Nothing wasted: engaging values and the imagination. How can working with feminist speculative fictions enthuse and engage students with social justice and sustainability in an age of austerity?

In the context of contemporary higher education, post white paper, ‘Students at the heart of the system’ [BIS, 2011. Students at the heart of the system [online]. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31384/11-944-higher-education-students-at-heart-of-system.pdf, (Accessed 5 Feb 2014), in which funding and commodification of learning and of students dominate university mission statements and agendas, it is crucial that we collaborate with our students to engage imagination and critical faculties with issues of value, and of social justice. Teaching and researching contemporary feminist speculative fictions and feminist critical practice offer a priceless opportunity to make a difference, to challenge the intellectual impoverishment that this new austerity brings with it. Learning and teaching research into threshold concepts and signature pedagogies combine here with feminist critical practice in a discussion of teaching two speculative fictions which engage criticality and values: Atwood [Atwood, 2003. Oryx and Crake. New York: Nan A. Talese.) and Hopkinson [Hopkinson, 1996. A habit of waste. Skin folk. New York: Aspect, 183–202] each of which critiques flawed societies using tropes of waste, and rejection of difference. Each suggests recovery from damage done in the name of austerity, and imagines futures for the critical imagination, social justice, self-worth and agency.     

Peasant,Patriot, Environmentalist: Sustainable Development Discourse in Havana

Private urban agricultural ventures, initially a spontaneous response to food shortages during the Special Period, soon became a state‐sponsored project, related to global notions of sustainability. This article explores the relationship between sustainability discourse and its local dimensions to reveal the role of sustainability in the reformulation of the Revolution. Urban gardeners engage with international discourses of sustainability and interact with the Cuban state's articulation of these discourses. While this process forces urban gardeners to adapt to the changing meanings of growing food, it also provides a different language through which gardeners define themselves, especially in the context of a changing relationship with the state.     

Peasant inclusion in global value chains: economic upgrading but social downgrading in labour processes?

This paper identifies impacts of value chain inclusion on labour from a social sustainability perspective. It focusses on the tasks, livelihoods and subjectivities of Amazonian flood plain peasants (ribeirinhos) who collect açaí for sale to an expanding market. The ‘logic’ of ribeirinho chain inclusion is explored using a combination of labour process and human security indicators. While household income benefits can be significant, gains may be threatened by monoculture trends and local power structures. Human security indicators suggest further caution. Whilst ribeirinhos remain very ‘flexible’ workers, chain engagement entails insecurities, as highlighted by their variable views of collectivity and contradictory positions with respect to sustainability. Sustainable chain prognoses require a deeper understanding of agents' means and of the preferred choices and voice of those working at the beginning of chains.     

Forced displacements in mining communities: politics in Chiadzwa diamond area,Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

The Chiadzwa diamonds attracted widespread attention due to human rights violations and illegal smuggling. When diamonds were discovered in 2006, thousands of artisanal miners descended on the diamond fields. In response, the government unleashed the army and police in brutal crackdowns to drive artisanal miners off the diamond fields. This militarisation of diamond fields and extraction was followed by forced displacement of the Chiadzwa people. This article examines the lived, everyday experiences of the displaced Chiadzwa people. Findings reveal that displacements dislocated the livelihoods and socialities of the people. Displacements also exacerbated people's vulnerability to livelihood shocks, insecurity, and poverty. In relocating people the government adopted a ‘top-down’ approach which triggered contestations and conflicts with the people who felt alienated from their ancestral land and excluded from diamond wealth. Consequently, sabotage, resistance and subversion were commonplace in the relocation process. These socio-political ‘tactics’ should be viewed as ‘weapons of the weak’.     

Poverty or riches: who benefits from the booming tourism industry in Botswana?

ABSTRACT

Botswana is a key tourism destination in Southern Africa mainly because of the rich wildlife resources and scenic beauty it sustains. Since the 1990s, the growth of wildlife-based tourism in Botswana has stimulated the development of a variety of tourism infrastructure and facilities. This paper asks if these qualify as sustainable tourism. Using both primary and secondary data sources, the study reveals that foreign-owned safari companies and investors dominate Botswana’s tourism industry, leading to the repatriation of tourism revenue, domination of management positions by expatriates and lower salaries for citizen workers. Tourism also fails to significantly contribute to rural development in Botswana due to its weak linkages with the domestic economy. Promoting more inclusive and beneficial policies and strategies would allow tourism to become more sustainable, making a significant contribution to local development, and allowing citizens to finally see real benefits from an industry which is sustained by their local environment.     

Democratic inclusiveness,climate policy outputs,and climate policy outcomes

In an ideal inclusive political system, all citizens are equally able to influence and challenge policies. We focus on how inclusiveness affects climate policies and outcomes. We argue that more inclusive systems should produce more policies in response to environmental threats and should have better outcomes. We test these hypotheses using panel and cross-sectional data relating to climate policy outputs and outcomes. The results suggest that inclusiveness is positively associated with policy outputs, but probably not with lower emissions of greenhouse gases. This pattern may relate to a lack of deliberation in systems, which are relatively inclusive in the narrower sense of pluralist democratic theory.     

Urban renewal as policy innovation in China: From growth stimulation to sustainable development

A major policy innovation in China, urban renewal creates an opportunity to promote sustainable inner‐city development and to foster economic growth in an environmentally and culturally sound way, which demands a close investigation of its context, internal and external dynamics, and policy features. Property‐led redevelopment dominated China's urban renewal since the early 1990s, as a result of the market reform and political decentralization. Recently, it has become important to meet the interests of local communities and the diverse stakeholders in the effort to preserve the urban history and cultural fabric of cities. Contextual factors in urban renewal policy and its innovation are investigated by analyzing a pioneering case in Guangzhou from a longitudinal study approach. The impact of the structural‐instrumental, cultural‐institutional, and environmental perspective on policy innovation with the change of contextual factors that transformed the development ideology and the managerial practice are identified to provide a new angle of studying policy innovation in the urban field.     

Private and public authority interactions and the functional quality of sustainability governance: Lessons from conservation and development initiatives in Tanzania

The changing shape of sustainability governance has been a key academic and policy concern in the past two decades, as part of a wider debate on the interactions between public and private authority in governing the economy, society, and the environment. In this article, we contribute to these debates by examining how these interactions operate locally and across jurisdictions in three conservation and development initiatives in Tanzania and what impact they have on the functional quality of sustainability governance. We find that clear division of responsibilities, coupled with material incentives for communities and equal and transparent distribution of benefits, are key positive contributors to functional quality. These factors underpin the complementary interactions (collaborative at the local level; institutional layering across jurisdictions) that are needed to successfully negotiate and implement the compromises needed to balance conservation and development goals. We also find that competitive dynamics are harmful to functional quality, especially those taking the form of local institutional duplication and of dominance by central government across jurisdictions. These tend to appear especially when sustainability initiatives involve multiple stakeholders with wide discrepancies in resources, interests, and power, which leads to compromises determined in a top-down manner.     

Agricultural land management and flood risks Interrelations

Recent extreme weather events have resulted in an ongoing discussion on the issues of land use and compensation payments within Austrian agriculture. Building on a functional evaluation system for agricultural lands, the national project ＂agriculture and flooding＂ has as its goal to classify the flood-protection contribution and flood sensitivity of agricultural lands. This, in turn, enables the recommendation of targeted measures for potentially improving flood situations, as well as an estimate of their implementation costs. In addition to the digital soil map, other fundamental sources used for the project are the digital flood risk map, IACS （integrated administration and control system of agricultural subsidies） land-use data and soil properties. The results will contribute to an understanding of the multifunctionality of agricultural lands and the setting of priorities on a regional scale regarding packaged flood-prevention and damage-minimization.