Access to natural resources and conflicts between farmers and agro‐pastoralists in Borkena Wetland,north‐eastern Ethiopia

This case study on the Borkena wetlands in north‐eastern Ethiopia tells, through the voices of the inhabitants, the story of the occupation and management of an area where agro‐pastoralists (Urrane) and farmers have progressively settled. It shows how different policy changes and natural disasters have transformed the type of peoples' livelihoods and land use patterns in the wetland. It tells the history of relationships between smallholder peasants, irrigation farmers, commercial farms, and the Urrane, where conflicts as well as collaboration developed, and it shows how different stakeholders behave and consider their own situation. The study also reveals that development intervention by World Vision Ethiopia (WVE) had mixed impact on peoples' livelihoods in the wetland: sedentary peasants have benefited while the Urrane have been adversely affected. The main issue is the marginalization of pastoralists, with the denial of their traditional land use rights by three successive regimes and administrations. Any solution to the cohabitation of the different groups and livelihoods will have to address the issue of land rights for the pastoralists and promote the fair participation of all stakeholders in the future management of the wetlands. Good governance and the competence of the state actors at local levels are the crucial issues for the realization of the suggested solutions.     

南昌市土地利用的空间冲突风险评估及分区优化研究

以土地利用的导向功能为基础,将南昌市1995、2005和2015三期20种土地利用类型划分为生态生产空间、生产生态空间、生态空间和生活生产空间。利用空间复杂性指数、空间脆弱性指数和空间稳定性指数3个因子构建冲突模型,借鉴倒“U”型模型,将空间冲突分为4类：稳定可控、基本可控、基本失控和严重失控,在冲突级别的基础上利用优化产业结构、生态系统修复等措施,建立10个亚功能区,优化土地资源,缓解空间冲突,实现可持续发展。研究结果表明：①1995—2015年中南昌市三生空间格局以生产生态空间为主,其次是生态空间、生态生产空间以及生活生产空间,生活生产空间所占比例在上升,其余均在减少,呈现“一升三降”特点;②1995—2015年南昌市三生空间空间冲突愈演愈烈,严重失控单元持续增长,但2005—2015年的增长速度较1995—2005年稍慢,南昌市三生空间冲突失控态势严峻;③不同空间类型冲突存在较大差异,均以可控级别为主,其中失控级别占比由大到小：生活生产空间?生产生态空间?生态生产空间?生态空间;④利用10个亚功能区优化南昌市70%以上的区域,其中以城镇用地等为主的两个亚功能区,70%以上属于允许建设区,以滩地、湖泊、林地等为主亚功能区65%以上属于禁止建设区,符合土地利用总体规划。     

Crocodile crimes: people versus wildlife and the politics of postcolonial conservation on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe

This article is about the politics of conservation in postcolonial Southern Africa. It focuses on the process and consequences of redefining the Nile crocodile as an endangered species and explores the linked local and international, commercial and conservationist interests that allowed the animal to re-establish itself in state-protected waterways in colonial and postcolonial contexts. It investigates the effects of the animal’s successful re-accommodation by examining conflicts between crocodiles and the fishing communities sharing space on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. Fishermen’s hostile representations of the animal emphasize competition for fish, harassment, fear, loss of assets and loss of life. Their fear of crocodiles is heightened by the animal’s entanglement in local social life, through its association with witchcraft. The article emphasizes the importance of considering both hegemonic and marginalized ideas about animals in the light of the material interactions, relations of power and historical contexts that shape them. Understanding the attitudes and circumstances of the local communities who bear the physical and economic costs of living with dangerous animals is important--it threatens the future of conservation programmes and reveals the potential for significant abuses to accompany the conservation of wildlife in postcolonial contexts.     

空间冲突理论分析与实证研究

对空间冲突展开理论分析,探讨空间冲突概念、表现形式和冲突类型。在福建省资源环境承载能力和国土空间开发适宜性评价基础上,应用ArcGIS空间叠置分析技术,实证研究福建省国土空间在生态保护、农业生产和城镇建设等不同功能上的冲突现状。结果表明：空间冲突现象普遍存在,主要表现为生态保护重要性与生态红线、现状耕地、现状城镇建设用地的冲突,农业生产不适宜性与现状耕地的冲突,以及城镇建设不适宜性与现状建设用地的冲突。基于福建省资源环境禀赋,提出生态优先、绿色发展,粮食安全、精明增长,权利平衡、人地和谐的冲突调控策略。     

Correlation between tides and seismicity in Northwestern South America: The case of Colombia

We present the first systematic exploration of earth tides-seismicity correlation in northwestern South America, with a special emphasis in Colombia. For this purpose, we use a dataset of ∼167,000 earthquakes, gathered by the Colombian Seismological Network between 1993 and 2017. Most of the events are intermediate-depth earthquakes from the Bucaramanga seismic nest and the Cauca seismic cluster. For this purpose, we implemented a novel approach for the calculation of tidal phases that considers the relative positions of the Earth-Moon-Sun system at the time of the events. After applying the standard Schuster test to the whole dataset and to several earthquake samples (classified by time, location, magnitude and depth), we found strong correlation anomalies with the diurnal and monthly components of the tide (global log(p) values around −7.0 for the diurnal constituent and −12.1 for the monthly constituent), especially for the intermediate depth events. These anomalies suggest that around 16% of the deep earthquakes in Colombia may be triggered by tides, especially when the monthly phase is between 350°-10°. We attribute our positive results, which favor the tidal-triggering hypothesis, in contrast to previous negative ones to: 1) the size of our dataset, and 2) the method we used to calculate tidal phases. Anyone willing to reproduce our results or to apply our methodology to custom datasets can use the public information system tQuakes that we developed for this work.     

Water scarcity problems in Israel

The demand for scarce fresh water requires Israel to cease squandering this limited resource on agriculture, at present consuming about 70% of the annual supply. Environmental pollution must cease as well, for untreated urban water effluent contaminates ground water. All Israel's 700 million cubic metres sewage water must be suitably purified to irrigate about one hundred thousand hectares. Climatically controlled greenhouses and advanced agricultural research will reduce the amount of water and land required for the cultivation of the fresh vegetables and fruit, and small proportion of the dry fodder needed for the country's consumption. Israeli agriculture's association with moral, ideological and social ideas obstructs meaningful reduction in the allocation of water to agriculture. The Zionist movement has always seen transforming land into a means of production as the index of its success. Failure in this would signify an inability to adapt to adverse environmental conditions and be a sweeping repudiation of Zionism. The protracted Israeli-Arab national conflict also affects water policy. Israeli Jewish society has always considered rural settlement, agricultural activity, as part of the substance of its national identity and power, bonding the people with the land and consolidating territorial sovereignty. Since the 1970s, capitalism, which has dominated Israeli ideology, has favoured the individual's interests over the community's. Thus agriculture is mobilized to accommodate the private struggle for the good of the farming sector against the needs of the national collective.     

广东人对外省人群体文化态度的调查与分析

根据研究的目的和任务，基于定性研究与定量研究相结合的原则，建立了由5个一级指标，21个二级指标及其相应权重组成的指标体系，同时，结合所建立的相关数据运算模型对问卷调查所获得的基本数据资料进行赋值和计算，利用数据处理后的结果就广东本地人对外省人群体文化的态度进行分析研究，研究结果表明：广东人对外省人群体文化的态度从总体上看属于基本融合性，但在具体指标方面仍存在一定的差异，具体体现为语言，社会交往，现实生活方面较高的融合性和生活习俗方面较强的冲突性，造成这一结果的主要原因是由于在文化交流日益频繁的今天，广东文化不仅是中华民族文化的有机组成部分，而且具有鲜明的个性特征，并深深的影响着广东人的行为和思想。     

Conflict studies and critical geopolitics — theoretical concepts and recent research in political geography

The political and economic upheavals during the past two decades have led to a new social and political organization of space on all levels of scale. To deal with the obvious changes, political geography had to rethink and to extend its traditional concepts. Transcending its long taken-for-granted radical approaches, the Anglo-American geography developed two conceptional paths, both of which are still relevant for political geography today:— a new awareness of regional differences in political action and culture— a new, constructionist awareness of the instrumentalization of geographical discourses for geopolitical purposes.With these theoretical concepts, political geography is examining a number of both traditional and new fields of research. Their heterogeneity is once again evidence of postmodern diversity and difference. They are characterized by both a new awareness of differentiation and a widening of the traditional viewpoint in three closely related respects transcending the traditional topics of political activity, the traditional political actors and the established levels of scale of politics. Based on the current literature it is possible to outline some major themes and perspectives of current political geography that are closely linked together, like knots in thematic networks:1. ecological politics and resource conflicts 2. territorial conflicts and boundaries 3. geopolitics and the politics of identity 4. globalization and new international relations 5. the symbolic representation of political power 6. regional conflicts and new social movements.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the real state of the world
B. Dalal–Clayton and D. Dent, Knowledge of the Land: Land resources information and its use in rural development
Krishna B. Ghimrie, The Native Tourist: Mass tourism within developing countries