Constructing Water Shortages on a Huge River: The Case of Shanghai

Shanghai is located on the world's third largest river (by volume). Yet it faces the risk of shortages of drinking water. Many decisions and environmental characteristics have contributed to this threat. First, Shanghai has become dependent on water brought into the municipality by rivers. Second, it has become increasingly reliant on water from the Changjiang (Yangzi River), principally in order to control the levels of pollution in the water that enters its treatment plants. Third, for reasons associated with inter‐provincial administrative arrangements, the city's water intakes are located within the municipality, within the estuary zone and subject to tidal intrusions of salt water. Fourth, at high tide and when the Changjiang's discharge is low, salt intrudes far into the estuary, beyond the current water intakes. If sea levels rise, these intrusions will become more pronounced. Fifth, large‐scale central government infrastructure projects (such as dams and the South‐North Transfer) are altering the hydrological characteristics of the river. Such projects raise the probability of salt water intrusions into the water intake zone. The Shanghai and central governments have thus made a series of decisions that, taken together, have led the municipality to rely on a source of drinking water that is increasingly unreliable and subject to the risk of shortages due to salt water intrusions. Why these decisions have been made – independently – is an important problem for those who would understand the provision of water for cities and the practical efficacy of Chinese governance systems.     

Spatio-temporal localization of New Zealand dairying

Changes in the localization of dairy farming in New Zealand are interpreted in terms of environmental advantages, inter-regional competition, transportation costs and policies, and the behaviour of cooperative dairy companies. Since the 1920s dairying has become increasingly localized in environmentally advantaged areas. Competition among dairy companies resulted in o ver-extension of supply areas and disequilibrium between collection costs and economies of scale at the plant. Subsequently, some rationalisation of supply areas has occurred, notably since the adoption of tanker collection from the 1950s with cooperative dairy companies using differential transport pricing policies to discourage suppliers at the spatial margins.     

Applying a Systematic Review to Land Use Land Cover Change in Northern Upland Vietnam: The Missing Case of the Borderlands

As Vietnam embraces the market economy, and a number of state policies promote reforestation and rural market integration, land use and land cover (LULC) changes are occurring in the country's northern uplands in increasingly complex and fragmented ways. Yet understandings of the degree and consequences of LULC changes in this diverse agro‐ecological region are incomplete. We conduct a systematic literature review of research reported in academic articles tracing and analysing LULC change in Vietnam's northern regions. We find that these studies have tended to take place away from the most mountainous, northern borderlands. The studies nonetheless highlight a diversity of land use land cover changes caused by numerous causes, making the distinction of overall trends difficult. To complement and extend this body of research, we introduce recent LULC change research we have completed in the mountainous border districts of Lào Cai province, on the Sino‐Vietnamese border. The heterogeneity of causes of LULC change in both the review articles and our case study points to the importance of adapting land use policies to local agro‐ecological and socio‐economic conditions and ethnic diversity, taking into account state–farmer relations, household livelihood decision‐making, and policy implementation at the commune and district levels.     

DEATH, DECAY, AND RITUAL RECONSTRUCTION: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF CADAVERIC SPASM

Summary. Archaeologists often joke that patterning which cannot be explained in socio-economic terms is likely to be of ritual significance. This view has contributed to both reticence about and a rather impressionistic approach to potential ritual patterning in the archaeological record. The application of interpretations derived from the forensic sciences to such contexts may help to exclude natural or taphonomic processes that can mimic these patterns and elucidate aspects of ritual behaviour. In this contribution, we review some recent advances made in the application of such understanding to human remains and provide two examples of another — cadaveric spasm — a condition that has, at times, been interpreted as relating to 'live' burial. From these examples, it is clear that the relationship between well-analysed human remains and their context is the key to differentiating natural from ritual processes associated with interment.     

NEANDERTHALS, ANATOMICALLY MODERN HUMANS, AND 'MODERN HUMAN BEHAVIOUR' IN ITALY

Summary.   Traditionally, accounts of the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition focus almost exclusively on the evidence from south-western Europe. Interpretations based on data from this area are then generalized to produce a relatively uncomplicated pan-European model, with the appearance of novel technologies, new patterns of land use, expanded social networks, and the emergence of complex forms of symbolic communication involving art and personal ornaments, all pointing to the appearance of 'modern human behaviour' in Europe about 40,000 years ago. This paper presents an impartial review of the important but often neglected evidence from Italy, and shows that models positing a single spatiotemporal origin for 'modern human behaviour' are too simplistic.