问题的研究需要由区域工作来完成;区域性研究必须体现全球性问题。本文介绍了全球变化对区域发展影响评价的基本方法,特别是IPCC评价报告中采用的区域脆弱性、敏感性评价方法;概述了我国未来50年环境变化的可能情景;从自然生态系统变化、水资源短缺、沙漠化、农业生产等方面评述了全球环境变化对我国区域发展可能影响研究的进展和成果,最后指出了全球变化区域响应研究存在的问题,并对其发展方向作了展望。