Environmental Geography

Inspired by the commercial desires of global brands and retailers to access the lucrative green consumer market, carbon is increasingly being counted and made knowable at the mundane sites of everyday production and consumption, from the carbon footprint of a plastic kitchen fork to that of an online bank account. Despite the challenges of counting and making commensurable the global warming impact of a myriad of biophysical and societal activities, this desire to communicate a product or service's carbon footprint has sparked complicated carbon calculative practices and enrolled actors at literally every node of multi-scaled and vastly complex global supply chains. Against this landscape, this paper critically analyses the counting practices that create the 'e' in 'CO2e'. It is shown that, central to these practices are a series of tools, models and databases which, in building upon previous work (Eden 2012; Star and Griesemer 1989) we conceptualize here as 'boundary objects'. By enrolling everyday actors from farmers to consumers, these objects abstract and stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from their messy material and social contexts into units of CO2e which can then be translated along a product's supply chain, thereby establishing a new currency of 'everyday supply chain carbon'. However, in making all greenhouse gas-related practices commensurable in enrolling and stabilizing the transfer of information between multiple actors these objects oversee a process of simplification reliant upon, and subject to, a multiplicity of approximations, assumptions, errors, discrepancies and/or omissions. Further the outcomes of these tools are subject to the politicized and commercial agendas of the worlds they attempt to link, with each boundary actor inscribing different meanings to a product’s carbon footprint in accordance with their specific subjectivities, commercial desires and epistemic framings. It is therefore shown that how a boundary object transforms greenhouse gas emissions into units of CO2e, the outcome is of distinct ideologies regarding ‘what’ a product's carbon footprint is and how it should be made legible. These politicized decisions, in turn inform specific reduction activities and ultimately advance distinct, specific and increasingly durable transition pathways to a low carbon society.

This paper examines the trend analysis of temperature and relative humidity in Kwara State. Climatic data on annual mean temperature (minimum and maximum) and relative humidity for 40 years (1978-2017) were collected from Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) Ilorin. Semi-Average method, Mann- Kendull statistics and regression method were used to analyse the trend in temperature and relative humidity. The Standardized Anomaly Index (SAI) was also used to examine the changes in temperature and humidity over the period of 1978-2017. The result of the analysis indicates that temperature (minimum and maximum) and relative humidity exhibit an upward trend. This implies that temperature and relative humidity increase over the period of 1978-2017. The Mann-Kendull statistics values show that there is no significant difference in the values of temperature (minimum and maximum) and relative humidity. The result of the Standardized Anomaly Index (SAI) also revealed that the values of tempera...

City logistics policies require an understanding of several issues (eg freight distribution context, preferences and relationship among agents) seldom accounted for in current research. Policies run the risk of producing unsatisfactory results because behavioural and contextual aspects are not considered. The acquisition of relevant data is crucial to test hypothesis and forecast agents' reactions to policy changes. Despite recent methodological advances in modelling interactive behaviour the development of apt survey instruments is ...

Simon Springer (Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Canada) contributes this short essay about his visit to Moscow and Domitrov. He organized a session titled “For Kropotkin” with Anthony Ince for the IGU Moscow Regional Conference and made a trip to the Kropotkin museum in Dmitrov.

In this paper, I argue that frontiers are dilemmas composed of multiple dualities, be they exclusive and inclusive powers, connected space and national periphery, or modernity and primitiveness. These dilemmas, in consequence, become the mechanism to create a leeway for the state to ‘tailor’ different meanings of frontier to meet the contingent market demands. I use tea production on China’s southwest frontier as an example to demonstrate that dilemma is not an end result, but a mechanism to rearticulate the relationship among frontier, the state and the market economy. Specifically, I argue that dilemmas on China’s southwest frontier have been forged by the Chinese state with its incompatible desires between ‘modernisation’ and ‘primitiveness’ of the tea landscapes in Yunnan, a province on China’s southwest frontier. Meanwhile, the incompatible desires and the resulting dilemmas on China’s southwest frontier have further mobilised the state to flexibly rework its power to reconstruct the frontier to meet contingent market demand. Based on the shifting meanings of tea landscapes, the state has flexibly ‘shuttled through’ the dilemmas between development of modernisation and preservation of primitiveness on the frontier.

The monograph brings a relatively complex and comprehensive evaluation of the frequently asked questions related to the development of wind energetics in the Czech Republic; the evaluation is based on the analysis of spatial relations, environmental aspects and the social and economic connections of the given issues. Information of encyclopaedic and descriptive character appears only exceptionally, the emphasis is put on the synthesis of knowledge from abroad and the findings of empirical research. An interdisciplinary approach forms the basis; it involves and systematically evaluates a wide set of mutually related aspects (physical-geographical, environmentally-ecological, human-geographical and sociological), questions of legislative and economic character, and finally also issues connected with the impact on the health of the population, quality of life etc. From all the disciplines involved in the issue it is geography that has a coordinating function and plays the most important role. The main advantage of geography is its broad thematic scope and the ability to synthesise, which is essential for the overall objective assessment of the location potential, or the specification of the rate of suitability and acceptability of wind energy exploitation in a particular location. Most of the authors established their names at the Institute of Geonics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, a public non-university scientific institution, the department of environmental geography; the others come from other academic, university and specialized departments. It is assumed that the publication could become a guideline for further scientific research and that it will help increase and enhance the knowledge portfolio of public service employees and economy subjects, that it will rectify some myths related to wind energy, and last but not least that it will contribute to the increase in the number of informed amateurs able to evaluate the given issue objectively and constructively.

In the first multipurpose river valley planning of India, the vast resources of Damodar River Basin (DRB) (eastern India) are not only to be envisioned in their entirety but also to be developed in a unified manner where the water, land, and people are simultaneously bounded in a seamless web. Four large dams (Konar, Tilaiya, Maithon, and Panchet), Durgapur barrage, and Tenughat reservoir are built to tamp the flood-prone Damodar River using water resource in an integrated method. The functionality of Damodar fluvial system is controlled by dams, barrage, weirs, sluices, embankments, and canals, maintaining a dynamic equilibrium between fluvial processes and anthropogenic processes. Carrying more than 50 years of legacy, the existing drainage and flood control system of Damodar Valley Corporation has aggravated a number of hydrogeomorphic problems especially in lower DRB, viz. siltation of river bed and reservoirs, uncontrolled monsoonal stream flow, declining carrying capacity of lower course, drainage congestion, low-magnitude annual floods, channel shifting, de-functioned canals, decay of paleochannels, decline of ground water level, and less replenishing of soils with fresh silts. The present paper is mainly tried to investigate the pre-dam and post-dam hydrogeomorphic variability in relation to flood risk and drawbacks of Damodar Valley Multipurpose Project. Specifically, the annual peak flow of Damodar shifts from August to September due to dam construction and reservoir storage. Applying the annual flood series of log Pearson type III distribution, we have estimated post-dam 5-year peak discharge of above 5,300 m3 s−1 and 100-year flood of above 11,000 m3 s−1. Due to siltation, the bankfull discharges of sample segments are gradually declined up to 4,011 m3 s−1, 2,366 m3 s−1, and 1,542 m3 s−1, respectively, having recurrence interval of 1.18–3.18 years only. With the regulation of monsoon flow, the standard sinuosity index is gradually increased downstream, having high dominance of hydraulic factors in respect of topographic factors. The upstream section of study area (Rhondia to Paikpara) now shows the dominance of aggradational landforms, braiding, avulsion, high width–depth ratio, breaching of right bank, and valley widening, but downstream of Barsul the phenomena of bank erosion, confined sinuosity, low width–depth ratio, and narrowness are more pronounced.

The coastal Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, Mexico – known locally as the Istmo – is regarded as one of the best wind energy generating sites in the world. Marketed as a preeminent solution to mitigating climate change, wind energy is now applying increasing pressure on indigenous groups in the region. The article begins by outlining a definition of colonialism that assists in identifying the temporal continuity of the colonial project to understand its relationship with wind energy development. The next section briefly reviews colonial genocide studies, discussing disciplinary debates between liberal and post-liberal genocide scholars, the relevance of self-management within colonial systems, the genocide-ecocide nexus and the ‘intent’ of destructive development projects. This leads into reviewing the claims and findings that emerged from fieldwork in the Istmo, which is divided into the north and south to show the different, yet similar dynamics taking place in the region. Finally, the article concludes that wind energy development as a ‘solution’ to climate change not only distracts from its dependence on fossil fuels and mining, but renews and continues a slow industrial genocide, assimilating and targeting (indigenous) people who continue to value their land, sea and cultural relationships.

Nestled in the Himalayan foothills of Northeast India, Darjeeling is synonymous with some of the finest and most expensive tea in the world. It is also home to a violent movement for regional autonomy that, like the tea industry, dates back to the days of colonial rule.

In this nuanced ethnography, Sarah Besky narrates the lives of tea workers in Darjeeling. She explores how notions of fairness, value, and justice shifted with the rise of fair-trade practices and postcolonial separatist politics in the region. This is the first book to explore how fair-trade operates in the context of large-scale plantations.

Readers in a variety of disciplines—anthropology, sociology, geography, environmental studies, and food studies—will gain a critical perspective on how plantation life is changing as Darjeeling struggles to reinvent its signature commodity for twenty-first-century consumers. The Darjeeling Distinction challenges fair-trade policy and practice, exposing how trade initiatives often fail to consider the larger environmental, historical, and sociopolitical forces that shape the lives of the people they intended to support.

We often think of cities as major drivers of economic development and growth. Big cities expand our access to infrastructure like public transit and public education. They allow for more efficient distribution of social services such as government assistance and health care. Cities create large markets for business, and can attract international investment and tourism from around the world. They are hubs of non-agricultural, high-paying professional jobs like banking, law, and engineering. Diversity and face-to-face interactions can lead to new ideas and cross-cultural collaborations. Conventional wisdom holds that cities are good for the economy.
Indeed, the link between a country’s level of urbanization and the size of its gross domestic product (GDP) is well established.

В книге рассмотрены теоретико-методологические вопросы стратегического управления туристскими организациями в условиях рыночной экономики. Дается обоснование принципам и методам управления турфирмами в условиях неопределенностей туристского рынка с учетом целевых установок их развития. Осуществлена прогнозно-поисковая оценка перспектив развития туризма как отрасли экономики Приморского района Дагестана. Предлагается механизм государственного регулирования туристской сферы в регионе.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Declarations on Sustainability in Higher Education (SHE) can be viewed as a piece of international regulation. Over the past 30 years research at universities has produced convincing data to warn about deterioration of the environment, resource scarcity and the need for sustainability. This in turn, has put a counter pressure on the university, forcing it to review its role as a driver for sustainable development. Today, universities and intergovernmental institutions have developed more than 31 SHE declarations, and more than 1400 universities have signed a SHE declaration globally. However, it is well known that signing a declaration does not necessarily lead to implementation. This is due to the lack of incentive structures. The article examines the discursive interaction between university and intergovernmental declarations that form the basis for the design of sustainable universities. Declarations tend to have impact on three trends. Firstly, there is emerging international consensus on the university’s role and function in relation to sustainable development; secondly, the emergence of national legislation, and thirdly, an emerging international competition to be leader in sustainable campus performance.

Conventional approaches to pro-environmental behaviour change rest on individualistic and reductive assumptions which posit that behaviour is the outcome of a linear and ultimately rational process of decision-making. Policy approaches have thus concentrated on providing tailored environmental information to individuals to encourage (eco)rational decisions and on removing barriers to ‘correct’ behaviour, and research has tended to focus on modelling the influences on individual decision-making processes through large scale questionnaire surveys.

This thesis takes a different approach. Based on emerging social practice theories, it investigates what actually happens when pro-environmental ideas come into contact with, and are contested in the course of, everyday practice. Specifically, it provides an ethnographic case study of a pro-environmental behaviour change initiative called Environment Champions in the head offices of Burnetts – a British construction company. It shows how the team of Champions at Burnetts, despite the apparent weakness of their environmentally rational proposals and strong resistance to them, were able to change the nature of social interactions around their offices and to restructure existing practices by introducing a form of environmental discipline to them. It thus argues that pro-environmental behaviour change is a fundamentally social process involving power struggles and collective negotiations over what should count as appropriate behaviour in specific contexts.

The thesis thus suggests that pro-environmental behaviour demands a much more fundamental challenge to social order and everyday life than is implied by conventional research and policy approaches. It concludes by setting out a number of practical and conceptual implications for future work on pro-environmental behaviour change, and outlining the beginnings of a new research agenda on processes of environmental socialisation.

That talk is never disinterested complicates the relationship between the environment and the claims people make about it. Talk about place, and one's self in it, is particularly complex when the environment poses risk or is otherwise problematized. This study, a secondary analysis of interview data, seeks to extend discursive work on place-identity by examining the ways in which 14 residents of a small English village talk about themselves and their locale. The locale accommodates an active quarry, and many residents had lodged complaints to the quarry about dust, noise and vibrations from blasting. Attention to the interactional context of the interviews illustrates the ways in which (simply) interviewing people about their locale can threaten self- and place-identity. When asked about life in the village, interviewees oriented to two main dilemmas in protecting self- and place-identity: (1) how to justify continued residence in a challenging environment and (2) how to complain about the locale whilst maintaining positive place-identity. Discursive responses to these dilemmas drew upon typical identity processes, such as self- and place distinctiveness and the formulation of out-groups, as well as upon constructions of localized power-sharing and morally obligated tolerance of risk. We suggest that research on problematical places, and of environmental risk, needs to be sensitized to how it may constitute a threat to self- and place-identity, and how this may mediate formulations self and place, as well as of environmental risk.

The impact of conservation policies on human wellbeing is critical to the integration of poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation. In many low-income countries, human–wildlife conflict adversely affects wellbeing of communities that closely interface with wildlife. Approaches to framing and mitigating conflict emphasize its visible costs. Hidden impacts, i.e. costs that are uncompensated, temporally delayed, or psychosocial in nature, remain poorly addressed. This paper examines the hidden impacts of human–wildlife conflict in low-income countries. It presents an account of the known and potential hidden impacts, investigating their effects on rural communities. Hidden impacts of human–wildlife conflict include diminished psychosocial wellbeing, disruption of livelihoods and food insecurity. Considerable opportunity costs are incurred through crop and livestock guarding. When seeking compensation for damage, bureaucratic inadequacies result in added transaction costs. Even though communities may be tolerant of wildlife, the hidden impacts of conflict jeopardize various components of global wellbeing. The paper concludes by identifying gaps in knowledge and outlining areas for future research that better address hidden dimensions of human–wildlife conflict.

Polusi udara merupakan salah satu masalah lingkungan yang sering mendapatkan perhatian dunia. Berbicara tentang polusi udara pastilah sangat erat kaitannya dengan Negara India yang posisinya sebagai negara dengan tingkat polusi terparah di dunia. India, sebagai salah satu negara yang memiliki angka persentase pertumbuhan ekonomi yang tinggi dan negara kontributor emisi polusi tertinggi ke-3 di dunia perlu mempertimbangkan kebijakan ramah lingkungan. Hal ini penting, karena penelitian-penelitian sebelumnya menyatakan bahwa polusi udara berasosiasi dengan morbiditas dan mortalitas masyarakat. Studi ini mengestimasi dampak rerata eksposur polusi udara distrik terhadap pengeluaran pelayanan kesehatan rumah tangga di India. Menggabungkan beberapa data yang meliputi India Human Development Survey (IHDS) gelombang ke-2 serta nilai eksposur polusi NO2 dan SO2 distrik dari India Air Quality (IAQ), penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa secara statistik peningkatan eksposur polusi udara sebesar 1% signifikan meningkatkan 0,384% hingga 0,495% pengeluaran pelayanan kesehatan rumah tangga.

Despite a city filled with numerous shopping malls, there are surprisingly few shopping malls in Singapore which have followed environmentally friendly building practices. City Square Mall is marketed by its developer as Singapore's first " Eco-Mall ". Using a combination of information from the developer, tenants and customer attitudes, this paper aims to investigate how City Square Mall has effectively and successfully portrayed itself as an " Eco-mall " from the marketing and operational perspective. Empirical investigations reveal mixed results where the mall's identity as an " Eco-Mall " is largely perpetuated by the developer, anchor and niche tenants; yet being subverted by the silent majority of small tenants as well as the general public due to inadequate resources and education; resulting in much uncertainty over the mall's long term sustainability and identity as an " Eco-mall " .

The entry begins with a definition of geography and with a description of what the discipline shares with the other social sciences and what makes it distinctive among them. Terminological clarifications are provided with regard to the relationship between human geography and physical geography, and between human geography and urban geography. After a brief history and overview of human geography’s engagement with social theory, the entry offers a discussion of the politicization of contemporary human geography and of how this phenomenon is reflected in theory building and concept development.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0464

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

This work aim is to perform modelling and spatial analysis of the marine geological data using combination of the QGIS and Python programming. Selecting proper cartographic software is important part of the geospatial research. QGIS provides organizing data in a GIS project for mapping and spatial visualization through vector and raster layers stored in GIS. Study area is Mariana Trench, west Pacific Ocean. A series of cross-section profiles were digitized in QGIS and used for further data processing in Python. Mariana Trench has complex geomorphic structure and unevenness in profiles stretching south-westwards. The geomorphology is subjected to various phenomena that affect its shape. These include bathymetry, geodesy, gravimetry, tectonics plates and geological settings, studied in this paper. To understand the structure of the trench, a data modelling using bathymetric analysis was performed by combination of QGIS mapping and statistical analysis in Python's library Seaborn. Statistical data modelling aimed at the analysis of the spatial variation of the geomorphology of the trench using following methods: multiple facet grids, area charts for the data frames, regression analysis, letter-value plots, hexagonal and Kernel density estimation. The results of the geospatial data analysis show spatial unevenness of the geomorphic structure, gravimetric, geodetic and bathymetric settings of the Mariana Trench. The study demonstrated effectiveness of Python application in geographic data analysis with Python codes provided for repeatability.

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

This collection of essays and notes attempts to tread the invisible borders between mythos, the neoliberal-Christian-nationalist 'world view' and socio-political trends in the rise of Trump, the Red Hats and the Evangelicals to political dominance in the United States.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.