DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin
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Mobile measurement techniques for local and micro-scale studies in urban and topo-climatology
Get PDFTechnical development during the last two decades has brought new potential and new applications for mobile measurements. In this paper, we present six case studies where mobile measurement devices were used to acquire data for meteorological and climatological research. Three case studies deal with ground-based mobile measurements – on buses for urban climate measurements and on a vessel on a lake – and three with airborne platforms – on a cable car and on an unmanned aerial vehicle for vertical soundings and on a tethered balloon sonde for cloud physics. For each study, we describe the measurement set-up and address the potential and drawbacks of these applications. At the end, we discuss general aspects related to mobile observations especially concerning the time and space dimension of measurements
Only a pawn in their games? environmental (?) migration in Kiribati – past, present and future
Get PDFThe Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICT) are exposed to the impacts of climate change. In extreme cases entire states may disappear. Kiribati is one of these countries. Within its own territory there are no places to where people could be safely resettled when their home islands become unsuitable for human habitation. Large-scale resettlement is nothing new to the people of Kiribati. In colonial times people from various islands were resettled. The Phoenix Island Settlement Scheme (PISS) is one of these efforts to allegedly bring people to safety. Making use of primary sources that have become available only recently the paper raises the question if there is anything to learn from PISS for present times, or if PISS has historical value only, as the United Kingdom’s last colonial expansion scheme. The paper asks about conflicting intentions of colonial authorities and assesses if and possibly why strategic political considerations resulted in a situation where humanitarian motivations retreated into the background leading to a sub-optimal preparation of the scheme, which then finally led to its failure. The paper comes to the conclusion that behind reportedly noble purposes there is a layer of colonial interests which lets settlers appear as objects in a larger colonial game
Socio-spatialities of vulnerability: towards a polymorphic perspective in vulnerability research
Get PDF“The space of vulnerability” – the title of the influential paper by Michael Watts and Hans-Georg Bohle from 1993 highlights the importance of spatiality for vulnerability research. As geographers have fundamentally shaped the concept of vulnerability, the issue of spatiality has been crucial for vulnerability from the outset. However, what notion of space have scholars adopted in their vulnerability analysis? The aim of the paper is to assess the ways in which space has been conceptualised in vulnerability research. We conduct this assessment behind the background of the conceptual development of space in human geography. Of particular interest is the question of how the successive socio-spatial turns identified by Jessop et al. (2008), which evolved around the categories of place, scale, network and territory, are reflected in publications on vulnerability. The assessment is based on a review of literature. We found that all four key socio-spatial categories have been taken up by scholars for vulnerability analysis. Following Jessop et al. we argue that a critical geography of vulnerability should acknowledge the polymorphy of socio-spatialities and assess the interplay of place, network, scale, and territory in the (re)production of vulnerability. We exemplify the argument with case studies from Bangladesh and Thailand and conclude that the full repertoire of spatial and social theories are needed in order to fully understand the social and spatial (re)production of vulnerability
The paradox of formalization and informalization in South-North value chains
Get PDFThe internationalization of value chains and the broad proliferation of different public and private standards have led to a formalization and standardization of value chains, production systems and their constitutional actors and linkages in the Global South. Recent studies on the integration of Southern production systems in international value chains, however, show that this is only partly the case. These studies identify limits and insufficiencies of formal and standardized coordination and control systems as well as a neglect of regional peculiarities, individual aims and capabilities of the embedded stakeholders in the South by the coordinating lead firms from the North. As a result, informal actors and arrangements continue to be, and even continue to develop as, important parts of Southern production systems. With reference to the concept of informality, principal-agent theory and convention theory, this study aims to contribute to the recent conceptual debate on global value chains and global production networks in outlining the importance of informal arrangements and non-industrial conventions as well as the limits to upgrading in South-North relationships. The empirical base are case studies on export-oriented primary production systems in Kenya (horticulture), Bangladesh (shrimps) and India/Bangladesh (leather)
Coolie chains: global commodities, colonialism and the question of labour
Get PDFThe analysis of global commodity chains calls for a close attention to the question of labour – in colonial times as well as in the present. Since the economy of the French domains in Indochina and New Caledonia relied on labour-intensive resource extraction (rubber, minerals), the colonial administration and French enterprises envisaged a system of coolie labour that implied the transfer of thousands of Vietnamese labourers from densely populated Tonkin to the newly established plantations and mines. The emergence of global commodity chains linked to European industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century thus entailed considerable social transformations in the colonies as a result of changing labour regimes
Whose knowledge? Reflecting on the plurality of knowledge production in contentious politics
Get PDFThe links between social protest and scientific research are complex and manifold. This article focuses on some of these connections, adopting a perspective on knowledge in which processes of knowledge production are located in all parts of society rather than being monopolised by academia. Drawing on the empirical example of the Port Vell conflict – a conflict about the the inner-city harbour tramsformation in Barcelona – moments of knowledge production and reproduction are examined. The article shows that social sciences develop and apply general concepts and theories which are adopted by activists. At the same time, protest movements contribute a specific form of alternative knowledge, e.g. about processes of exclusion following current urban transformation while also including situated and embodied consequences of these processes. This perspective on knowledge in various types challenges traditional forms of research. This article forms tentative ideas about alternative roles for researchers
Four decades of World Natural Heritage – how changing protected area values influence the UNESCO label
Get PDFSince the launch of the World Heritage Convention in 1972, World Heritage sites have become increasingly popular. To date, more than 1000 sites have received World Heritage status, among them 228 natural and mixed sites. Yet too, in the past four decades, protected area paradigms have evolved from rather strict and exclusionary to more integrative approaches. Nevertheless, relatively little is known on how such developments influence World Natural Heritage (WNH) sites. This paper presents the results of a global survey of 128 of 211 WNH sites listed in 2011 and analyses the results by taking the year of inscription as a reference. The article shows that the understanding of WNH status has undergone great changes: from being perceived as an internationally valued instrument to foster conservation, WNH status has now rather become a label of great promotional importance. This can, e.g., be shown by a decreasing influence of WNH status on the status of protection of a site. Conversely, the influence of WNH status on visitor numbers has increased with time. Furthermore, evidence suggests that more complex effects of WNH status attribution, such as a site’s influence on sustainable development, take time to develop and are thus greater for sites that have been inscribed in the list at an earlier date. Given these developments, it is necessary to rethink whether the World Heritage approach in its current form is still timely, and how the development potential of World Natural Heritage sites can be tapped while ensuring their conservation
A new approach to inventorying bodies of water, from local to global scale
Get PDFHaving reliable estimates of the number of water bodies on different geographical scales is of great importance to better understand biogeochemical cycles and to tackle the social issues related to the economic and cultural use of water bodies. However, limnological research suffers from a lack of reliable inventories; the available scientific references are predominately based on water bodies of natural origin, large in size and preferentially located in previously glaciated areas. Artificial, small and randomly distributed water bodies, especially ponds, are usually not inventoried. Following Wetzel’s theory (1990), some authors included them in global inventories by using remote sensing or mathematical extrapolation, but fieldwork on the ground has been done on a very limited amount of territory. These studies have resulted in an explosive increase in the estimated number of water bodies, going from 8.44 million lakes (Meybeck 1995) to 3.5 billion water bodies (Downing 2010). These numbers raise several questions, especially about the methodology used for counting small-sized water bodies and the methodological treatment of spatial variables. In this study, we use inventories of water bodies for Sweden, Finland, Estonia and France to show incoherencies generated by the “global to local” approach. We demonstrate that one universal relationship does not suffice for generating the regional or global inventories of water bodies because local conditions vary greatly from one region to another and cannot be offset adequately by each other. The current paradigm for global estimates of water bodies in limnology, which is based on one representative model applied to different territories, does not produce sufficiently exact global inventories. The step-wise progression from the local to the global scale requires the development of many regional equations based on fieldwork; a specific equation that adequately reflects the actual relationship between distribution and abundance of water bodies in a given area must be produced for each geographical region
Politics, citizenship and disobedience in the city of crisis: a critical analysis of contemporary housing struggles in Madrid
Get PDFThe city region of Madrid can be considered as an exponent of the striking contradictions associated with the contemporary market-oriented production of housing. Given the increasing economic constraints of many middle- and working-class households because of the crisis, property values have been declining for practically seven years now, and tens of thousands of households have been evicted from their homes because they were unable to pay back their mortgages. Simultaneously, since the outbreak of the indignados movement in May 2011, a contestation of the structural forces ruling the real estate sector has been taking place, and questions about the right of housing became a prominent part of the public debate in an increasingly politicised society. Alongside the background of literature about the post-political city and subversive citizenship, this article pursues three key aims: It analyses the consequences of the persistent crisis with a special focus on the residential housing market in Madrid. Secondly, an analysis of the new social and political dynamics that have been emerging during the crisis is developed. Finally, it pinpoints to the way how the emergence of new actors within contemporary housing struggles has been shifting the social and political discourses in this political arena. Such an approach brings together discussions from the field of Political Science with the new geographies of contested crisis urbanism that relate to debates about the social construction of the city, citizenship and disobedience
Small-scale opencast mining: an important research field for anthropogenic geomorphology
Get PDFArtisanal and small-scale mining (A&SM) is a growing economic sector in many third-world countries. This review focuses on anthropo-geomorphic factors and processes associated with small-scale opencast mining (SSOM), a form of A&SM in which near-surface ores are extracted by removing relatively thin covers of soil, bedrock or sediments. Being widespread and commonly conducted without proper planning and beyond the control of local authorities, this form of mining has potentially large impacts on landforms and landscape dynamics, often resulting in drastic consequences for the local environment and agriculture. SSOM should be regarded as a component of anthropogenic geomorphology because it involves the role of humans in creating landforms and modifying the operation of natural geomorphological processes, such as weathering, erosion, transport and deposition. By initiating new and modifying natural geomorphic processes, SSOM causes and/or accelerates geomorphic processes, resulting in various forms of land degradation. While the direct geomorphic impact of SSOM is in general easily discernible and leads to characteristic features, such as excavated pits and overburden spoil heaps, many secondary impacts are attributed to geomorphic processes triggered in the wake of the primary mining-induced landscape alterations. The magnitude of such secondary implications may well extend beyond the actual mining areas, but these effects have not been thoroughly addressed in the research so far. This review summarizes the known studies on the geomorphic impacts of SSOM operations and highlights common geomorphic processes and landforms associated with this type of anthropogenic activity, thus establishing a starting point for further in-depth research