The emergent network structure of the multilateral environmental agreement system

The conventional piecemeal approach to environmental treaty-making has resulted in a ‘maze’ of international agreements. However, little is known empirically about its overall structure and evolutionary dynamics. This study reveals and characterizes the evolving structure of the web of international environmental treaty law. The structure was approximated using 1001 cross-references among 747 multilateral environmental agreements concluded from 1857 to 2012. Known network analysis measures were used to answer the following questions: has a complex system of international environmental treaty law emerged? If so when, and what does it look like? What are its topological properties? To what extent is the institutional complex fragmented? The network analysis suggested that multilateral environmental agreements have self-organized into an interlocking system with a complex network structure. Furthermore, the system has defragmented as it coevolved with the increasing complexity and interconnectivity of global environmental challenges. This study demonstrates the need to approach multilateral environmental agreements in the context of a complex networked system, and recommends against assuming the overall institutional structure is fragmented. Proposals for global environmental governance reform should pay attention to this network's emergent polycentric order and complexity and to the implications of these features for the functioning of the multilateral environmental agreement system.     

Gender analysis for better coastal management – Increasing our understanding of social-ecological seascapes

Although highly recognized as needed, studies linking gender and coastal/marine management are scarce. This research illustrates the importance of gender analysis in natural resource management by linking gender and coastal management i.e. Marine Spatial Planning. The research was conducted in various Zanzibar seascapes (Unguja Island, Tanzania). Using a typology comprising gender structure, symbolism and identity; the results show a clear gendered division of labor, highly associated with a gender symbolism in which traditional roles of women as responsible for reproduction activities played a major role. Men used the whole seascape for their activities, while women remained in coastal forests and shallow areas collecting wood, invertebrates and farming seaweed. These activities allowed women to combine productive and reproductive work. Ecosystem importance for subsistence decreased with distance from land for both genders, while the importance for income increased with distance for men. Both genders acknowledged seagrasses as very important for income. Income closely followed the universal pattern of men earning more. Identities were defined by traditional ideas like “women are housewives”, while men identities were strongly associated with fisheries with reinforced masculinity. Livelihood diversity was higher for women also showing a tendency of slow change into other roles. Management was found to be strongly androcentric, revealing a deep gender inequality. The research exemplifies how a gender analysis can be conducted for management enhancement. It also invites replication around the world. If management is found to be androcentric in coastal locations elsewhere, a serious gender inequality can be at hand at global level.     

Mediating good food and moments of possibility with Jamie Oliver: Problematising celebrity chefs as talking labels

This paper explores the powerful and mediating role of celebrity chefs over audience relationships with food through analysis of Jamie Oliver and his recent series Save with Jamie. The paper firstly situates the role of celebrity chefs theoretically, defining them as ‘talking labels’ who may act both as knowledge intermediaries and boundary objects to connect audiences with food in multiple ways. Here chefs actively construct and mediate discourses around ‘good food’. As trusted, credible, well-liked public figures, chefs step into out private home spaces through our televisions to convey food information in a charismatic, entertaining and accessible way. Like traditional food labels, chef’s words can be ‘sticky’ and take hold in public imaginations in a way that goes far beyond the capacity of food products labels. Yet the relationship between chefs and audiences is far from straightforward and so the paper secondly aims to explore how these talking labels are understood and ‘used’ by audiences in their everyday food practices. Drawing selectively from a large scale audience survey (n = 600) as well as the series, Save with Jamie, this paper reveals the different ways that audiences ‘talk back’ to chefs both positively and negatively to create moments of simultaneous possibility and resistance for audience relations with food. This revealed complex relationships between audiences, chefs and food. It also suggests that the powerful work on celebrity chefs functions as part of a new mediated mechanism within today’s food governance.     

Cleantech clusters: Transformational assemblages for a just,green economy or just business as usual?

The rhetorical zeal for green enterprise as a global fix for the tripartite challenges of economic recession, environmental degradation and social inequality is increasingly visible in state and non-state pronouncements around the globe under the banner of ‘The Green Economy’. In particular, many policy-facing statements call for transitions leading to a transformation in development practices. Yet there is little detail either in policy or research regarding the types of transitions needed and how they are to be initiated, nor agreement about what a transformed economy might look like. Despite this, there are emergent activities within the cleantech arena which are being heralded as actually existing examples of green economy activities. One means through which these activities are seeking to exert influence over development trajectories is by clustering both at the subnational and transnational level. While diverse in formation, many of these clusters are hybridised, involving actors from public, private and civil society sectors. Critiquing the efficacy of mainstream industrial cluster theory to analyse hybridised cleantech clustering, this paper presents a unique synthesis of current thought on multiscalar environmental governance and socio-spatial formations to explore the practices and potentialities of these hybridised cleantech clusters. Surveying the landscape of cleantech clustering and meta-clustering, before focusing in depth on one case study, the contribution of clustering to transitioning towards a transformed green economy is considered. Despite strong forces, both within and beyond cleantech clusters, for maintaining neoliberalised approaches to cleantech activity, it is concluded that for as long as cleantech clusters remain open and inclusive of actors proposing alternative pathways they do represent potential, albeit provisional, assemblages for transformation.     

CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS：CHINA‘S URBAN GOVERNANCE

Chinaˊs urban reforms have brought social progress and development,but a comprehensive national system of social welfare(for example,unemployment insurance,pensions,medical care and public housing)for new migrants from rural areas is lacking.One of the most remarkable changes in Chinese cities in the last decade was a change in so-cial“equality“,with the rise of new poverty both in individual communities and some social groups in urban society.Howev-er,there is little social assistance and public infrastructure for the migrants.Governments or communities or individual should pay attention to the control of new urban poverty and new slums.This paper consider that it is necessary to launch a successful policy,which include mainly:1)accommodating urban growth through low-cost investment projects;2)ur-ban economy depends heavily on successful macroeconomic policy;3)to broaden the three channels linking adjustment to the incidence of urban poverty;4)to restructure urban economic based on the high or new technology;5)to coordi-nate relationship between urban economic growth and environment management for sustainable development of Beijingˊs metropolitan fringe.     

2000-2010年广州市住房产权管理角色变化分析

中国城镇住房分配从再分配体制向市场化为主的分配体制转变,深刻地影响政府、单位和市场在住房产权管理角色上的变化。利用广州市老八区的"五普"和"六普"数据,从住房产权结构变化、住房产权选择和住房产权空间形态等角度,分析政府、单位和市场在住房供应、分配和空间配置等住房产权管理中的角色变化。广州市2000年以来的住房产权结构变化反映了单位退出住房供应角色、政府保障房供应力度不够、市场成为最主要住房供应主体等特征。住房产权选择影响因素表明家庭与单位、政府之间的组织联系逐步弱化,与市场间的社会联系日益成为主导,家庭生命周期、家庭收入等体现家庭与市场间的市场联系变量成为城镇居民住房选择的最显著影响变量。住房产权空间形态重构表明,2000-2010年间,中心城区单位提供的体制内住房比重大幅度下降,并逐步被体制外住房所替代,政府提供的体制内住房则向郊区或近郊区形成集聚,导致体制内外住房空间布局出现一定"倒置",住房来源过度市场化、住房供应主体变化和级差地租等因素是其重要形成原因。研究还显示,单位不再承担住房供应任务后,尽管政府在住房调控上起到重要作用,但未充分承担起住房供应任务,城镇居民住房来源"过度市场化"趋势。为此,政府应加大保障房建设力度,并在区位上力求分散、均衡和避免郊区化,以避免加重保障房社区居民居住空间和社会空间上的双重边缘化。随着城市住房市场化的深入发展,中国城市大规模的房地产开发和政府房地产调控政策的制订过程中,更应关注快速全球化、现代化和市场化背景下居民家庭结构、社会经济地位等体现家庭与市场间的社会联系的变量对居民住房选择偏好的影响。     

Mobile bodies: Animal migration in North American history

North Americans have had a profound affect on wildlife, especially migratory animals such as elk, bison, salmon, and many species of birds. Migration is a vital adaptation for these and other species. Yet despite this importance and the myriad ways in which people have influenced and understood migration, environmental geographers have devoted scant attention to it. This paper examines the role of animal migration in North American history. North Americans have affected and managed animal migrants in six primary ways: transforming migrant habitats; harvesting migrants; obstructing and facilitating migrants; working across borders; visualizing migrants; and accepting and resisting migrants. I examine these different aspects of animal migration history in North America and end with a discussion of how other geographers such as environmental historical geographers, political ecologists, and animal geographers can employ this framework.     

Data,interface, security: Assembling technologies that govern the future

Over the last decade, fire governance practices in the British Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) have undergone fundamental transformation. Rather than just being responded to as and when they occur, the FRS have adopted a range of anticipatory governing strategies to govern fires in anticipation of their occurence. This turn towards anticipatory governance has been facilitated in no small part by the digital infrastructure now embedded in the FRS. Composed of data, hardware, software, fibre-optic cables along with human analysts and organisational processes, this infrastructure operates to make risk projections on fire which shape and condition strategic decision making. This paper explores the operation of this digital infrastructure through the notion of interface. Drawing on empirical material relating to processes of data sourcing and risk calculation, interfaces account for the sites, moments and experiences in which human and non-human agents relate to one another in making fire risk projections. Showing relations to exist spatially, temporally and sensually, I argue that interfaces are crucial to the operation of an anticipatory security apparatus which relies on digital devices.     

Old Chico’s new tricks: Neoliberalization and water sector reform in Brazil’s São Francisco River Basin

This article examines changing water governance modalities in the context of the neoliberalization of nature. Specifically, it focuses on Brazilian water sector reforms passed in 1997 that mandate decentralized and participatory decision-making at the river basin scale. Critics have suggested that rescaling, decentralization, and participatory governance mechanisms – supposedly intended to render decision-making more equitable, accessible, and relevant – can serve to legitimate, facilitate, and thus further embed processes of neoliberalization. Examining the impact of Brazil’s water sector reforms on the state–society relationship, this article presents a case study of water governance in the São Francisco River Basin and finds that the reforms – despite their neoliberalizing potential – have not significantly contributed to the neoliberalization of governance therein. Instead, water governance continues to be characterized by longstanding patterns of traditional elite control. Through an institutional and socio-natural analysis, this article describes and accounts for the continued dominance of these patterns relative to neoliberalization and explores activists’ efforts to use water sector reforms to pursue more progressive possibilities. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for variegation and contestation in ongoing debates over neoliberal natures.