scholarly journals Points of convergence: Deploying the geographies of critical nexus-thinking

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110225
Author(s):  
Catherine Walker ◽  
Benjamin Coles
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Water Crisis ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Politics Of Scale ◽  
Resource Governance ◽  
Resource Sustainability ◽  
Resource Interactions ◽  
Scientific Scholarship

In recent years, the concept of ‘nexus’ has become a metaphor for resource interactions (particularly between food, water and energy), a policy apparatus to address resource sustainability and an object of academic analysis. Contending that the ways that nexus has been conceptualised and applied so far are invariably incomplete, this paper marks a concerted attempt to draw geographical scholarship into the conceptualisation of nexus-thinking to offer a more complete reading of resource geographies and their underlying interactions. We present critical nexus-thinking as a conceptual framework for tracing the geographies fashioned by resource nexuses, including the enrolment of human and non-human populations into such nexuses, and how the governance of both routine resource interactions and of ‘shocks’ can impact on such populations. To mobilise critical nexus-thinking as a conceptual framework, we draw out three points of convergence between nexus policy logics and critical geographic/scientific scholarship: socio-material-ecological interactions, politics of scale, and flows, blockages and dis/connectivity. We deploy critical nexus-thinking through analysis that extends the 2014/2015 ‘water crisis’ in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area to other sites, spaces and materials in order to critically evaluate the politics, materiality and spatiality of resource governance, and we use this example to point to how scholars might apply critical nexus-thinking analyses in other contexts.

“Is There Lead in My Water?”: Employing a Culturally Compelling Instructional Perspective to Teach for Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fenice B. Boyd ◽  
Monica L. Ridgeway ◽  
Tiffany M. Nyachae
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Real World ◽  
Instructional Practice ◽  
Instructional Delivery ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Content Area ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Water Crisis ◽  
Alternative Learning ◽  
Instructional Perspective

AbstractIn this paper we build a conceptual framework to argue for culturally compelling instruction that leads to teaching for change. Culturally compelling instruction calls for a substantive shift in how teachers view their students, communities, and what the perspective might mean for students’ future when they have access to alternative learning opportunities. The framework encourages teachers to take a stance and assume responsibility and ownership for their own decisions about the curriculum and instructional delivery. Most prominent is to acquire a depth of understanding of their students’ identities and needs. To represent our vision for culturally compelling instruction we use the lead poisoned water crisis in Flint, Michigan, USA as an illustrative case. Our work provides an example of how a real-world circumstance such as Flint’s may be integrated into content area subjects to frame a culturally compelling instructional practice.

Sustainability in Arid Grasslands: New Technology Applications for Management

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas K. Budge ◽  
Arian Pregenzer
Keyword(s):  
Human Impacts ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Resource Sustainability ◽  
Technology Applications ◽  
Species Abundances ◽  
Ecosystem Studies ◽  
Grazing Systems ◽  
Arid Grasslands

As biodiversity, ecosystem function, and ecosystem services become more closely linked with human well-being at all scales, the study of ecology takes on increasing social, economic, and political importance. However, when compared with other disciplines long linked with human well-being, such as medicine, chemistry, and physics, the technical tools and instruments of the ecologist have generally lagged behind those of the others. This disparity is beginning to be overcome with the increasing use of biotelemetric techniques, microtechnologies, satellite and airborne imagery, geographic information systems (GIS), and both regional and global data networks. We believe that the value and efficiency of ecosystem studies can advance significantly with more widespread use of existing technologies, and with the adaptation of technologies currently used in other disciplines to ecosystem studies. More importantly, the broader use of these technologies is critical for contributing to the preservation of biodiversity and the development of sustainable natural resource use by humans. The concept of human management of biodiversity and natural systems is a contentious one. However, we assert that as human population and resource consumption continue to increase, biodiversity and resource sustainability will only be preserved by increasing management efforts—if not of the biodiversity and resources themselves, then of human impacts on them. The technologies described in this chapter will help enable better management efforts. In this context, biodiversity refers not only to numbers of species (i.e., richness) in an arbitrarily defined area, but also to species abundances within that area. Sustainability refers to the maintenance of natural systems, biodiversity, and resources for the benefit of future generations. Arid-land grazing systems support human social systems and economies in regions all over the world, and can be expected to play increasingly critical roles as human populations increase. Further, grazing systems represent a nexus of natural and domesticated systems. In these systems, native biodiversity exists side by side with introduced species and populations, and in fact can benefit from them.

scholarly journals Credit of ecological interactions: A new conceptual framework to support conservation in a defaunated world

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 1892-1897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luísa Genes ◽  
Bruno Cid ◽  
Fernando A. S. Fernandez ◽  
Alexandra S. Pires
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Ecological Interactions

scholarly journals Pulp Friction in the La Plata Basin: The Importance of Natural Resource Governance for South American Regionalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 107049652199873
Author(s):  
Karen M. Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resource ◽  
Pulp Mill ◽  
South American ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Politics Of Scale ◽  
Resource Governance ◽  
Natural Resource Governance ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Regional Development Strategies ◽  
National Governments

Over the last two decades, natural resource governance has become an increasingly important element of South American regionalism as commodities became a central driver for regional development strategies. Yet, due to socio-environmental impacts and dissatisfaction with decision-making processes, it is also frequently contested. This article focuses on one particularly prominent contestation with transboundary and regional repercussions, the case of the pulp mill conflict which escalated between Argentina and Uruguay in the 2000s. Using the concepts of regionness and politics of scale, it examines in which ways the pulp mill conflict affected regional cohesion and seeks to understand why it evolved in this way. This shows that the way national governments address socio-environmental conflicts is an important additional obstacle to regional cohesion which has received little attention in studies of South American regionalism so far.

scholarly journals The logic of ecological patchiness

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Grünbaum
Keyword(s):  
Species Interactions ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mean Field ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Ecological Indices ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Patchy Environments ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Resource Interactions ◽  
Consumer Resource

Most ecological interactions occur in environments that are spatially and temporally heterogeneous—‘patchy’—across a wide range of scales. In contrast, most theoretical models of ecological interactions, especially large-scale models applied to societal issues such as climate change, resource management and human health, are based on ‘mean field’ approaches in which the underlying patchiness of interacting consumers and resources is intentionally averaged out. Mean field ecological models typically have the advantages of tractability, few parameters and clear interpretation; more technically complex spatially explicit models, which resolve ecological patchiness at some (or all relevant) scales, generally lack these advantages. This report presents a heuristic analysis that incorporates important elements of consumer–resource patchiness with minimal technical complexity. The analysis uses scaling arguments to establish conditions under which key mechanisms—movement, reproduction and consumption—strongly affect consumer–resource interactions in patchy environments. By very general arguments, the relative magnitudes of these three mechanisms are quantified by three non-dimensional ecological indices: the Frost, Strathmann and Lessard numbers. Qualitative analysis based on these ecological indices provides a basis for conjectures concerning the expected characteristics of organisms, species interactions and ecosystems in patchy environments.

scholarly journals Implication of Traditional Ecological Knowledge on Forest Resource Management

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Dhruba Laudari
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Traditional Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Ecological Anthropology ◽  
Contact And Impact ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

The primary approaches within contemporary ecological anthropology are cultural ecology, historical ecology, political ecology and spiritual ecology. The cumulative approach developed on by fusing these approaches is applied dimension of ecological anthropology known as environmental anthropology. Human populations have ongoing contact and impact upon the land, climate, plant and animal species in their vicinities and these elements of their environment have reciprocal impacts on humans. The theme of traditional ecological knowledge is important for the consideration of a broad range of question related to nature-environment relations. Different groups of people in various parts of the world perceive and interact with nature differently, and have different traditions of environmental knowledge. Their perceptions and knowledge are partly shaped by their values, worldview and environmental ethics. In the exploration of environmental ethics and religion toward an ecologically sustainable society, indigenous peoples and traditional ecological knowledge have attracted considerable attention from both scholars and popular movements. The lesson from this ield study, under the theoretical outline of cultural and human ecology includes the importance of cultural conservation of forest resources, adaptive management, uses of traditional ecological knowledge and development of religious/spiritual conservation ethic. This may contribute to the development of an interdisciplinary conservation science with a more sophisticated understanding of social-ecological interactions. The indings thus could be used for formulating better policies for sustainable management of forest/natural resources. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hjsa.v4i0.4669 Himalayan Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol.IV (2010) 77-90

Geographien der Gewalt

2007 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedikt Korf ◽  
Michelle Engeler
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Politics Of Scale ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
New Wars ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Geographies of violence. In his Hettner-lecture, Michael Watts asserted that violence might be understood as ‘struggle over geography’. Surprisingly, geography is largely missing in the contemporary debates on the incidence of civil wars, the dynamics of war economies and “new” wars. These debates have produced universalistic, nomothetical statements about the causes and dynamics of contemporary war economies and have focused on analyzing the economic incentives of combatants and fighters, thereby neglecting the spatial contextualities and institutional ambiguities of war economies. In this paper, we suggest to bring geography back in focus and develop a conceptual framework that studies geographies of violence using three analytical concepts: governable spaces, spaces of agency and subjectivities. These categories are linked with the politics of scale. We illustrate this framework with examples from the Sri Lankan and Sierra Leonean civil wars. Our studies suggest that geographies of violence produce complex entanglements of survival and war economies that are manifested in the spatio-temporal dynamics of different actors’ vulnerabilities and agencies.

scholarly journals Water Scarcity in Brazil: A Case Study

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Slater
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Water Scarcity ◽  
Water Crisis ◽  
The City

Between 2012 and 2015, Brazil experienced one of the worst droughts in its history. A combination of natural and human-made causes—including climate change, environmental degradation, poor urban planning, a lack of maintenance of existing infrastructure, corruption, and the mismanagement of water resources—contributed to a growing water crisis. This article will focus on the effects of both the drought and the subsequent water crisis on the vast metropolitan area of the city of São Paulo, illustrating how both natural and human factors combined to create a crisis in Brazil’s largest city.

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