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Blue-space availability, environmental quality and amenity use across contrasting socioeconomic contexts
Get PDFOver 60% of the global population are expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Urban blue spaces are critical for biodiversity, provide a range of ecosystem services, and can promote human health and wellbeing. Despite this, access to blue space is often unequally distributed across socioeconomic gradients, and the availability of quality blue space could extend to environmental justice issues. Three stages of analysis were carried out in Mexico City, Mexico and Bristol, UK to (i) assess associations between blue space and socioeconomic metrics at a regional scale, (ii) apply a rapid assessment tool to assess amenity, access and environmental quality, (iii) consider local quality across socioeconomic gradients at a regional scale. Still water availability was indicative of higher socioeconomic status, but contrasting city evolutions underpinned differences. Locally, there were environmental gradients from more complex to disturbed habitats that influenced potential wellbeing and amenity benefits. In combination, this may exacerbate inequalities and risk increasing ecosystem disservices. If cities are to be socially, and environmentally resilient to higher levels of disturbance in the future, healthy ecosystems will be key. However, further research is needed to address various dimensions of injustice in urban areas beyond blue space distribution
The Rohingya crisis: a critical analysis of the United Nations Security Council and international human rights law
Get PDFThis essay reviews the human rights violations against the Rohingya people in
2017 and assesses the effectiveness of accountability under the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC). It is concluded that under the principles of ethics and
integrity in international law and human rights law, there should have been
investigations into the crimes committed against Rohingya Muslims in
accordance with the judgement given by the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber. The
essay underlines the fundamental principles of ethics and integrity in
international law and human rights law. The principles of ethics and integrity
in international law should have allowed the UNSC to act in accordance with
the international doctrine of human rights. It is concluded that the UNSC's
failure to carry out its obligations was solely due to Russia's political ties with
Myanmar, which also resulted in Russia using its veto power and obstructing
the UNSC's statement on the situation. The banal approach to the implementation
and enforcement of international law and human rights has paralysed the
principle of ethics and integrity. In this light, the essay affirms there is a need to
create a better framework to resolve issues such as the Rohingya genocide and
the Russian invasion of Ukraine and any complications that may arise in the
future. It is suggested that in addition to the United Nations Assembly and the
UNSC, there is a need to create a conflict management body within these two
settings
Managerialism and academic professional autonomy - power and resistance in the UK universities: the case of lecture capture policies before and during Covid-related shift to online learning
No full textNew Public Management (NPM) and marketisation have dramatically changed UK higher education (HE). Academic roles have been re-shaped (MacFarlane, 2012), workloads increased (Jacobs, 2004; Tight, 2010; Zucas & Malcolm, 2017) performance management has increased surveillance, with diminished professional autonomy, academic freedom and professional discretion. Institutional power has shifted from academics to managers (Deem & Brehony, 2005). New technologies contribute to this. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, lecture capture (LC) technologies although enabled teaching to go on during lockdowns, have also increased the rift between managerial and professional perspectives often at the expense of academics’ job satisfaction and job security. The aim of this research project was to explore how managerial and professional powers are negotiated during lecture capture policy development and implementation as well as the shift to online teaching. How these negotiation dynamics and wider institutional, social and economic inform and shape academic responses to changes (through compliance, adaptation or resistance), and how individual and collective responses mediate academic agency. This report focuses on reporting negotiation patterns across institutions and processes of academic resistance
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Maps and memory, rights and relationships: articulations of global modernity and local dwelling in delineating land for communal-area conservancies in north-west Namibia
No full textMapping new administrative domains for integrating conservation and development,
and defining rights in terms of both new policy and the citizenry governed thereby, have been
central to postcolonial neoliberal environmental governance programmes known as Community
Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM). Examples now abound of the complex,
ambiguous and sometimes contested outcomes of CBNRM initiatives and processes. In this
paper I draw on historical, oral history and ethnographic material for north-west Namibia,
particularly in relation to indigenous Khoekhoegowab-speaking Damara / ≠Nūkhoen and
||Ubun peoples, to explore two issues. First, I highlight the significance of historical colonial and
apartheid contexts generating mapped reorganisations of land and human populations for
memories of access and use that exceed these reorganisations. Second, I foreground a nexus of
conceptual, constitutive and affective relationships with lands now bounded as CBNRM
administrative units or ‘conservancies’ that have tended to be disrupted through both past events
and as economising neoliberal governance approaches have taken hold in this context.
Acknowledging disjunctions in conceptions and experiences of people-land relationships may
assist with understanding who and what is amplified or diminished in contemporary globalising
trajectories in neoliberal environmental governance. In particular, oral histories recording
individual experiences in-depth, especially those of elderly people prompted by return to
remembered places of past dwelling, can historicise and deepen recognition of complex cultural
landscapes that today carry high conservation value
Mental well-being and quality of working life in UK social workers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a propensity score matching study
Get PDFDuring the COVID-19 pandemic interest into its potential impact on mental well-being has intensified. Within the social care sector, the pandemic has increased job demands and prolonged stress taking a disproportionate toll on the workforce, particularly social workers. This article compares the mental well-being and quality of working life of social workers in the United Kingdom (UK) before and during the pandemic. Data were collected in 2018 (N = 1,195) and 2020 (N = 1,024) using two cross-sectional surveys. To account for the differences between the datasets, propensity score matching was employed prior to effect estimation, utilising demographic and work-related variables common to both datasets. The differences between the two time-points were estimated using multiple regressions. Both mental well-being and quality of working life were significantly higher during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 compared to 2018. This suggests that during the highpoint of the pandemic in the UK, increased support, and changes to working practices, such as reprioritisation of work and other initiatives, may be responsible for increased mental well-being and quality of working life. While acknowledging the known pressures on UK social workers during the COVID-19 pandemic this evidence suggests a mixed picture of the pandemic with lessons for managers and employers
Walking-with, re-membering the Holocaust: 'Forced Walks: Honouring Esther', a case study of somatic and digital creative practice
Get PDFThe paper discusses a walking and multi-media arts project seeking to renew agency in Holocaust testimony and generate contemporary resonances. Forced Walks is a programme of speculative, socially engaged experiments, initiated by artists Richard White and Lorna Brunstein. Honouring Esther (2015–2017), the first Forced Walks project, walked the route of a Nazi Death March digitally transposed to Somerset (UK), subsequently retracing it in Lower Saxony, Germany. The project engaged walkers in co-creating an immanent reflective space materialized in mark-making, social media and installation. An emergent hybrid somatic/digital process, ‘making the return’ in a specific Holocaust context, is presented
The scenic route to academic attainment via emotional wellbeing outdoors
No full textThis chapter presents a summary of a longitudinal mixed methods study tracking 11 children (aged 5–7 on entry), defined as disadvantaged in multiple ways. They attended weekly Forest School and outdoor learning sessions over three years. The study investigates the project’s impact on the children in terms of their academic attainment, wellbeing and connection to nature. The children’s attendance and academic attainment improved in comparison to their non-participating peers at school. The findings emphasise the importance of how social free play outdoors and relationships with a particular place can establish emotional resilience and self-regulation
Sonic dancer
No full textPart of an innovative creative technology project which aims to develop a human-centric remote collaboration experience by co-creating a low-cost device and method to aid dance professionals with mixed abilities to maintain creative and teaching dance practices while not being physically able to work as a group. It also allows for sensing people in a shared virtual space. In addition to professional support, it aspires to create connectedness between isolated people enhancing wellbeing and provides an inclusive approach for visually impaired users