March 21, 2013
Jen Dickie
On the 14th March, the United Nations Development Programme published the 2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, which describes how the “rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class”. Crediting sustained investment in education, health care and social programmes as well as increasing international engagement, the report states that the “world is witnessing an epochal global rebalancing”. Whilst the UN’s press release focuses on the “massive poverty reduction” and that more than 40 developing countries have demonstrated growth beyond expectations, Claire Provost highlights some of the more negative findings from the report in her article for The Guardian. Her article focuses on the warning from the UN that unless action is taken to tackle environmental threats such as climate change, deforestation and air and water pollution, the number of people living in extreme poverty could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050. The report highlights that climate change is already exacerbating “chronic” environmental threats, and stresses that although everyone is affected, “they hurt poor countries and poor communities the most”.
In an article for The Geographical Journal, Nigel Clark, Vasudha Chhotray and Roger Few discuss the relationship between natural hazards and disasters and how best to address the “uneven exposure and resilience of different social groups”. They argue that human-induced climate change and its associated impacts have further added to the already complex nature of natural disasters. Questioning the concept of global environmental justice, they discuss issues such as the tendency of powerful political and economic actors to take advantage of disasters and how traditional coping mechanisms have been eroded by ‘global modernising forces’; however, they state that whilst aid responses can be distributional and/or rights-based, the idea of justice is likely to stem from “ordinary human virtues of care and compassion”. Following this argument, Clark et al., offer the notion that current generations of humans may be more likely care about the environment and the challenges it, and our future generations, face if we consider ourselves as owing an incalculable debt to past generations who survived a magnitude of natural disasters and therefore made our existence possible.
As growth in developing nations continues, the challenges facing them will change. The UN highlights that sustainable economies and societies will rely on new policies and structural changes, and that these are needed if human development and climate change goals are to be aligned. However, it is clear that policies alone will not be enough. If we can show the same resilience and respect for our environment as our ancestors did, and view our actions as something we ‘owe’ our future generations, perhaps attitudes will change.
Nigel Clark, Vasudha Chhotray, Roger Few, 2013, Global justice and disasters, The Geographical Journal, DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12005
Environmental threats could push billions into extreme poverty, warns UN, The Guardian, 14th March 2013
Press release: “Rise of South” transforming global power balance, says 2013 Human Development Report, accessed 18th March 2013
Human Development Report 2013, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, accessed 18th March 2013
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Atmosphere & Biosphere, Biogeography, Climatology, Cultural Geography, Development, Early View, Economic Geography, Environment and Society, Global Issues, Hydrology and Water Resources, Social Geography, The Geographical Journal | Tagged: Climate change, disasters, Global environmental justice, hazards, Human Development Report 2013, UN | 
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Posted by Jen Dickie
February 8, 2013
The laying of water pipes in Israel c. 1946. Hydrological politics are now a key site where climate change meets questions of sovereignty. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Martin Mahony
Global geopolitics have conventionally been conceived of in terms of the horizontal actions and interactions of territorially-bounded nation states. However, critical geographers have recently started giving consideration to ‘vertical geopolitics’, drawing greater attention to the spatial exercise of power in a dimension which cannot conventionally be discerned from a flat political map of the world.
Vertical geopolitics have figured prominently in the news recently, particularly as new technologies of surveillance and violence have challenged conventional orderings of vertical territory (such as the notion of sovereign ‘airspace’). In particular, the military use of drones – or unmanned aircraft – for the purposes of intelligence-gathering and assassination has quite radically altered the political geographies of modern warfare. Meanwhile, the WWF’s recent announcement that drones will be used to help protect wildlife from poachers marks an interesting development in the sky-bound surveillance of the global environment.
Climate change offers an fascinating window through which to observe the changing dimensions of political geography. In the first instance, the science and politics of the atmosphere may seem to challenge conventional territorial forms of governance. However, research is starting to emerge which demonstrates how certain political responses to climate change represent reterritorialising moves in the ongoing negotiations over sovereignty, environment and natural resources.
A paper I wrote recently with Mike Hulme seeks to explore the knowledge-base underlying many such moves. Regional climate prediction has become a key means of localising or even territorialising climate change, thus producing new forms of political space in which the implications of climate change can be debated. A recent paper by Michael Mason in The Geographical Journal takes this proposition further. In analysing the ‘securitisation’ of climate change in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict, he offers a fascinating picture of the interaction of climate politics with the (vertical) geopolitics of contested sovereign spaces.
Mason argues that the specific way in which climate change has been rendered as a security problem by the Israeli government tends to reinforce vertical relations of domination over Palestinian skies and groundwater resources. By contrast, in the case of the Palestinian Authority, the threats posed by climate change have both been woven into liberation narratives and used as an opportunity to demonstrate policy competence and fitness for statehood.
Mason’s paper makes an important contribution to a growing body of literature which emphasises the multitude of ways in which climate change is securitised, normalised and politicised in different contexts and settings. The vertical geopolitics of climate change represent an important facet of this line of inquiry, and one which is only just beginning to be explored.
Michael Mason, 2013, Climate Change, Securitisation and the Israel-Palestine Conflict, The Geographical Journal, DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12007
Martin Mahony & Mike Hulme, 2012, Model Migrations: Mobility and Boundary Crossings in Regional Climate Prediction. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37, 2, 197-211
WWF plans to use drones to protect wildlife. The Guardian
John Brennan’s killer drones are new symbol of American in the world. Los Angeles Times
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2 Comments | Climatology, Environment and Society, Political Geography, The Geographical Journal, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | Tagged: Climate change, conflict, Vertical geopolitics, water | Permalink
Posted by mwfmahony
February 1, 2013
by Briony Turner
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
One could say that effective low carbon solutions will be those that respond to the requirements of energy infrastructures and to the ways in which people actually integrate the social and technical aspects of energy systems to achieve comfort, cleanliness, and other ordinary ways of life. This requires developing a better understanding not only of householders’ daily practices within their homes and how adaptable these practices are but also the practical application of this understanding into standard industry working practices.
An international climate change audit found that the UK lags behind others in Europe on programmes to move consumer choice to more energy-efficient appliances, recommending that the government “undertake evaluations of effectiveness based on real practice in homes so that programmes can be responsive and kept on track”. We increasingly have the research findings to enable this. Take for instance Harriet Bulkely and Sara Fuller’s article in Area which explores how British people who have recently migrated to Spain actually adapt to new regimes of heat. Intriguingly, one of their findings is that adapting to the heat may potentially result in “increasing vulnerability to the cold, demonstrating how responses to stresses on thermal comfort are culturally and materially conditioned”.
So, bearing in mind the challenges posed by cultural and material norms, people’s expectations of comfort and the potential for adaptability, all-be-it with repercussions, there is an additional challenge in the form of a divergence in industry strategies within the UK, at the heart of which is the interlinking black box of domestic practices. The built environment industry is focused on low carbon in the form of reducing emissions of buildings through improving their energy performance, reducing their overall energy usage, i.e. focusing on how much electricity the buildings (including the human activity within them) use. Yet, the energy supply industry sees the issue, within a future grid system based on inflexible nuclear generation and intermittent renewable generation, as one of balancing supply and demand. This requires demand management which is not just focused on how much electricity people use, but, is actually more concerned with when they use it –for more on this, see Sarah Higginson and colleague’s 2011 conference paper.
Both industries diverge on the strategy for tackling people. Whilst both confine people to the term “end user”, the supply industry regards the end user as an object necessitating “demand management” whereas, the built environment industry sees the building (which contains the end user) necessitating “demand reduction”. The householder has in many ways been divorced from the home, with the focus of behaviour change activity resting predominantly on utility supply and demand chains.
Both industries concede some acknowledgement of the impact of individual behaviour on energy demand with most interventions in both industries aimed at encouraging activities based on small lifestyle adaptations that enable continuation and/or enhancement of existing standards and conventions. Yet the dichotomy of managing energy demand to uphold/lock in/enhance existing ways of life when everyday practices are constantly changing is widely criticised –for those interested in this have a look at Yolande Strengers’ paper on ‘Peak electricity demand and social practice theories’.
To achieve the ambitious energy consumption and carbon emissions reductions set out in statute, low energy/low carbon design and retrofitting needs to shift from focusing on building energy performance, to domestic energy performance, with the building fabric, services and interior design being better understood as contributory factors to locking in, but also with the potential to change domestic energy practice. This perspective leads beyond the supply and demand rhetoric to analyse how energy systems lock in or challenge existing unsustainable needs and what opportunities there are across the material infrastructures to change domestic practice.
Sara Fuller and Harriet Bulkeley, 2012, Changing countries, changing climates: achieving thermal comfort through adaptation in everyday activities, Area, DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2012.01105.x
Sarah Higginson, Ian Richardson and Murray Thomson, 2011, Energy use in the context of behaviour and practice: the interdisciplinary challenge in modelling flexible electricity demand presented at Energy and People: Futures, Complexity and Challenges Oxford University 20-21 September 2011
INTOSAI, 2010, Report by the INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing: The Climate is Changing – Key Implications for Governments and their Auditors
Yolande Strengers, 2012, Peak electricity demand and social practice theories: Reframing the role of change agents in the energy sector, Energy Policy 44 226-234
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Leave a Comment » | Area, Early View, Scale, Social Geography, Urban Geography | Tagged: behaviour change, built environment, Climate change, domestic practice, energy, energy industry, energy policy, energy transition, Low Carbon Futures, practices, reterofit, sustainable design, transitions | Permalink
Posted by Briony
November 2, 2012
By Daniel Schillereff
![L'aquila earthquake damage - Kremlin.ru [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://geographydirections.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/laquila_earthquake_damage1.jpg?w=300&h=200 "L'aquila earthquake damage - Kremlin.ru [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
What do Hurricane Sandy, the earthquake in Aquila, Italy in 2011, the earthquake of British Columbia last week and climate science have in common? They have all prompted intense debate centred on the effectiveness of scientists at communicating science. A piece in The Guardian is one recent example. In particular, how can uncertainty in model projections or predictions be succinctly but accurately explained in a manner accessible to all who may be impacted by the event?
Recent commentary in the Financial Times on the Aquila earthquake criminal charges highlights the three-way relationship which exists between those who produce knowledge, those who disseminate that knowledge to others and those who desire that knowledge to be outlined to them in a non-complex, straightforward manner. In the broadest sense, these end-users are normally assumed to be the scientists, the media and the public, respectively. However, the on-going difficulties communicating climate science and the other examples mentioned in this post suggest this relationship is failing to function in an ideal manner. Of graver concern is the possibility that scientists will be unwilling to discuss or disclose their findings in the future due to risk of persecution; is a new approach required?
Although its scope is much narrower, the novel approach outlined by Lane et al., 2011 in their Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers paper, ‘Doing Flood Risk Science Differently…’ could act as a model for improved communication of science and subsequent mitigation strategies being implemented in the future on a wider scale. Their case study of flood risk around Pickering, Yorkshire, highlighted the deep understanding of local residents of the hydrological and geomorphological triggers of flood events and Lane et al. emphasise their knowledge directly contributed to a more holistic and effective model of the local flood regime. They suggest local people for whom flooding is a serious hazard should be encouraged and supported to produce knowledge as opposed to being simply involved in a focus group discussing knowledge previously generated by scientists. Provided each user group is willing to invest the necessary effort, this approach appears both sensible and practical specifically due to continued user involvement in each step of the scientific process.
S N Lane, N Odoni, C Landstrom, S J Whatmore, N Ward, S Bradley, 2011, Doing flood risk science differently: an experiment in radical scientific method, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 15-36.
Poor information obscures emergency warnings, The Guardian, 01 November 2012
Jailing the seismic seven will cause tremors beyond Italy, Financial Times, 24 October 2012
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Posted by dschillereff
October 29, 2012
By Martin Mahony
According to a recent PBS documentary entitled Climate of Doubt, a sustained attack on the science of climate change from a range of predominantly conservative, free-market think-tanks and research institutions has pushed the climate issue off the political agenda in the US. For Republicans, any adherence to the consensus position offered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would seem to be political suicide in front of a sceptical conservative public. For Democrats, climate change can seemingly only be discussed in terms of the economic opportunities offered by investment in alternative energy sources.
The PBS documentary could be criticised for simplifying the issue of scepticism and its role in science and politics, and all sides of the debate – including PBS – still cling on to the idea that science provides the one and only path to politically actionable policies to address questions of environmental change and societal vulnerabilities.
The antagonistic battle over the reality of climate change continued this week with news that prominent climate scientist Michael E. Mann of Penn State University is taking a prominent US conservative publication to court over claims of defamation. In a blog post on the Competitive Enterprise Institute website, Mann was compared to recently convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky, although the target of Mann’s molestation was claimed to be climate data and statistical methodologies.
While this is an extreme case, it is an example of the kind of ad hominen argumentation that so often characterises climate change debates. In an innovative new paper in The Geographical Journal, Nelya Koteyko and colleagues explore the discourse and rhetoric employed by contributors to online newspaper comment threads. The paper shows how “stereotypes” of science and politics are used to distance climate scientists from commonly-held ideals of scientific practice (such as disinterestedness or organized scepticism), and how the ‘Climategate’ incidents of late 2009 bolstered the arguments of sceptical readers against the reality of climate change.
Like the Michael E. Mann incident and the PBS documentary, the paper highlights the deep entangling of climate scepticism and conservative economic ideologies, as sceptical statements often combine scientific issues with arguments against higher taxation and greater government involvement in the regulation of industry. Although it is important for scientists to be able to defend themselves against personal attacks and harassment, these episodes should tell us that the apparent political gridlock over climate change will not be solved simply by more science, or by convincing all sceptics of the reliability of the headline claims made by the IPCC. In a climate of ideological antagonism, it will take a titanic effort of political argumentation and innovation to move the policy discussion forwards. Science cannot do the job of politics.
Penn State scientist Michael Mann alleges defamation, seeks damages, Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media
Nelya Koteyko, Rusi Jaspal & Brigitte Nerlich, 2012, Climate change and “climategate” in online reader comments: a mixed methods study, The Geographical Journal, DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2012.00479.x
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Posted by mwfmahony
October 17, 2012
By Jen Dickie
This week, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation are hosting the ‘Committee on World Food Security’ in Rome. This follows an announcement last Wednesday from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) stating that the UK suffered its worst wheat harvest since the 1980s, blaming the combined forces of a spring drought followed by the wettest summer in 100 years (Met Office). Describing this year’s weather as “a rollcoaster for British farmers that most now just want to forget”, Fiona Harvey and Rebecca Smithers from The Guardian describe both the difficulties farmers face after a disastrous growing season, and in a related article, how this has impacted on British consumers by not only increasing our shopping bills but by changing our shopping habits. In response to a 32% rise in food prices in the UK since 2007, they report how ethical provenance has dropped down the consumer’s list of considerations when food shopping; instead, affordability is now the key priority.
It is not only the UK that is suffering; in The Observer this weekend, John Vidal highlighted the rising concerns over food security and the potential onset of a global food crisis due to failing harvests across the world. Quoting experts such as Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Research Centre in Washington, and Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the UN Food and agriculture Organisation, Vidal stresses the complex interplay among concurrent global issues such as climate change, increasing consumption and decreasing production of food, population growth, water shortages and rising food prices.
In a recent article for The Geographical Journal, Tim Lang and David Barling acknowledge the complex nature of the concept of food security, arguing that even the term ‘food security’ is interpreted and used in different ways. They argue that “Much of the food security discourse still is about governments, farmers and the hungry” whereas more coherent policy frameworks are needed that address the development and understanding of a food system that “is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable”.
Whilst policymakers meet this week to discuss how to keep global food prices in check, earlier this month the UN reported that one in eight people in the world are starving or under-nourished. A global food crisis has not yet been declared, however, Lester Brown warns us that “As food prices climb, the worldwide competition for control of land and water resources is intensifying… Food is the new oil, land is the new gold”. This is food for thought!
Tim Lang and David Barling, 2012, Food security and food sustainability: reformulating the debate, The Geographical Journal, DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2012.00480.x
Weather-beaten UK farmers lament a dismal year for food production, The Guardian, 12 October 2012
Food prices: ‘Bread, coffee and fresh fruit have become a bit of a luxury’, The Guardian, 12 October 2012
A mixed harvest, but wheat well down, The NFU website, 10th October 2012
UN warns of looming worldwide food crisis in 2013, The Observer, 13th October 2012
Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, Earth Policy Institute Press Release
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1 Comment | Biogeography, Climatology, Early View, Economic Geography, Environment and Society, General, Global Issues, Hydrology and Water Resources, Social Geography, The Geographical Journal | Tagged: Climate change, drought, food policy, food security, policy, policy frameworks, sustainability, sustainable food | Permalink
Posted by Jen Dickie
October 12, 2012
By Martin Mahony
![MEC's green roof among others by sookie (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://geographydirections.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/green-roof3.jpg?w=250&h=187 "MEC's green roof among others by sookie (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Many commentators on the current US presidential election campaigns have noted – or bemoaned – a seeming conspiracy of silence when it comes to climate change. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney seem keen to make the issue a centrepiece of their respective campaigns, regardless of where they seem to stand on the question of how to deal climate change, or indeed whether it’s a problem at all.
In the UK, critics of the Conservative-led coalition government have been keen to point out that David Cameron’s pledge to lead the “greenest government ever” is starting to sound rather hollow. Like in the US, climate change barely figures on the national political agenda. Perhaps this could be attributed to the current primacy of economic and fiscal issues in political debate. However, it may also be indicative of a broader trend which has seen climate change governance re-scaled away from the nation-state and international negotiations, towards new networks of cities, municipalities and regional governments.
As illustrated by Harriet Bulkeley and Vanesa Castán Broto in a recent article in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, a variety of governmental practices have emerged at the urban scale which seek to address climate change mitigation and adaptation. Through diverse social and technical practices, “climate change experiments” have been enacted which have positioned mitigation and adaptation nearer to the centre of rationales for urban transition and renewal. However, far from being simply the spill-over effects of a governance system which lacks the capacity to address climate change in a formal and coherent manner, these new political spaces highlight the complex processes by which new norms and goals circulate in practice through social and technical interventions in the urban fabric.
The kind of interventions which Bulkeley and Broto discuss include formal policy measures such as the establishment of carbon markets, grassroots movements such as ‘Transition Towns’, and the development of new architectural forms which respond to the needs of energy efficiency. While such initiatives are often dismissed as being insufficient responses to the scale of the climate change challenge, Bulkeley and Broto suggest in their exciting new research agenda that analysts need to engage more seriously with the growing number of processes by which climate change is being responded to in urban settings. While climate change may have disappeared from our national political debates, it is increasingly a potent motivator of political action in our cities.
Harriet Bulkeley and Vanesa Castán Broto, 2012, Government by experiment? Global cities and the governing of climate change, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00535.x
The 2012 election’s only bipartisan consensus: not to talk climate change, The Guardian
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Posted by mwfmahony
October 5, 2012
By Briony Turner
Source: author
Somewhat regrettably, those scorching days admiring sporting finesse, feeling the heat of the sun against skin (and the 100% recycled polyester iconic top of a Games Maker –the not so regrettable aspect) are now a distant memory, washed out by a month’s worth of downpour in one day.
Having had the topic of weather embargoed for the summer (Games Makers were implored not to be quintessentially British and moan about the weather), the country has returned to its favourite topic of conversation, wiping even the Duchess of Cambridge off the front pages. According to the Met Office official blog, the culprit is an ‘unusually active’ and ‘lingering’ (blame that part on the jet stream) low pressure system from the Atlantic which has had a field day moving north across the UK, picking up the cooler polar air en route, causing a deeper depression, not only meteorologically but also metaphorically in its wake.
Future climate projections suggest a rise in frequency of such extreme events. Some geographers, Marc Tadaki and colleagues, are caught up in whether physical geography needs to exist, and/or indulge in a ‘navel gazing and angst’ debate as to the purpose of geography (Dalby, 2012 p.270). However, others have simply rolled up their sleeves and are conducting geographical analyses, improving the understanding of and addressing climate change and human vulnerabilities, as noted by Simon Dalby in his recent book review in The Geographical Journal. These applications and analyses form the basis of information provided by organisations like the Environment Agency, whose website provides the latest flood alerts and enables householders to identify the extent to which, if at all, their homes are at risk of flooding. A catastrophe modelling firm, working with the European Space Agency, has recently launched a mapping tool with geo-coded ‘snapshots’ and impact assessment features to help insurers handle the aftermath of flooding.
Extensive systems and infrastructure, including governance arrangements, are in place to attempt to reduce the impact and effects of flooding. Homeowners in the UK at risk of flooding currently benefit from the “Statement of Principles”, an agreement between Government and insurers, although it will expire on the 1st July 2013. Defra are currently working on a replacement. An article in The Geographical Journal, provides a timely reminder of the complexities encountered in public engagement within flood risk management (FRM) and the potential negative consequences that can result if the local micro-politics are not understood and sensitivities, particularly repercussions of shifts in local power relations, are not accounted for before application of FRM engagement.
One way of reducing the scale of flooding in urban areas is to intercept and delay rain and surface runoff by utilising and improving urban ecosystems. Built environment industry experts are looking at innovative ways of ecologically adapting the built environment, there’s an annual conference and, this year, a public exhibition of the Integrated Habitats Design Competition’s winners and finalists in October at the Natural History Museum (a Fringe Event of the UN Convention on Biodiversity). This just goes to show that urban ecosystems can be enhanced, have social, economic as well as ecological value and, as Robert Francis and colleagues point out in their article in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, offer opportunities for innovative research.
Flooding – availability and coverage of insurance Association of British Insurers
S. Dalby, 2012, Geo 2.0: digital tools, geographical vision and a changing planet, The Geographical Journal 178 270–274
UK Climate Projections: Briefing report (UKCP09) Defra
R. A. Francis, J. Lorimer and M. Raco, 2012, Urban ecosystems as ‘natural’ homes for biogeographical boundary crossings, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37 183–190
Defra tweaking statement of principles replacement Insurance Times.co.uk
What’s bringing the stormy weather to the UK? Official blog of the Met Office news team
Satellite Flood Footprints PERILS
M. Tadaki, J. Salmond, R. Le Heron and G. Brierley, 2012, Nature, culture, and the work of physical geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37 547–562
C-P. Tseng, and E.C. Penning-Rowsell, 2012, Micro-political and related barriers to stakeholder engagement in flood risk management, The Geographical Journal 178 253–269.
Britain gets almost a month of rain in 24 hours , The Guardian
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Posted by Briony
October 3, 2012
By Jen Dickie
![By Jason Kuffer from East Harlem, USA (Air Conditioners Uploaded by Adrignola) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://geographydirections.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/air_conditioners_on_apartment_walls.jpg?w=200&h=300 "By Jason Kuffer from East Harlem, USA (Air Conditioners Uploaded by Adrignola) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Initially unveiled in 2010, the government’s eagerly awaited Green Deal finally got started on Monday 1st October. Under this scheme, bill payers can implement energy saving improvements through an ‘install now, pay later’ plan. As winter approaches, this scheme will be particularly welcome in rural communities where many households are poorly insulated and cannot access mains gas supplies, two factors that contribute to the high levels of fuel poverty seen in rural areas. Whilst the overall goal of the scheme is to improve a buildings’ energy efficiency, much of the media focus is on its potential to reduce household heating bills. In The Guardian last Friday, Miles Brignall outlined how the scheme will operate and how it should particularly benefit ‘hard-to-treat’ houses.
Although affordable heating is undoubtedly an important issue, thermal comfort applies to both hot and cold conditions. Whilst the UK did not benefit from the European heatwave this summer, where temperatures in parts of Central and Eastern Europe reached up to 15 oC above their seasonal average, some scientists believe that we will experience more extreme weather events as a result of climate change.
In an article for Area, Sara Fuller and Harriet Bulkeley explain the importance of understanding how people might respond and adapt to ‘new regimes of heat’ to achieve thermal comfort. By investigating the everyday activities of recent UK migrants to Spain, they determined that people often achieve thermal comfort in a variety of ways. Rather than solely relying on air conditioning, which is often the assumed response to increasing temperatures, people adjusted their daily routines and clothing choices. These are promising findings, where more sustainable options are being chosen rather than relying on energy guzzling technology. However, if the UK does start to experience more extreme heat events in the future, there will undoubtedly be an increase in the installation of air conditioning units and thermal comfort, particularly in the workplace, will become a more prominent issue. Whilst the Green Deal does include heating, ventilation and air conditioning measures, it is unclear to what extent these cover cooling technologies. With energy demands rising, perhaps more investment into the development of sustainable cooling technologies is needed.
Green deal: insulate your home from rising energy bills, The Guardian, 28th September 2012
Sara Fuller and Harriet Bulkeley, 2012, Changing countries, changing climates: achieving thermal comfort through adaptation in everyday activities, Area, DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2012.01105.x
Extreme heat becoming more likely under climate change, The Met Office, 10th July 2012
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Posted by Jen Dickie
May 14, 2012
The latest issue of Area (Volume 44, Issue 2, pages 134–268, June 2012) is available on Wiley Online Library.
Click past the break for a full list of articles in this issue.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Wil Stobbart
On the 14th March, the United Nations Development Programme published the 2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, which describes how the “rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class”. Crediting sustained investment in education, health care and social programmes as well as increasing international engagement, the report states that the “world is witnessing an epochal global rebalancing”. Whilst the UN’s press release focuses on the “massive poverty reduction” and that more than 40 developing countries have demonstrated growth beyond expectations, Claire Provost highlights some of the more negative findings from the report in her article for The Guardian. Her article focuses on the warning from the UN that unless action is taken to tackle environmental threats such as climate change, deforestation and air and water pollution, the number of people living in extreme poverty could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050. The report highlights that climate change is already exacerbating “chronic” environmental threats, and stresses that although everyone is affected, “they hurt poor countries and poor communities the most”.
Nigel Clark, Vasudha Chhotray, Roger Few, 2013, Global justice and disasters, The Geographical Journal, DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12005
Environmental threats could push billions into extreme poverty, warns UN, The Guardian, 14th March 2013
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