Voices of young biosphere stewards on the strengths,weaknesses, and ways forward for 74 UNESCO Biosphere Reserves across 83 countries

Young stakeholders are key actors in social-ecological systems, who have the capacity to be agents of sustainability transformation but are also at high risk of exclusion in the unfolding of global change challenges. Despite the focus of sustainability on future generations, there has been little research effort aimed at understanding young actors’ roles as biosphere stewards. In this work we investigate how young stakeholders perceive and participate in the implementation of sustainability objectives in 74 Biosphere Reserves of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme across 83 countries, through participatory group workshops, individual surveys and grey literature review. We explore to what extent youth perceptions are aligned or not with current understandings of Biosphere Reserves and how young stakeholders are acting in pursuit of Biosphere Reserve objectives. We find that young stakeholders have a comprehensive understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced by environmental governance, such as resilience and adaptation to global change and the governance challenges of implementing adaptive co-management and increasing stakeholder participation. We also show that young stakeholders can be active participants in a wide range of activities that contribute to achieving conservation and development goals in their territories. They are particularly concerned with youth participation within all levels of Biosphere Reserve functioning and with the creation of sustainable livelihood opportunities that will allow future generations to remain in their native territories. Our study provides evidence of the importance of young stakeholder knowledge and perspectives as central actors in conservation and development initiatives, like Biosphere Reserves, and of the need to increase young stakeholder integration and participation within environmental governance.     

Stuck in transition? Exploring the spaces of employment training for youth with intellectual disability

This paper is concerned with the experiences of young adults with intellectual disabilities as they transition from high school in search of paid employment. The experiences of people with intellectual disability remain under-researched within geography. We use qualitative techniques to examine the experiences of six young adults with intellectual disabilities. Data are drawn from interviews with the youth themselves, their parents, and employers, as well as from participant observation at an employment training program for the intellectually disabled. While the primary goal of the youth and their parents was to make a transition to competitive paid work, a lack of transition planning, a shortage of appropriate opportunities and other factors meant the youth spent considerable time in ‘transitional spaces’ such as the vocational training centre, sheltered workshop, and supported employment placements. While these spaces are organized around an explicitly economic goal of augmenting the youth’s employability, they can play a critical role as spaces for social interaction and meaningful activity outside the home. Study findings point to the importance of moving beyond paid employment as the core of a successful transition to consider a broader goal of ‘meaningful activity’.     

Responsible adults-in-the-making: Intergenerational impact of parental migration on Indonesian young women’s aspirational capacity

In the developing economies in Southeast Asia, labour migration is increasingly seen not simply to generate income to meet short-term livelihood needs but to secure the family’s future, often by investing in children’s education. While much work has been done studying the impact of parents’ remittances on children’s wellbeing including education access, the impact of parental migration on children’s (educational) aspirations has received less attention. Viewing youth as social actors, this paper interrogates how they make meaning of their parents’ migration, and how this consequently influences their decisions to activate, delay or reshape their hopes and plans for their own educational and work trajectories. With the increasing feminisation of labour migration in Southeast Asia where gendered regimes in care and domestic work make it easier for women to work overseas, this paper focuses attention on the aspirations of young women at the cusp of adulthood from a migrant-sending area in rural East Java, Indonesia. These young women’s ‘navigational capacity’ (Appadurai, 2004) is not only shaped by tangible obstacles such as the lack of sufficient resources, but is also more subtly moulded by an emerging discourse of self-responsibilisation in the making of ‘dutiful daughters’. Drawing on conceptualisations of multiple ‘logics of aspiring’ operating within spatial contexts (Zipin et al., 2015), we show how young women unsettle, inflect and challenge the normative linear education-work transitions by expressing their desire to replace their parents in accessing labour migration as a livelihood option, and reflect on the dialectical relationship between agency and aspirations.     

中国地质学会公布第五届野外青年地质贡献奖———金罗盘奖评选结果

为表彰一批在我国野外地勘一线工作中做出突出成绩 的 45 周岁以下的青年地质工作者,向中国地质学会成立百 年献礼,学会于 2022 年 2 月 22 日启动了第五届“野外青年 地质贡献奖---金罗盘奖”申报及推荐工作。     

中国地质学会公布第十八届青年地质科技奖(金银锤奖)评选结果

为表彰具有“献身、创新、求实、协作”的科学精神和科学道德及学风的40周岁以下的青年地质工作者，向中国地质学会成立百年献礼，学会于2022年2月22日启动了第十八届青年地质科技奖(金银锤奖)申报及推荐工作。近期，中国地质学会组织召开第十八届青年地质科技奖(金银锤奖)终评会议，评选产生了第十八届青年地质科技奖(金银锤奖)获奖者。会议决定授予梁前勇等10名同志“第十八届青年地质科技奖——金锤奖”荣誉称号，授予曹文庚等40名同志“第十八届青年地质科技奖——银锤奖”荣誉称号（获奖名单见附件）。