Integration of Instruments for the Protection of Natural Protected Areas in Urban and Biodiversity Strategies and in Urban Planning Regulations

Approximately 75% of the urban settlements in Romania are superimposed or are tangent to at least one natural protected area, these not being integrated from the point of view of their regulation in the urban strategies and in the urban planning regulations. From a spatial point of view, this type of relationship often represents a contrast between the urban fabric and the quasi-natural fabric. However, in the regulatory or strategy instruments for the development of urban settlements, where such contrasts exist, they are only integrated at the border level. The ecotone is, in most cases, the only element mentioned in urban planning instruments and is approached as a land that can only function in isolation and that in no way can support urban development. This reluctance and fear of approaching natural protected areas, also negatively influences the conception of the community, investors and the administration. Urban actors are not informed and therefore not motivated, but neither do they have the opportunity to get involved in the conservation and protection process. The purpose of this article is to research urban and biodiversity strategies at E.U level, to identify gaps in the formulation of urban planning tools, what are the reasons behind generating these gaps and how they can be eliminated, or at least mitigated. The analysis will focus on some models of urban strategies which address natural protected areas, but will also consider related elements, directly related to their conservation, urban ecology and the involvement in the process of urban actors.

Brief communication: Radar images for monitoring informal urban settlements in vulnerable zones in Lima, Peru

Lima, Peru's capital, has about 9.6 million inhabitants and keeps attracting more residents searching for a better life. Many citizens, without access to housing subsidies, live in informal housing and shack settlements. A typical social phenomenon in Lima is the sudden illegal occupation of areas for urban settlements. When such areas are unsafe against natural hazards, it is important to relocate such a population to avoid significant future losses. In this communication, we present an application of Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images to map the extension of a recent occupation of an area with unfavorable soil conditions against earthquakes.

Everyday speculation in the remaking of peri-urban livelihoods and landscapes

Peri-urbanization is transforming the urban-rural interface of metropolitan areas across the global south. Large-scale planned developments and infrastructure projects result in the widespread displacement of residents and the disappearance of agricultural fields, vegetable plots, and small enterprises. Through multi-year fieldwork in eastern peri-urban Jakarta, we shift the optic from the large players driving these transformations—developers, land brokers, and investors—to examine how residents of peri-urban settlements (kampungs) respond to unexpected developments and manage the uncertainties associated with market-induced displacement. We conceptualize their practices as everyday speculation, extending speculation beyond its financial meaning to include social and cultural aspects. Both displacees in relocation kampungs and holdouts in kampungs subject to displacement make the most of emergent spatiotemporal rent gaps to devise ways to improve their livelihoods and accumulate wealth, but they also attempt to realize their social and cultural aspirations of reproducing kampung ways of life characterized by dense social networks and commoning practices such as mutual aid. Speculation reinforces pre-existing economic inequalities among kampung residents but is not obliterating social and cultural values that contest the norms of neoliberal global urbanism. Scaling up from everyday speculation by individual households, we identify three paths of kampung transformation that are concatenating across a shape-shifting speculative kampung landscape that coexists in a complex and synergistic relationship with the planned developments. Understanding residents’ everyday actions is thus important to grasping the full scope of peri-urbanization.

Wooden Facade Renovation and Additional Floor Construction for Suburban Development in Finland

Finnish urban settlements are in the age of restoration, and the suburbs need improvements in Finland. In this sense, wooden facade renovation and additional floor construction are viable and sustainable solutions for this development in the Finnish context. This chapter focuses on these important applications from the Finnish residents’ perspective as ecologically sound engineering solutions through a survey. In doing so, the challenges of facade renovation, as well as the benefits of additional floor construction, were presented. The main purpose of the survey was to get the opinions of the residents, find out which variables are important, make inferences for the planning and improvement of such areas, and determine what will be emphasized in the sustainable suburban development of the future. Therefore, the results were based on this empirical approach—survey—but further research such as energy analysis, wood-based facade renovation, and additional floor solutions will be done as part of other studies. It is believed that this study will contribute to the use of sustainable materials and decarbonization of buildings as well as zero energy building (nZEB) to overcome the challenges posed by climate change by the diffusion of wood in the renovation of buildings.

Urban Green Innovation Ecosystem to Improve the Environmental Sustainability

This chapter is aimed to analyze the relationships between environmental sustainability, urban ecosystems, and green innovation. The method employed is the critical analytical review of literature and further discussion on the issues focusing the city´s experience on managing the formulation, generation, development, implementation and evaluation of new behaviors and ideas in green innovation. It is concluded that the green innovation is directly related with the environmental sustainability and urban ecosystems. The interest of this analysis lies in providing support to urban settlements in managing the risks inherent in green area innovation, incremental or radical as a community’s management would experience in relation to the environmental sustainability in urban ecosystems.

Analysis of the contribution of urban Innovation Ecosystem to Environmental Sustainability

This paper is aimed to analyze the relationships between environmental sustainability, urban ecosystems and green innovation. The method employed is the critical analytical review of literature and further discussion on the issues focusing the city´s experience on managing the formulation, generation, development, implementation and evaluation of new behaviors and ideas in green innovation. It is concluded that the green innovation is directly related with the environmental sustainability and urban ecosystems. The interest of this analysis lies in providing support to urban settlements in managing the risks inherent in green area innovation, incremental or radical as a community’s management would experience in relation to the environmental sustainability in urban ecosystems.

Predictors of COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence: Findings from Slums of Four Major Metro Cities of India

There are limited studies on COVID vaccine confidence at the household level in urban slums, which are at high risk of COVID-19 transmission due to overcrowding and poor living conditions. The objective was to understand the reasons influencing COVID-19 vaccine confidence, in terms of barriers and enablers faced by communities in urban slums and informal settlements in four major metro cities in India. A mixed method approach was adopted, where in field studies were conducted during April–May 2021. First, a survey of at least 50 subjects was conducted among residents of informal urban settlements who had not taken any dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Delhi; second, a short interview with five subjects who had taken at least one dose of the vaccine in each of the four cities to understand the factors that contributed to positive behaviour and, finally, an in-depth interview of at least 3 key informants in each city to ascertain the vaccination pattern in the communities. The reasons were grouped under contextual, individual/group and vaccine/vaccination specific issues. The most frequent reason (27.7%) was the uncertainty of getting the vaccine. The findings show the need for increasing effectiveness of awareness campaigns, accessibility and the convenience of vaccination, especially among vulnerable groups, to increase the uptake.

Diet reflects opportunistic feeding habit of the Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator)

The Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator) is a large generalist predator and scavenger lizard. This species has a widespread distribution throughout South and Southeast Asia and is frequently encountered around the edges of urban settlements. Here, we present information on diet diversity and habitat utilisation of a population of Asian water monitors inhabiting the University of Malaysia Terengganu campus located on the east coast of mainland Malaysia. The stomach contents of 30 Asian water monitors were examined by stomach flushing, and 47.6% of stomach contents was mangrove crab, 26.2% was human waste and 26.2% was other natural foods consisting of fruits, fishes, leeches, snails, birds and insects. We then recorded the locations and habitats utilised by patrolling the campus area and found Asian water monitors preferred to use water and mangrove forest habitats that fringed and crisscrossed the campus. The broad diversity of stomach contents reflected food available at this location and indicates the opportunistic feeding habit of this species. Given that this species widely distributed in Southeast Asia, its broad diet diversity and habitat variations may promote the adaptation of Asian water monitor to different environments.

Allergic reactions to cephalosporin antibiotics in a 15-year-old population

Cephalosporin, along with penicillin, are among the least harmful antibiotics. It is widely prescribed for common infections such as bronchitis, otitis media, pneumonia and cellulitis. A contraindication for this agent is a history of penicillin allergy, due to possible cross-reactions of hypersensitivity to penicillin and cephalosporin. Hypersensitivity reactions can occur in any mode of administration and to almost all antibiotics. Hypersensitivity reactions to cephalosporin are very similar to those of penicillin. The purpose of the study was to determine whether exist reactions to cephalosporin in the study population, and to determine whether exist statistically significant differences in the occurrence of allergic reactions to cephalosporin between boys and girls of the same age and whether exist differences in the occurrence of allergic reactions between subjects in urban and rural areas. The sample consisted of 1605 respondents, the sample was randomly selected and stratified by sex, and all data were processed in the statistical program. The results of the research show that 9.1% of the total population of boys and girls aged 15 from the Tuzla Canton are allergic to some type of antibiotic. The percentage of allergic reactions to cephalosporin is statistically significantly higher in the total population of 15 - year - olds from suburban and urban settlements than among peers in rural areas. Allergic reactions to cephalosporin were not observed in the group of boys from urban and suburban settlements as well as girls from rural settlements. This research also showed that there are statistically significant differences in the occurrence of cephalosporin allergies between urban and rural respondents.

Distributional Issues in Natural Capital Accounting: An Application to Land Ownership and Ecosystem Services in Scotland

Accounting for ecosystems is increasingly central to natural capital accounting. What is missing from this, however, is an answer to questions about how natural capital is distributed. That is, who consumes ecosystem services and who owns or manages the underlying asset(s) that give rise to ecosystem services. In this paper, we examine the significance of the ownership of land on which ecosystem assets (or ecosystem types) is located in the context of natural capital accounting. We illustrate this in an empirical application to two ecosystem services and a range of ecosystem types and land ownership in Scotland, a context in which land reform debates are longstanding. Our results indicate the relative importance of private land in ecosystem service supply, rather than land held by the public sector. We find relative concentration of ownership for land providing comparatively high amounts of carbon sequestration. For air pollution removal, however, the role of smaller to medium sized, mostly privately owned, land holdings closer to urban settlements becomes more prominent. The contributions in this paper, we argue, represent important first steps in anticipating distributional impacts of natural capital (and related) policy in natural capital accounts as well as connecting these frameworks to broader concerns about wealth disparities across and within countries.