Legal geographies and ecological invisibility: The environmental myopia of evidence

This study shows how legal evidentiary rules intended to make trials fair also enable biodiversity loss, even in courts charged with environmental protection. The common law is premised on two types of rules. The first, substantive laws, set rules for how society should function—obstructing and punishing some behaviours while enabling and rewarding others. In contrast, procedural laws are intended to level the playing field when there is a dispute over substantive rules during litigation. This case study concerns a routine environmental dispute over land development in Sydney, Australia. It demonstrates how, by enabling courts to determine what evidence will and will not be considered, procedural rules and practices drive substantive outcomes by rendering certain places, dynamics, and connections visible and capable of judicial action while obscuring others. Specifically, the court’s efforts to use evidentiary tools to make litigation more efficient drove substantive outcomes in two ways. First, work to narrow evidence to address factual disputes also narrowed the court’s geographic scale of analysis to the property boundaries of the site, thus obscuring broader threats to a critically endangered ecological community. Second, these procedural evidentiary decisions drove substantive outcomes undermining biodiversity protection, while concealing their inherently substantive nature. Combined with the tendency of the court to use procedural informality to promote compromise between the parties, and a broader juridical treatment of intact ecological communities as species that can largely be moved at will, the evidentiary rules enabled an environmentally focused court to enable the victory of development over species protection.     

四川广汉龙居寺中殿建筑热湿环境特征研究

为了解广汉龙居寺中殿建筑热湿环境特征,采用基于物联网技术的环境温湿度监测系统对建筑空间温度和相对湿度进行监测,分析建筑空间温湿度时空变化规律,评估建筑热湿环境特征,探讨热湿环境对文物保存的影响。结果表明,该建筑对外界环境温湿度变化具有较好的缓冲和隔离作用,建筑内部热湿环境对文物保存不利,主要体现在相对湿度高、波动大,湿度调控将是文物预防性保护的关键。建筑热湿环境为壁画酥碱和霉斑病害主要成因,同时促进了编竹夹泥墙体结构安全问题的发生。研究成果不仅丰富了对四川地区明代编竹夹泥墙木结构古建筑热湿环境特征的认识,而且为该建筑壁画病害和墙体结构安全问题的成因分析提供了依据。     

基于生态文明的县域环境-经济-社会耦合脆弱性与协调性研究——以黑龙江省齐齐哈尔市为例

选取2005-2015年齐齐哈尔市县域环境、经济和社会数据,构建包含三大子系统,9项要素,27个指标的县域环境-经济-社会系统评价体系,采用熵值法和耦合协调度模型,通过细分判别标准对其生态文明及内部三大子系统的协调性进行评价;采用脆弱性模型对2015年县域环境、经济与社会的脆弱性分级;运用ArcGIS对2015年生态文明指数和内部协调性可视化对比。结果表明：①齐齐哈尔多数县域生态文明质量逐年提升,但远未达良好水平;②县域环境、经济与社会失调发展年份居多,协调年份极少,社会滞后型成为影响协调发展的主要类型;③县域耦合脆弱性问题严峻,部分县域脆弱性出现两极分化;④县域生态文明建设与三大子系统耦合协调程度不匹配现象严重,协调度有待提升。     

传统村落保护度评价体系及其实证研究——以湖南省首批中国传统村落为例

传统村落在全球化、现代化和城镇化进程中面临诸多破坏,因此,传统村落保护研究显得尤为迫切。本文从原真度、活态度、完整度、传承度四个方面,构建了传统村落保护度评价指标体系及其评价函数。在对其保护状态进行阶段划分的基础上,通过湖南省的案例研究发现：①湖南首批中国传统村落保护度整体处于中度保护,且内部差异明显;②四项准则层中原真度和整体度较好,而活态度和传承度较低;③24项指标内部差异较大,建筑风格原真度等两项指标较好,而农业生产活态度等3项指标则较弱;④案例研究验证了构建的评价体系的科学性和评价函数的可行性。     

旱区生态移民空间冲突的生态风险研究——以宁夏红寺堡区为例

生态移民过程是各种空间要素在迁入区地域范围内重新组合与再结构化过程。理论上,这种区域空间重构过程客观存在空间冲突及生态风险。旱区生态系统十分脆弱,系统开展该类型区生态移民空间冲突的生态风险问题的研究,有利于为空间冲突生态风险突发危机状态下区域可持续发展提供调控科学方案。本文以宁夏红寺堡生态扶贫移民安置区为例,采用该区域1995、2000、2005、2010和2015年五期遥感影像,通过构建空间冲突模型,测算空间冲突水平,探测了空间冲突的生态风险及其主导因素与机制。结果表明：总体上,在1995-2015年生态移民大规模集中安置过程中,红寺堡区生态移民空间冲突指数均值呈前高后低的特点,分别为0.617、0.625、0.454、0.476和0.459,属可控范围,生态风险程度较低,其中稳定可控区的面积比例增加2.1倍。但不同土地利用类型的空间冲突水平差异较大,其中的水域、林地、耕地、草地的空间冲突程度较低,而未利用地、沙地和建设用地的空间冲突程度相对较高。地理探测显示,该地区的景观脆弱度指数、面积加权平均斑块分维数指数、斑块凝聚度指数、聚合度指数和斑块密度指数是影响区域空间冲突的主要因素。     

YOUNG ACTIVISTS IN MUDDY BOOTS

The Swedish youth organization Fältbiologerna was founded in 1947 with the mission to inspire learning about nature through outdoor activities. Since then, the members have stayed true to their slogan ‘keep your boots muddy’ through engaging in bird watching and forest excursions; however, in the late 1960s and early 1970s – a period that environmental historians refer to as the ‘ecological turn’ – the organization’s activities were extended to also include political activism. Fältbiologerna increasingly evolved into a fertile terrain for young environmentalists. In this article, we explore how this Swedish branch of modern environmental youth activism came about. Based on a close reading of the members’ journal, Fältbiologen, between 1959 and 1974, we identify four key characteristics that were communicated in the journal during the years of study: adventurous, knowledgeable, influential, and radical. We demonstrate that Fältbiologerna took an increasingly radical position and began to engage in environmental debates and actions, while still holding on to ideals of learning through spending time in nature. Participation in these different activities shaped the young members into environmentalists.     

The lit world: living with everyday urban automation

In this article, we develop and advance the concept of the lit world by bringing together literatures about everyday lighting, automation in everyday life and human perception, along with our ethnographic research into people’s experience of automated lighting in Melbourne, Australia. In doing so we formulate and argue for an approach to automation that situates it as part of everyday mundane worlds and acknowledges its entanglement with the emergent and experiential qualities of everyday environments as they unfold. We demonstrate this through the example of automated lighting, understood as a situated technology that has contingent effects and participates in the making of particular ways of seeing and feeling the world. We thereby argue for an account of automation that reaches beyond its potential for the management of human (and other) behaviour, to ask how the qualities and affordances of automated technologies might seep out of their intended domains, and create new perceptual and experiential opportunities. In a context where automation is increasingly prevalent in everyday life, such attention to the experience and use of automated technologies which already exist on a large scale is needed. Urban lighting is an example par excellence of automation in the world because it has a long history beyond the recent association of automated technologies with code and digital infrastructures. As scholars debate how automated technologies will become part of our future digital lives, understanding how people live in a lit world offers a starting point for considering how we might live with other anticipated algorithmic forms of automation.     

The impact of the school space on research methodology,child participation and safety: views from children in Zanzibar

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the impact of school environments as research spaces on participatory research methods, children’s agency and safety. The article draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork on children’s perceptions of protection programmes in state and Qur’anic schools in Zanzibar Town. Working with ‘draw & write’ and photovoice approaches disclosed issues with children’s safety in schools and highlighted limitations of participatory research in educational spaces. Drawing on Zanzibari children’s perspectives, I suggest that to improve fragile theoretical ideals about children’s participation in participatory approaches in educational settings, research processes need cultural sensitization and conceptualization in relation to the intersecting notions of place and personhood. This, as the paper shows, needs to guide and can help develop a respectful understanding of children’s lives. This paper contributes to discussions on childhood research ethics and constructions of ‘safe research spaces’.     

Seismic Risk Assessment and Mitigation at Emergency Limit Condition of Historical Buildings along Strategic Urban Roadways. Application to the “Antiga Esquerra de L’Eixample” Neighborhood of Barcelona

ABSTRACT

This article presents a management tool for the large-scale assessment and mitigation of the seismic risk of urban systems. The research introduces a new perspective for a scientifically tackled holistic approach. The proposed methodology considers multiple objectives, from the identification of the most vulnerable buildings whose collapse may hinder the operationality of strategic urban roadways after the occurrence of an earthquake, up to the proposal of proper interventions to improve their functionality. The approach uses a performance-based approach founded on the concept of urban Emergency Limit Condition. Plotting maps of geo-referenced scenarios by means of GIS software have revealed to be extremely useful to detect the weak points of the urban network and to plan suitable strategies of seismic risk mitigation and appropriate enhancement of reliability. The proposed methodology is applied to the “Antiga Esquerra de l’Eixample” neighborhood of Barcelona that hosts the strategic route to the hospital and is characterized by high levels of seismic vulnerability of existing buildings and exposition of its high-density population.     

Migrant workers,self‐reliance,and the propensity to hold income protection insurance by country of residence

Utilising a large comparative survey across 11 countries, it is shown that country effects condition the individual uptake of income protection insurance and that shared attributes, including labour market status, are important factors in determining the take‐up of income protection insurance, whatever the respondents' country of residence. We observed differences in the respondents' coping strategies, including self‐reliance, and were able to distinguish between migrant workers and those who work in their country of origin, along with the “special” case of the Australian respondents. These findings have implications for the ongoing debate on the labour market effects of globalisation and the significance of national institutions and regulatory practices.