Ambivalent climate of opinions: Tensions and dilemmas in understanding geoengineering experimentation

Due to the fear of the consequences of climate change, many scientists today advocate the research into—but not deployment of—geoengineering, large-scale technological control of the global climate, to reduce the uncertainty around its efficacy and harms. Scientists propose in particular initiating field trials of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This paper examines how the meanings of geoengineering experimentation, specifically SAI field trials, are reconfigured in the deliberation of the lay public. To this end, we conducted focus groups with Japanese citizens in June 2015 on the geoengineering concept and SAI field trials. Our main findings are as follows: the ‘climate emergency’ framing compelled the lay public to accept, either willingly or reluctantly, the need for ‘geoengineering research’; however, public discourse on SAI field trials was ambiguous and ambivalent, involving both tensions and dilemmas in understanding what the SAI field trial is for and about. Our results exhibit how the lay public wrestles with understanding the social, political, and ethical implications of SAI field trials in multiple dimensions, namely, accountability, controllability, predictability, and desirability. The paper argues that more clarity in the term ‘geoengineering research’ is needed to facilitate inclusive and pluralistic debates on geoengineering experimentation and not to preemptively arrive at a consensus that ‘we need more research.’ We conclude that ambivalence about both the pros and cons of geoengineering experimentation seems to be enduring; thus, instead of ignoring or repressing it, embracing ambivalence is required to keep the geoengineering debate democratic and inclusive.     

Stop FEMA Now: Social media,activism and the sacrificed citizen

In an era of late capitalism and climate crisis, an expanding, heterogeneous network of people find themselves precariously positioned at the edge of disaster. This paper explores how Stop FEMA Now, a coalition of U.S. flood disaster survivors and other coastal homeowners, used social media to challenge neoliberal policies that produced – and then privatized – environmental risk. I find that social media played a crucial and sometimes unexpected role in enabling activists to organize across difference and cohere around an identity that emphasized their multiple layers of vulnerability and responsibilization. Through images that reembedded natural disasters in their political and economic contexts, activists exposed their historic and ongoing abandonment by neoliberal policies and state failures. Ultimately, such abandonments forfeited coastal homeowners to a future marked by fiscal and climate crisis, constituting them as sacrificed citizens. And yet, I also propose that the struggles of sacrificed citizens offer new possibilities for coalitions and pluralisms.     

Charting the emergence of a ‘knowing system’ for climate change adaptation in Australian regional natural resource management

Climate change increases the complexity and uncertainty of regional natural resource management (NRM), calling into question the appropriateness of linear knowledge-transfer approaches. In this paper we reflect on knowledge practices among a partnership of researchers and NRM planners, under a federal program of NRM investment intended to ‘deliver information’ to regional NRM planners to support planning for climate change. We unpack ‘container’ and ‘conduit’ metaphors of linear, one-way communication invoked by the starting conditions, and explore whether more relational ways of communicating were achieved. A key theme emerged early in the research that NRM planners felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available and discouraged by the irrelevance of much of it to their climate change planning. Our research-practice collaboration unfolded in this context and through ongoing face-to-face and virtual engagement over a period of two years. The collaborative approach featured joint identification of priority activities, co-design of planning approaches, and the iterative co-development of an online ‘information portal’, which acted as a boundary object. We report the emergence of a ‘knowing system’, resulting from these efforts to foster relationships and co-produce boundary objects in a particular geographic context. Our findings highlight the potential benefits of investing in the capacity of researchers and NRM practitioners to engage in collaborative research partnerships premised on the emergence of knowing systems.     

Using ESDA with social weights to analyze spatial and social patterns of preschool children's behavior

To study the development of spatial and social behavior of preschool children, micro-level spatiotemporal data were collected for the first time in both spatial and social context using a novel behavioral coding system. These unique behavioral data enable us to explore the group-level, dynamic, spatial, and social patterns of preschool children's playing behavior from a hybrid geographic and social perspective. In this research, GIS and exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) techniques are employed together to study group-level spatial and social behavior emerging from children's everyday activities and interactions. ESDA with social weights is proposed to explore spatial and social patterns of preschool children's behavior at the same time. The results highlight the utility of this approach for studying the relationships between preschool children's playing behavior and preschool's environmental settings and the relationships between preschool children's personal activities and the formation of their social network space.     

Measuring the attractiveness of Dutch landscapes: Identifying national hotspots of highly valued places using Google Maps

In a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) or an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), determining the value that the general public attaches to a landscape is often problematic. To aid the inclusion of this social value in such analyses, a Google Maps-based tool, called the HotSpotMonitor (HSM), was developed. The HSM determines which natural places are highly attractive by having people mark such places on a map. The definition of attractiveness remains open to avoid having marker placement being influenced by preconceived thoughts. The number of markers an area receives is considered to indicate its social value. Six regions were selected, and from these, stratified samples were drawn (total n = 3293). Participants placed markers at three spatial levels: local, regional and national. This paper focuses on the markers at the national level. The first research question is whether the HSM can produce an accurate map of highly attractive places at a national level. The results indicated that while in principle HSM can produce such a map, the spatial representativeness of the sample is important. The region of origin of the participants influenced where they placed their markers, an effect previously termed spatial discounting. The second research question considers which qualities the participants associate with the marked places. These qualities were very similar at all three spatial levels: green, natural, presence of water and quiet were often selected out of the fourteen suggested qualities. The third, and more exploratory, research question concerns which characteristics of an area predict its attractiveness. Natural and forest areas had higher marker densities than water surfaces or all other types of land use combined. The discussion evaluates the potential of the HSM to generate input on social landscape values for CBAs and EIAs.     

Developing parallel procedures for line simplification

Abstract

This paper explores parallel programming issues that are relevant to the efficient implementation of spatial data handling procedures on current parallel computers through sample implementations of the Douglas line simplification procedure. Using source code-equivalent implementations of the Douglas procedure, this paper analyses the performance characteristics of two parallel implementations, compares their performance characteristics to those of a sequential implementation, and identifies critical components of the parallel implementations that enhance or inhibit their overall performance values. The results of this work show that the selection of appropriate interprocessor communication and load balancing strategies are crucial to obtaining large speedup values over comparable sequential implementations.     

Social Mix and the Problematisation of Social Housing

Social housing in Australia is at a significant juncture. High levels of housing stress, increasing levels of socio-spatial polarisation and reduced government funding are posing complex policy challenges. Social mix policies are one response to these challenges, arising from the problematisation of social housing estates as socially excluded. This problematisation is examined through case studies of two Sydney social housing renewal projects: Telopea and Riverwood North. Drawing on interviews with government, private-sector and not-for-profit housing practitioners, the paper identifies two distinct discourses of social exclusion within this problematisation—culture of poverty discourse and equity discourse—that shape the implementation of social mix. These discourses reveal that implementing social mix is more complex than simply managing the cohabitation of residents in different tenures. Rather, the practice of social mix is embedded within discourses about the nature and causes of social exclusion. These discourses, in their turn, inform the multiple and sometimes conflicting aspirations pursued through social mix policies.     

Elements of viral cartography

ABSTRACT

Making and sharing maps is easier than ever, and social media platforms make it possible for maps to rapidly attain widespread visibility and engagement. Such maps can be considered examples of viral cartography – maps that reach rapid popularity via social media dissemination. In this research we propose a framework for evaluating the design and social dissemination characteristics of viral maps. We apply this framework in two case studies using maps that reached wide audiences on Twitter. We then analyze collections of maps derived from and inspired by viral maps using image analysis and machine learning to characterize their design elements. Based on our initial work to conceptualize and analyze virality in cartography, we propose a set of new research challenges to better understand viral mapmaking and leverage its social affordances.     

The tragedy of the commodity is not inevitable: Indigenous resistance prevents high-value fisheries collapse in the Pacific islands

The emergence of export markets for high-value seafood products tends to produce a predictable pattern of serial depletion of resources and social disruption in coastal communities, a phenomenon described as ‘the tragedy of the commodity’. The sea cucumber trade epitomizes these challenges, with cases of rapid growth followed by fishery collapse documented across the Indo-Pacific and the majority of assessed stocks worldwide overexploited. Is this ‘boom-bust’ sequence inevitable? We examine three cases of resistance to the sea cucumber trade from Palau, Pohnpei, and Yap. Despite the overwhelming short-term financial incentives to export, fishers, youth, elected and traditional leaders, and civil society organizations coordinated to ban the trade at its peak, using public protest, court battles, and customary and statutory law. We show that, like the tragedy of the commons, Indigenous peoples and local communities can organize to resist the tragedy of the commodity. They do so by asserting Indigenous values, rights, and institutions, recommonizing the resource and preventing fisheries collapse. These cases challenge the inevitability of the tragedy of the commodity and the narrative of poor fishers as vulnerable and disempowered.     

Climate discourses as barriers to rights-based adaptive social protection: How historical politics shape Ethiopia’s climate-smart safety net

A rights-based approach to ‘adaptive social protection’ holds promise as a policy measure to address structural dimensions of vulnerability to climate change such as inequality and marginalisation, yet it has been failing to gain traction against production and growth-oriented interventions. Through the lens of Ethiopia’s flagship Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), we trace the role of climate discourses in impeding progress towards socially transformative outcomes, despite the importance of social protection for building resilience. We argue that intertwining narratives of moral leadership and green growth associated with Ethiopia’s national climate strategy shape how the PSNP is rendered ‘climate-smart’. These narratives, however, are embedded within politics that have historically underpinned the country’s drive for modernisation and growth-oriented policies, particularly in dealing with food insecurity. Like pre-existing narratives on development and the environment, they rationalise the presence of a strong central State and its control over natural resources and rural livelihoods. The PSNP is thus conditioned to favour technocratic, productivist approaches to adapting to climate change that may help reproduce, rather than challenge the entrenched politics at the root of vulnerability. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates how climate discourses risk diluting core rights-based dimensions of social protection, contradicting efforts to address the structural dimensions of vulnerability to climate change.