Index

America is embroiled in a culture war. National education standards have exacerbated the conflict. Supporters justify standards by adopting the rhetoric of globalization and national labor force preparedness. Opponents claim that standards threaten local control over value inculcation and social reproduction. This paper examines the “politics of scale” to hypothesize that conservatives have solicited Congressional support for local school choice and school prayer to subvert national education standards. Results from a multivariate analysis confirm that a significant link exists between Congressional opposition to education standards and support for school prayer and school choice.     

Culture Wars and NationalEducation Standards: Scale and the Struggle over Social Reproduction

America is embroiled in a culture war. National education standards have exacerbated the conflict. Supporters justify standards by adopting the rhetoric of globalization and national labor force preparedness. Opponents claim that standards threaten local control over value inculcation and social reproduction. This paper examines the “politics of scale” to hypothesize that conservatives have solicited Congressional support for local school choice and school prayer to subvert national education standards. Results from a multivariate analysis confirm that a significant link exists between Congressional opposition to education standards and support for school prayer and school choice.     

美丽中国与联合国可持续发展目标(SDGs)结合的黑河流域水资源承载力评价

水资源是制约干旱、半干旱区社会经济发展的关键因素,结合联合国可持续发展目标（SDGs）指标和美丽中国评价指标,以水资源承载力为核心,从水资源系统、社会系统、经济系统、生态环境系统、协调系统5个方面构建指标体系,基于熵权法确定权重,评价2001-2017年黑河流域各县区水资源承载力及时空分布。结果表明：（1）当前水资源利用效率水平下,2010年以来黑河流域大多数县区GDP均超过最大承载能力,而人口则在2010年以前已超载。（2）从水资源承载综合评价结果来看,2001-2015年随着生态输水工程的进一步实施,水资源承载力有所好转,但中下游波动较大,水资源形势依然十分严峻。（3）控制不断扩展的绿洲面积,减少高耗水农作物种植面积,实施合理用水总量控制和定额管理措施,是减缓水资源压力的重要措施。     

When the whole is less than the sum of all parts – Tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are described as integrated and indivisible, where sustainability challenges must be addressed across sectors and scales to achieve global-level sustainability. However, SDG monitoring mostly focuses on tracking progress at national-levels, for each goal individually. This approach ignores local and cross-border impacts of national policies and assumes that global-level progress is the sum of national, sector-specific gains. In this study, we investigate effects of reforestation programs in China on countries supplying forest and agricultural commodities to China. Using case studies of rubber and palm oil production in Southeast Asian countries, soy production in Brazil and logging in South Pacific Island states, we investigate cross-sector effects of production for and trade to China in these exporting countries. We use a three-step multi-method approach. 1) We identify distal trade flows and the narratives used to justify them, using a telecoupling framework; 2) we design causal loop diagrams to analyse social-ecological processes of change in our case studies driven by trade to China and 3) we link these processes of change to the SDG framework. We find that sustainability progress in China from reforestation is cancelled out by the deforestation and cross-sectoral impacts supporting this reforestation abroad. Narratives of economic development support commodity production abroad through unrealised aims of benefit distribution and assumptions of substitutability of socio-ecological forest systems. Across cases, we find the analysed trade supports unambiguous progress on few SDGs only, and we find many mixed effects – where processes that support the achievement of SDGs exist, but are overshadowed by counterproductive processes. Our study represents a useful approach for tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives and provides cross-scale and cross-sectoral lenses through which to identify drivers of unsustainability that can be addressed in the design of effective sustainability policies.     

Co-designing global target-seeking scenarios: A cross-scale participatory process for capturing multiple perspectives on pathways to sustainability

The United Nations 2030 Agenda catalysed the development of global target-seeking sustainability-oriented scenarios representing alternative pathways to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Implementing the SDGs requires connected actions across local, national, regional, and global levels; thus, target-seeking scenarios need to reflect alternative options and tensions across those scales. We argue that the design of global sustainability-oriented target-seeking scenarios requires a consistent process for capturing multiple and contrasting perspectives on how to reach the goals, including the perspectives from multiple scales (e.g. local, national, regional) and geographic regions (e.g. the Global South). Here we propose a novel approach to co-design global target-seeking scenarios, consisting of (a) capturing global perspectives on pathways to the SDGs through a review of existing global scenarios; (b) a multi-stakeholder process to obtain multiple sub-global perspectives on pathways to sustainability; (c) an analysis of convergences, and crucially, divergences between global and regional perspectives on pathways to reach the SDGs, feeding into the design of new target-seeking scenario narratives. As a case study, we use the results of the 2018 African Dialogue on The World in 2050, discussing the future of agriculture and food systems. The identified divergent themes emerging from our analysis included urbanization, population growth, agricultural practices, and the roles of different actors in the future of agriculture. The results challenge some of the existing underlying assumptions of the current sustainability-oriented global scenarios (e.g. population growth, urbanisation, agricultural practices), indicating the relevance and timeliness of the proposed approach. We suggest that similar approaches can be replicated in other contexts to better inform the process of sustainability-oriented scenario co-design across scales, regions and cultures. In addition, we highlight the implications of the approach for scenario quantification and the evolution of modeling tools.     

PRELIMINARY EXPLORATION OF DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY OF PUDONG IN SHANGHAI

The article, in a comprehensive view, explores the strategic vantages, strategic urgency, strategic goals, strategic planning as well as strategic steps.     

Aadel Brun Tschudi Annual Lecture 2017 – efficiency and equity in development geography,the SDGs and the Sendai Framework

ABSTRACT

What can contemporary geographical research learn from Aadel Brun Tschudi? As a pioneer of development geography, Tschudi emphasised efficiency, equity and the responsibility of geographers to be active in society. While her contributions to development geography were made in the context of nation-building efforts in the mid–late 20th century, the globalising process of the early 21st century raise similar concerns for identity, emergent hierarchies of power and socio-environmental transformation. Using Tschudi’s cardinal principles of equity and efficiency, the paper identifies four action arenas and exemplifies these through interventions aimed at reducing risk and addressing unmet development challenges: (1) high efficiency, low equity (private sector led), (2) low efficiency, low equity (humanitarian sector led), (3) low efficiency, high equity (spontaneous local action), and (4) high efficiency, high equity (collaborative action). The analysis draws out the different ways in which the aspirations and policy communities that own the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 are interacting now and how far these interactions are able to deliver efficiency and equity for the poor in low- and middle-income countries, which is Tschudi’s primary concern.     

Producing global awareness? An analysis of Norwegian pupils’ negotiations of images in a museum exhibition

ABSTRACT

The article focuses on Norwegian pupils’ negotiations of meaning in images of social inequality in A World at Stake, a circulating museum exhibition in Denmark, Norway and Sweden that addressed the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. More specifically, the article focuses on the pupils’ engagement with two images in the exhibition. By investigating how the pupils negotiated the meaning of those images, the authors demonstrate some of the ways in which the pupils’ reported engagement and responses had the potential to foster critical debate relating to the North–South divide in terms of poverty and affluence. Drawing on critical visual methodology, the authors discuss their findings of how the pupils used their experiences to make sense of the images, situate their social identities within a globally and socially unjust world, and, by implication, the potential for two images to inspire them to reflect on their roles and responsibilities in the wider world. The authors conclude that although the pupils’ social identities to varying degrees were mobilized, AWAS spurred engagement and reflections that helped the authors to understand how the pupils saw themselves, their roles and their responsibilities beyond the Global North.     

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Response Strategies of China

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which launched in 2015 inherited, extended and developed the merits of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in 2000. By the analysis of SDG goals, it can be found that SDG has mainly covered the securities of food supplies, disease prevention, social justice and human rights, the securities of water, energy, land and eco-environment. It covers the human, social, economic, and eco-environmental dimensions. To achieve it, the SDG should be localized and coordinated with the long-term development strategies of Chinese government. And the goals should be integrated into the policies and engineering projects of China simultaneously. By multilaterally cooperating with international communities and sharing the development experiences of other countries/regions, and confronting global issues together, the SDG can be achieved eventually by all the countries of the world.     

Informing national adaptation for sustainable development through spatial systems modelling

Acute climate-change hazards, such as floods or storm surges, can affect a nation’s built and natural environment assets that are critical for development and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To reduce the impacts of such acute climate-change hazards and safeguard development, national decision-makers require evidence on where and how hazards affect SDG achievement to better inform adaptation. Here, we develop a systems methodology that spatially models the impacts of climate-change hazards across a nation’s entire built and natural environment assets and its interdependent influences on the SDG targets to inform national adaptation. We apply our methodology in Saint Lucia through a participatory approach with decision-makers across 18 government ministries, academia, and the private sector. Results reveal that acute climate-change hazards can affect half of Saint Lucia’s assets across 22 sectors, which can influence 89% of all SDG targets. Application of our methodology provided evidence on where and how to prioritise adaptation, thereby helping to add spatial granularity to 52 measures under Saint Lucia’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) as well as specificity on how limited capacity for cross-sectoral coordination can be directed to safeguard SDG targets. Adaptation does not necessarily imply investing in physical asset protection: results show the need to protect critical natural environments which provide important adaptation services to the built environment. As more nations develop and revise their NAPs and Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, strategic planning across sectors – as demonstrated in Saint Lucia – will be critical to facilitate adaptation that safeguards SDG achievement.