Taking natural limits seriously: Implications for development studies and the environment

This article explores how thinking about ecological limits, thresholds and boundaries has evolved in the last few decades, and explores the analytical and political possibilities that emerge if development studies scholars engage with these ideas. It makes the case for an engaged political economy approach, which focuses on understanding how finite resources at a variety of scales are shared between the competing claims of different groups in society. The article suggests that, while the science of planetary limits is important, the most significant societal challenges are not about how close we are to the limits, but involve finding mechanisms to reconcile the difficult trade-offs that inevitably arise when we consider alternative human pathways in the present and the future. Choices are ubiquitous, even when there may be no immediate ecological tipping point, and a political economy perspective focuses on the ways in which humanity prioritizes different, often irreconcilable, objectives and interests in relation to the environment. The productive consequence of this thinking for development studies is the need for a renewed focus on the key issues that define prosperity and well-being, as well as the political and moral economy within which human society governs itself, and its relationships with nature.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/dech.1217

Geographies of corporate practice in development: Contested capitalism and encounters

In this introduction to the themed issue, Geographies of Corporate Practice in Development: Contested Capitalism and Encounters, we reflect on how development is shaped by a range of actors in relation to corporate practices and market-based interventions. The research collectively fills a gap in scholarly work critically interrogating the meaning, practices and outcomes of corporate activities that couple growth and profit-led commercial goals with claims to improving lives of vulnerable communities. The geographical perspective adds an understanding of places and narratives of corporate practice, both in the micro-politics of everyday engagements and in associated macro level changes across different scales of engagement. Although the capitalist enterprise itself has long been debated in economic and development geography, its associated social, development and environmental costs and consequences have become the subject of renewed contestation, debate and critique in the last decade, and particularly following the 2008 financial crisis. Here we introduce a set of articles focused on particular development experiences that reflect the grey space between seemingly irreconcilable opposites—sustained commercial growth and profit versus human well-being—recognizing that the corporate interests at stake are multifarious and situated across both corporate and non-corporate domains of influence and actions. For this reason, we speak in this themed issue not merely of corporations and the effects of their development projects, but rather emphasize the encounters between the assemblage of actors involved in implementing, contesting and morphing these projects across scales of intervention, from boardroom ideas to grassroots iterations with social, environmental and economic implications.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.11.02

Comparing groups versus individuals in decision making: A systematic review protocol

Background Biodiversity management requires effective decision making at various stages. However decision making in the real world is complex, driven by multiple factors and involves a range of stakeholders. Understanding the factors that influence decision making is crucial to addressing the conflicts that arise in conservation. Decisions can be made either by individuals or by groups. This precise context has been studied extensively for several decades by behavioural economists, social psychologists and intelligence analysts. The observations from these disciplines can offer useful insights for biodiversity conservation. A systematic review on group versus individual decision making is currently lacking. This systematic review would enable us to synthesize the key insights from these disciplines for a range of scenarios useful for conservation. Methods The review will document studies that have investigated differences between group and individual decision making. The focus will be on empirical studies; the comparators in this case are decisions made by individuals while the intervention is group decision making. Outcomes include level of bias in decision outcomes or group performance. The search terms will include various combinations of the words “group”, “individual” and “decision-making”. The searches will be conducted in major publication databases, google scholar and specialist databases. Articles will be screened at the title and abstract and full text level by two reviewers. After checking for internal validity, the articles will be synthesized into subsets of decision contexts in which decision making by groups and individuals have been compared. The review process, all extracted data, original studies identified in the systematic review process and inclusion and exclusion decisions will be freely available as Additional file 1 in the final review.NM is funded by the Fondation Weiner Anspach in Belgium. WJS is funded by Arcadia. LVD was supported under the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS) Programme, grant code NE/K015419/1. GES is funded by The Nature Conservancy.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from BioMed Central via http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13750-016-0066-

Model evaluation and ensemble modelling of surface-level ozone in Europe and North America in the context of AQMEII

More than ten state-of-the-art regional air quality models have been applied as part of the Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII). These models were run by twenty independent groups in Europe and North America. Standardised modelling outputs over a full year (2006) from each group have been shared on the web-distributed ENSEMBLE system, which allows for statistical and ensemble analyses to be performed by each group. The estimated ground-level ozone mixing ratios from the models are collectively examined in an ensemble fashion and evaluated against a large set of observations from both continents. The scale of the exercise is unprecedented and offers a unique opportunity to investigate methodologies for generating skilful ensembles of regional air quality models outputs. Despite the remarkable progress of ensemble air quality modelling over the past decade, there are still outstanding questions regarding this technique. Among them, what is the best and most beneficial way to build an ensemble of members? And how should the optimum size of the ensemble be determined in order to capture data variability as well as keeping the error low? These questions are addressed here by looking at optimal ensemble size and quality of the members. The analysis carried out is based on systematic minimization of the model error and is important for performing diagnostic/probabilistic model evaluation. It is shown that the most commonly used multi-model approach, namely the average over all available members, can be outperformed by subsets of members optimally selected in terms of bias, error, and correlation. More importantly, this result does not strictly depend on the skill of the individual members, but may require the inclusion of low-ranking skill-score members. A clustering methodology is applied to discern among members and to build a skilful ensemble based on model association and data clustering, which makes no use of priori knowledge of model skill. Results show that, while the methodology needs further refinement, by optimally selecting the cluster distance and association criteria, this approach can be useful for model applications beyond those strictly related to model evaluation, such as air quality forecasting. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Will the Sustainable Development Goals address the links between poverty and the natural environment?

The relationships between the natural environment and poverty have been a central theme in the sustainability and development literatures. However, they have been less influential in mainstream international development and conservation policies, which often neglect or fail to adequately address these relationships. This paper examines how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may influence the framing of environment-poverty relationships. We argue that the SDGs’ comprehensive nature could provide an opportunity for better environment-poverty integration. To realise this potential, SDG-related activities will need to challenge the institutional status quo; transform how we measure, understand and implement development; design interventions that reflect local visions of development; make trade-offs between SDGs explicit; and address ultimate drivers of environmental degradation and poverty.Cambridge Humanities Research Gran

Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food, energy, water and the environment

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the ‘nexus’ of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.This work was supportedby the Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Number ES/L01632X/1] and is part of the Nexus Network Initiative. WJS is funded by Arcadia

Distinct positions underpin ecosystem services for poverty alleviation

AbstractAs the concept of ecosystem services is applied more widely in conservation, its users will encounter the issue of poverty alleviation. Policy initiatives involving ecosystem services are often marked by their use of win-win narratives that conceal the trade-offs they must entail. Modelling this paper on an earlier essay about conservation and poverty, we explore the different views that underlie apparent agreement. We identify five positions that reflect different mixes of concern for ecosystem condition, poverty and economic growth, and we suggest that acknowledging these helps to uncover the subjacent goals of policy interventions and the trade-offs they involve in practice. Recognizing their existence and foundations can ultimately support the emergence of more legitimate and robust policies.</jats:p

Exploring natural capital using bibliometrics and social media data

Research and interest into natural capital, i.e., the stock of the world’s natural resources, is increasing as it links humans with nature within a social-ecological system, contributing to ecosystem sustainability. We collected publication data for 300 natural capital papers to explore academic networks and research trends. We used Twitter to collect 14,193 tweets about natural capital over nine months. Analyzing publication data shows three main research clusters, but few coauthorships between the clusters. The results show substantial international coauthorships, and the dominance of American and British academics as coauthors. Analyzing Twitter data, we identified a small community of key users that tweet about natural capital frequently. We found that a range of words is used in tweets about natural capital and the overall sentiment of tweets is positive. For both types of data, “ecosystem services” and “biodiversity” are keywords associated with natural capital. Our results have identified key communities of natural capital researchers, but highlight a potential disconnect between research clusters that needs to be addressed. Current communities surrounding natural capital in academia and on Twitter are relatively exclusive and small