scholarly journals Mobile Worlds: Choice at the Intersection of Demographic and Environmental Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Barnett ◽  
W. Neil Adger
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Size Composition ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Sustainable Solutions ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Integrate Analysis ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
New Research

Research on environmental change has often focused on changes in population as a significant driver of unsustainability and environmental degradation. Demographic pessimism and limited engagement with demographic realities underpin many arguments concerning limits to growth, environmental refugees, and environment-related conflicts. Re-engagement between demographic and environmental sciences has led to greater understanding of the interactions between the size, composition, and distribution of populations and exposure to environmental risks and contributions to environmental burdens. We review the results of this renewed and far more nuanced research frontier, focusing in particular on the way demographic trends affect exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation to environmental change. New research has explained how migration systems interact with environmental challenges in individual decisions and in globally aggregate flows. Here we integrate analysis on demographic and environmental risks that often share a root cause in limited social freedoms and opportunities. We argue for a capabilities approach to promoting sustainable solutions for a more mobile world.

Can the planet be saved in Time? On the temporalities of socionature, the clock and the limits debate

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 904-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijay Kolinjivadi ◽  
Diana Vela Almeida ◽  
Jonathan Martineau
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
System Change ◽  
Rice Production ◽  
Clock Time ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Economic Productivity ◽  
Linear Representations ◽  
Political Act

The tendency of capitalist modernity to impose predictable, homogenous and linear representations of time for economic productivity has made it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to effectively respond to catastrophic environmental changes that are emergent, sudden, non-linear and unpredictable. A confusion between the actions and consequences of environmental change, and socialized representations of time and space within which humans must respond to such changes, not only paralyses possible solutions within fixed imaginaries but is also out of synch with the perpetual coming-into-being of socionature entanglements. The multiple temporalities coordinating interactions of humans and non-human natures are instead fetishized and made governable, commensurable and reproducible through the mechanistic intervals of the clock. We argue that the desire for transformative system change can be found in temporal desynchronizations to clock Time (capital T) and that political strategies to responding to socio-ecological crises reside in alter-temporalities (lower t time) of emergent socionature relations. Through an example of the desynchronized temporalities of tinawon rice production, we show how alter-temporalities emerge to reclaim cultural and food sovereignty from the otherwise flattening effects of modernity. We highlight the futuring potentials of such temporalities and their implication within ongoing debates between ecomodernists and those advocating limits to growth. Given that continuing to act in the Time of capital evidently fails to bring about system change and even aids in perpetuating our crises, we claim that responding in time (lower t) is itself a political act in raising the possibility for more convivial and life-affirming futures.

Performance Assessment of Plant-Produced Warm Recycled Mixtures for Open-Graded Wearing Courses

2017 ◽  
Vol 2633 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Frigio ◽  
Arianna Stimilli ◽  
Amedeo Virgili ◽  
Francesco Canestrari
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Plant Production ◽  
Partial Substitution ◽  
Chemical Additives ◽  
Adhesion Properties ◽  
Sustainable Solutions ◽  
Dry Conditions ◽  
Indirect Tensile ◽  
Modified Binder ◽  
New Research

Sustainable solutions, such as the combination of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) as a partial substitution of virgin materials and warm-mix asphalt (WMA) additives to decrease production temperatures, represent the new research frontier in the asphalt industry. Specific investigations must evaluate the consequences of recycled WMA performance, especially in the case of open-graded (OG) mixtures, given that lower production temperatures can affect the adhesion properties and durability of those materials. This paper describes an experimental effort that involved OG mixtures produced in plant at warm temperatures (130°C) with two WMA chemical additives characterized by different compositions. In addition, an equivalent mixture (used as a control for comparison purposes) was produced at standard temperatures. Each material was prepared with a polymer-modified binder and 15% RAP. The main objective of the study was to characterize volumetric and mechanical properties of the investigated mixtures with particular attention paid to compactability aptitude and durability. To this end, gyratory-compacted specimens were subjected to several laboratory tests after dry and wet conditioning (i.e., indirect tensile strength, Cantabro test, semicircular bending, and repeated indirect tensile loading). Moreover, plant production of the investigated mixtures made it possible to evaluate the feasibility of large-scale processes. The WMA mixtures showed significant water susceptibility, although they guaranteed good compactability and satisfied mechanical acceptance requirements and international recommendations for raveling resistance in dry conditions. The chemical composition of the WMA additives was found essential to reduce the water damage. Surfactants and adhesion enhancers included within one of the investigated WMA additives ensured better water resistance than the other additive classified as a viscous regulator.

scholarly journals The costs and benefits of flexibility as an expression of behavioural plasticity: a primate perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 368 (1618) ◽  
pp. 20120339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carel P. van Schaik
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Geographical Variation ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Behavioural Plasticity ◽  
High Plasticity ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Cognitive Benefits ◽  
Local Genotypes ◽  
Individual Decisions

Traditional neo-Darwinism ascribes geographical variation in morphology or in behaviour to varying selection on local genotypes. However, mobile and long-lived organisms cannot achieve local adaptation this way, leading to a renewed interest in plasticity. I examined geographical variation in orang-utan subsistence and social behaviour, and found this to be largely owing to behavioural plasticity, here called flexibility, both in the form of flexible individual decisions and of socially transmitted (cultural) innovations. Although comparison with other species is difficult, the extent of such flexibility is almost certainly limited by brain size. It is shown that brains can only increase relative to body size where the cognitive benefits they produce are reliably translated into improved survival rate. This means that organisms that are very small, face many predators, live in highly seasonal environments, or lack opportunities for social learning cannot evolve greater flexibility, and must achieve local adaptation through selection on specific genotypes. On the other hand, as body and brain size increase, local adaptation is increasingly achieved through selection on plasticity. The species involved are also generally those that most need it, being more mobile and longer-lived. Although high plasticity buffers against environmental change, the most flexible organisms face a clear limit because they respond slowly to selection. Thus, paradoxically, the largest-brained animals may actually be vulnerable to the more drastic forms of environmental change, such as those induced by human actions.

Buddhism and Sexuality

Buddhism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Langenberg
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Sexual Expression ◽  
Buddhist Ethics ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Early Buddhism ◽  
High Regard ◽  
New Research ◽  
Tantra Yoga ◽  
Historical Detail

Because of its high regard for celibate monasticism and incisive critique of desire as a root cause of suffering, Buddhism is widely assumed to be a sex-negative religion. In fact, as a growing body of scholarship has demonstrated, the sexual landscape of Buddhist traditions across time and place is varied, complex, and at times transgressive. The beginnings of Buddhism and sexuality as a research subfield can arguably be traced to the 1998 publication of Bernard Faure’s The Red Thread, a work that attempts to identity major themes and lines of tension in Buddhists’ imaginative encounters with, efforts to discipline, and philosophical understandings of human sexuality. Faure’s monograph was, however, preceded by L. P. N. Perera study of sexuality in ancient Buddhist India (Sexuality in Ancient India); see Perera 1993, cited under Seminal Monographs), Miranda Shaw’s monograph on women and Tantra (Passionate Enlightenment); see Shaw 1994, cited under Sexuality in Indo-Tibetan Tantra), and Liz Wilson’s book on disgust and the female body in early Buddhism (Charming Cadavers); see Wilson 1996, cited under Seminal Monographs). Since Faure, specialists in various Asian traditions have focused on sexuality with ever increasing levels of historical detail and theoretical sophistication. Examples include Sarah Jacoby’s work, Love and Liberation (Jacoby 2014, cited under Seminal Monographs), Richard Jaffe’s monograph, Neither Monk nor Layman (Jaffe 2001, cited under Non-celibate Monasticisms), John Power’s 2009 book A Bull of a Man (Powers 2009, cited under Seminal Monographs), and José Ignacio Cabezón’s Sexuality and Classical South Asian Buddhism (Cabezón 2017, cited under Seminal Monographs). In the meantime, scholars of tantra, yoga, and consort traditions such as Holly Gayley, David Gray, Janet Gyatso, and Christian Wedemeyer have moved past the orientalist judgements of early Indology and the phenomenology of Mircea Eliade in their treatments of Tantric sexuality; advances in Vinaya studies by Shayne Clarke, Alice Collett, Anālayo, and others have deepened understanding of early monastic negotiations with Indian sexual concepts and social mores; and queer and LGBT studies by Richard Corless and Hsiao-lan Hu have generated new research angles. The subfield of Buddhist ethics has also produced a small literature on Buddhist sexual ethics to complement its already substantial work on related topics like human rights and abortion. Additionally, specialists in Buddhist modernisms such as Ann Gleig and Stephanie Kaza have enriched the literature on Buddhism and sexuality by addressing issues such as sexual expression, sexual identity, and sexual abuse in contemporary Buddhist communities in the West.

The Individual Level: Selection Effects

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-102
Author(s):  
Diane C. Bates
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Sudden Onset ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Slow Onset ◽  
Governance Arrangements

This chapter contributes to the explanation to how environmental migrants are ‘selected’ at the individual and small group level. It argues that individual decisions to migrate depend on the type of environmental change. The author distinguishes between sudden onset environmental problems (e.g. natural disasters) and slow onset environmental problems (e.g. climate change). Sudden onsets make push factors more important- They give migrants less power over their decision to migrate, and therefore include more vulnerable population groups. On the contrary, slow onset events create opportunities for individual agency. Governance can play an important role as it can influence migration and environmental change, especially on the local and state level. The author argues that democratic governance arrangements confer agency to individuals and non-democratic governance delimits it. Moreover, the management of sudden onsets in the short run can be more effective in non-democratic governance, while slow onset environmental changes call for democratic governance arrangements.

Human Needs and Freedom: Three Contrasting Perceptions and Perspectives

1979 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramashray Roy
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Need Satisfaction ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Human Predicament ◽  
Human Need

Discussions on human needs assume, even when not explicitly stated, certain ontological, historical and anthropological perspectives, and they often represent a mix of normative and empirical elements. Moreover, such discussions often ignore or sidetrack the linkages of need-satisfaction with larger issues such as freedom, social justice and ecological balance. These linkages point to the necessity of establishing harmony between man, society and nature. This paper deals with how these linkages have been perceived in three streams of thinking, Liberalism, Marxism and Gandhism. Believing in the idea of linear progress, the Liberals (excepting J. S. Mill) and Marx did not recognize that unrestrained proliferation of needs was subject to limits to growth, depletion of natural resources and degradation of natural environment. Marx believed that the process of need-satisfaction mediating between Man as subject and Nature as object releases the dormant, creative capacities of human beings. Marx therefore stood for large-scale industrial production as necessary for human need-satisfaction. He saw dehumanization and alienation as the consequence, not of industrialization, but of a disjunction between the forces of production and the relations of production, which is the characteristic of capitalism and which will disappear in socialism. Neither the liberals nor Marx saw that industrialization itself entails centralization, degradation of human values and spoliation of nature. Gandhi, on the other hand, saw in need proliferation the root cause of human predicament and in industrialization its exacerbation. He did not accept the proposition that by changing social forms, man will shed his covetousness, self-aggrandizing tendency, etc. He therefore called for self-restraint and limitation of wants, which would obviate the necessity of large-scale industrialization. He clearly saw that man himself has created the civilizational predicament through his own activities, and therefore emphasized that the reform of the system must begin with the reform of man through non-attachment, non-violence and quest for truth.

The Implications for Governance of Migration Linked to Environmental Change: Key Findings and New Research Directions

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1078-1082 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Geddes ◽  
W Neil Adger ◽  
Nigel W Arnell ◽  
Richard Black ◽  
David S G Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
The Third ◽  
New Research

With this paper we draw conclusions from the contributions to this theme issue that all explored the links between environmental change, migration, and governance. We have three objectives. The first is to identify key themes emerging from each of the papers and to consider their significance. The second is to specify overarching implications of the work gathered in this theme issue. The third is to identify areas where future research would be beneficial in further enhancing understanding of the links between environmental change, migration, and governance in the context of adaptation.

Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas and the Icelandic Saga Map

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 381-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Lethbridge ◽  
Steven Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Research Initiative ◽  
Literature History ◽  
New Research ◽  
Diverse Data ◽  
Digital Research ◽  
Research Tools

This essay discusses strategic efforts to develop new digital research tools and approaches as key elements of an inter-disciplinary research initiative in progress, Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM), which aims to study aspects of Icelandic literature, history, archaeology, environment, and geography in order to better understand societal responses to environmental change over the longue durée. The essay showcases a particular digital humanities project, Icelandic Saga Map (ISM), which not only provides an extremely useful tool for helping achieve many of the identified aims and methodological needs of an integrated environmental humanities initiative such as IEM but also is a valuable example of how innovative digital humanities tools can foster new research trajectories and open up new horizons for interdisciplinary engagement and synthesis of knowledge and diverse data.

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