Geographical Journal最新文献

Flood risk management (FRM) is facing various challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity losses. Traditional structural FRM measures are now not always feasible as responses to these challenges. One answer might be the use of policy experiments to promote innovation. This paper aims to assess and to explain why innovations in FRM are rarely implemented. We analysed seven innovative strategies across Austria that combine several different approaches. Each is concerned with risk reduction systems designed to save space, time and possible rising costs. The research used 76 qualitative standardised semi-structured interviews with key FRM experts conducted between 2012 and 2021 in order to examine transition pathways through time. The results show that there exist numerous drivers and barriers to debating, designing and implementing FRM innovations. The capture of transition pathways nevertheless shows the system shift from a more traditional understanding towards a transformative path, which created new understandings of the role of the different actors in FRM as well as new institutional settings. However, these policy experiments were still led by the relevant public administrations as they are the main funders, the principal actors in the planning and implementation phases in the realisation of many of these innovations.

Researchers from institutions of higher education who conduct studies in the Caribbean often rely on local knowledge and support to produce scientific publications that could inform resource management. However, such research remains largely inaccessible to local communities because of the proprietary nature of the current knowledge ecosystem in academia. This commentary proposes knowledge repatriation as a means of advancing decolonial research efforts within higher education. First, we highlight the intersecting features of epistemic and environmental (in)justice with examples from the Caribbean context and discuss how knowledge repatriation efforts can counter extant environmental and epistemological exploitative practices. Second, we identify how academic institutions are specially positioned to challenge traditional research practices and advance knowledge repatriation. Third, we explore one example of how knowledge repatriation can unfold within a Caribbean context and some related challenges.

Almost 20 years have passed since Viequenses succeeded in their struggle to kick out the US Navy from their island, yet residents have been left stranded facing issues of the dispossession of the island's most poor, alongside slow clean-up efforts and deteriorating health outcomes. Drawing upon approaches from recent critical transportation geographies, this article uses a mobility justice framework to understand how the afterlives of over 60 years of direct militarised colonial violence continue to repeat through Viequense mobile life. I particularly focus on how Vieques' environmental injustices become mobility injustices through the poor ferry service. The article explores the governance of the maritime transportation service by disentangling its mobile politics, revealing the deeper impacts of coloniality on infrastructures of mobility. I do so through a critical policy analysis of legislative measures, plans, reports and grant proposals prepared by Puerto Rican state authorities from 1999 to 2021. Recognising the close relationship between debt and infrastructural landscapes in Puerto Rico, I use debt as an analytical tool to explain how it is constitutive of mobility regimes on the island. Through this analysis, the article centres on the creation of the Maritime Transportation Authority (ATM) as an institutional actor in charge of Viequense mobilities, detailing how it was enmeshed in fiscal and political tensions that resulted in extreme im/mobilities to its passengers. I find that the struggle for ownership over mobilities is a characteristic of the mobile politics of the ferry service, defined by an unequal power distribution between institutional actors and users, codified by public policies. This demonstrates how multiple dimensions of justice intertwine within mobility politics, aggravating existing environmental injustices into mobility injustices.

The conflict between environmental justice and economic development is an issue central to the developing world. Using an interview analysis of community residents, this study seeks to identify whether the formally proposed trans-shipment hub sited for the Goat Islands in Jamaica is an environmental injustice. The site, situated in the Portland Bight Protected Area, is one of Jamaica's largest fish sanctuaries and provides hundreds in the community with their livelihoods. The hub, which was promoted as an economic development project by the Jamaican government, would have allowed Jamaica to enter into the global trans-shipment chain, subsequently reaping millions of dollars in profit. Resultant themes include issues related to environmental degradation, displacement of community members, hope for employment opportunities and investments into communities and desire for consultation. While many community residents had concerns regarding the potential location of the logistics hub, there were mixed reactions as to whether this type of development should never be allowed to take place. The study reveals the conundrum that is faced by states when it comes to promoting economic development initiatives. On the one hand, there is a desire for these forms of investment to spur economic advancement, yet on the other hand, the environmental injustices cannot be ignored. Further, the paper reveals the importance of consultation and recognition when development projects are proposed.

The implementation of US-backed agricultural initiatives under what became known as the Green Revolution (1945–1970) reshaped populations, ecologies, and landscapes worldwide. While most investigations into the implications of this era focus on the development of intensive farming in places such as Mexico, India, and the Philippines, few offer critical analysis of its Caribbean manifestations. This paper examines the role of the Green Revolution in the production of environmental injustice in Haiti. Historically, we situate Green Revolution technopolitics in a broader trajectory of US-led imperial and neoliberal interventions that spans from the Occupation of Haiti (1915–1934) to the 21st century. We draw from our long-term ethnographic research to show how Green Revolution transformations impact agrarian life in Haiti's lower Artibonite Valley and Central Plateau today. Integral to the Occupation were efforts to (re)establish production of export commodities. We demonstrate how such attempts, regardless of outcome, generated indelible material, social, and ecological entanglements that served to intensify empire. In 1949, the US and Haitian governments established an agency tasked with extending Occupation-era irrigation infrastructure throughout the Artibonite Valley. After these efforts stalled, 1970s interventionists sought different inroads for increasing agricultural production, particularly of rice. Their initiatives paved the way for post-2010 ventures that perpetuate many of the same consequences, including hunger, economic insecurity, and environmental degradation. We show how the history of imperial intervention in Haiti created the conditions for the ongoing production of environmental injustice through agrarian reform. Ultimately, we argue that the Green Revolution transformed Haiti's agrarian geographies in ways that intensified environmental harms and advanced a project of US empire that continues to shape Haiti today. We examine the contemporary implications of this century of transformation for farmers, who carry on a legacy of agrarian justice that has contested the project of the Green Revolution since its inception.

The experiences of overseas territories and how their varying degrees of self-governance influence climate (in)action are overlooked topics, even though these places are often highly impacted by climate change. Analysing the situation of the Dutch Kingdom demonstrates some of these challenges. The Kingdom consists of the European Netherlands and the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao, St Maarten, Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba. Out of these, the Caribbean islands are the most vulnerable to climate change, while the European Netherlands has contributed the most to it. This can be seen as climate injustice. Access to mitigation and adaptation mechanisms mentioned in international agreements could be beneficial to these Caribbean islands. However, the international climate change agreements have only entered into force for the European part of the Kingdom and not the Caribbean part due to a territorial limitation. This has several consequences, and this paper highlights two. First, the requirement that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced does not apply to the islands, which leaves room for unsustainable activities but also overlooks their need for adaptation and compensation for loss and damage. Second, access to climate finance instruments is limited as the Dutch Caribbean islands are seen as part of the Kingdom and therefore do not qualify for international assistance. Within the European Union, funds are available but access to these is not guaranteed, as the experience with recovery after Hurricane Irma demonstrates. These examples show that the issues around climate justice have been insufficiently resolved. There is a need for a long-term climate strategy within the Kingdom along with complementary funding. Until then, climate litigation could assist in enforcing a duty of care by local governments and the Kingdom to protect inhabitants by using the human rights framework. This would also create a roadmap for other territories in similar circumstances.

It is well established that urban form can encourage or hinder daily walking activity. Consequently, urban form has a direct impact on both spatial accessibility and the ability of achieving daily physical activity recommendations. However, the relationship between urban form and walking patterns may present relevant differences among different population subgroups, for instance in terms of gender. In order to analyse how the relationship between urban form and daily walking time might be modulated by gender, the present study aims to explore walking patterns of men and women living in different neighbourhood types in Barcelona Metropolitan Region (Spain). For this purpose, the study uses data extracted from a smartphone tracking app among a rather specific population group: young adults who commute daily to the same destination. The findings show that compact urban forms promote gender equality. The study especially sheds light on the disadvantaged position of young women living in small towns and suburbs, who walk much less than other women and any men.

Every few years, Karachi floods during the summer monsoon. The flooding brings latent manoeuvrings by political actors looking to establish their hold over the city to the surface. Politicians, urban administrators, and relevant state and non-state institutions blame historical planning failures, informal and illegal constructions, institutional conflict, incapable municipal governance, and widespread corruption for the flooding. They move quickly to establish authority and consolidate power while offering ‘fixes’. Eviction drives against ‘illegal settlements’ built along storm-water drains, heavy taxes, fines, and demolitions of non-conforming constructions, institutional reforms, budget allocations, and project approvals for new infrastructure all happen at once. Once the emergency ceases, key players in urban politics – resident groups, community associations, political parties, municipal authorities, land developers, planners, international non-governmental organisations, and military institutions – start working on projects of accumulation and entrenchment, in preparation for the next crisis. In this paper, we look at the space–time of Karachi's certain and yet uncertain flooding crisis as a moment to study the politics of the maybe in the Pakistani megacity. Outlining marginal and affluent residents' lived experiences in a flooding city and relating their politics with governmental responses to immediate and possible future floods, we study the conditions of inhabitation, citizenship claims, and governmental relations in Karachi. We argue that the monsoon's expectant arrival becomes a locus for articulating and modulating different kinds of popular vernaculars, governmental practices, and political manoeuvrings for institutional and individual actors seeking profit and power in and through Karachi. The politics of the maybe hinges on actors entrenching their political positions without care, taking away any possibility for a shared, coherent worldview for all Karachiites. In conclusion, we argue that distant interests and logics of this politics of governance and inhabitation are inherently exploitative, threatening to pull apart the very city they thrive on.

This paper explores the spatio-legal dynamics of marine protected areas and their relation to socio-environmental justice. It adopts a critical legal geography perspective to unpack ocean lawscape configurations triggered by territorial claims, the international mechanisms for maritime boundary-making, and state sovereignty instruments. It is empirically focused on the Seaflower marine biosphere reserve, a protected area amid a geopolitical contestation between Nicaragua and Colombia in the southwestern Caribbean. By analysing its spatio-legal history over two decades (2000–2021), the paper sheds light on the marine legalities of this region, which are often contradictory and overlapping. Focusing on the marine lawscape of Colombia, it explores the relationship between protected areas and marine territorialisation, also reflecting on the governance regimes' effects on indigenous livelihoods and marine biodiversity. The paper concludes that (i) marine protected areas are regularly being disrupted, re-bordered, and reconfigured by the international ocean regimes governing the oceans; (ii) the link between the creation and management of marine protected areas and territorial jurisdiction compromises social and environmental justice, and (iii) inclusion of indigenous legalities might enhance equity and sustainability in ocean governance.

In this paper, I discuss how the earthquake risk is exploited by ‘disaster capitalism’, in order to convert Istanbul to a massive construction site. The shock of the 1999 Marmara Earthquake has been effectively used by the neoliberal market and government as ‘a shock therapy’ to implement a construction-led development model for Turkey and to favour the construction sector by introducing new incentives, exceptional rights and interventions, which otherwise might be challenged. The current Turkish government justify the ongoing massive urban transformation and new mass housing projects as an improvement of the housing stock to make residential buildings stronger and more resilient to earthquakes. However, areas actually under earthquake risk do not match the areas that are officially declared under disaster risk by the government. The Disaster Law #6306 that granted the government the absolute right to expropriate land based on the justification of ‘protecting residents against earthquakes and other natural disasters’ was applied in a selective way to seize valuable land in Istanbul. In the paper I explore how the disaster was quickly converted to an opportunity for economic growth. To do that I introduce stories of three different neighbourhoods in Istanbul, namely Moda, Tozkoparan and Fikirtepe, each of which experience the ongoing massive urban transformation differently based on the land value of the neighbourhoods, class position of the residents, and residents' capacity to organise in order to protect their rights. I describe, how disaster capitalism is lived and experienced differently in these three neighbourhoods. Although the massive construction projects are indifferent to life's sustainability, those projects are justified as interventions in terms of public health and safety through making housing resilient to earthquakes. I critically discuss how in each case biopolitics presents disaster capitalism's massive urban transformation projects as a manifestation of liveliness.