Local Communities Research Articles

Who and what belongs to us? Towards a comprehensive concept of inclusion and planetary citizenship

In this theoretical article, we ask who and what belongs to us. We aim to conceptualise planetary citizenship and identify the scale for experiences of planetary inclusion. As a basis for the planetary approach, we utilise systems thinking and eudaimonic well-being that transcends hedonism and materialism and that focuses on meaningful and purposeful living, personal growth, engagement and positive relationships. Expanding the concept of human participation is necessary as the contemporary lifeworld has gradually stretched beyond the traditional boundaries of local communities and nation-state societies. Furthermore, the lifestyle of people living in high-income industrial countries has also been noted to have serious consequences in wider circles of life. Thus, human–biosphere relationships must be renegotiated to strengthen responsible citizenship and facilitate caring for life on Earth. To promote this ideal, we widen the already validated scale for experiences of social inclusion towards a scale for experiences of planetary inclusion. We introduce the concept of planetary citizenship, which enhances the concept of inclusion. Planetary citizenship refers to a life orientation where the boundary between humans and the rest of nature disappears. It refers to the citizen who is simultaneously a local, global and planetary actor. The attachment to something larger could help planetary citizens grow towards being a person who is aware and reflective and can look at the world from new perspectives. Experiences of planetary inclusion could also help to solve the problems of climate change, depletion of natural resources and biodiversity loss.

Financing electricity resilience in local communities: a review of the literature

Financing electricity resilience in local communities: a review of the literature

The global relevance of locally grounded ethnobiology.

While ethnobiology is a discipline that focuses on the local, it has an outstanding, but not yet fully realized potential to address global issues. Part of this unrealized potential is that universalistic approaches often do not fully recognize culturally grounded perspectives and there are multiple challenges with scaling up place-based research. However, scalability is paramount to ensure that the intimate and context-specific diversity of human-environmental relationships and understandings are recognized in global-scale planning and policy development. Here, we identify four pathways to enable the scalability of place-based ethnobiological research from the ground up: local-to-global dialogues, aggregation of published data, multi-sited studies, and geospatial analyses. We also discuss some major challenges and consideration to encourage continuous reflexivity in these endeavours and to ensure that scalability does not contribute to unnecessarily decontextualizing, co-opting, or overwriting the epistemologies of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. As ethnobiology navigates multiple scales of time and space and seeks to increase its breadth, this study shows that the use of deliberately global approaches, when carefully nested within rich field-based and ecological and ethnographically grounded data, can contribute to: (1) upscaling case-specific insights to unveil global patterns and dynamics in the biocultural contexts of Indigenous Peoples and local communities; (2) bringing ethnobiological knowledge into resolutions that can influence global environmental research and policy agendas; and (3) enriching ethnobiology's field-based ethos with a deliberate global analytical focus.

Analyzing the Economic Impact of Airport Expansion Projects on Local Communities

Analyzing the Economic Impact of Airport Expansion Projects on Local Communities

The Political Legacies of Wartime Resistance: How Local Communities in Italy Keep Anti-fascist Sentiments Alive

The Political Legacies of Wartime Resistance: How Local Communities in Italy Keep Anti-fascist Sentiments Alive

Unsettling the Play-based Approach by thinking with ghosts and haunting

ABSTRACT In this artistic essay using (re)photography, we analyse two interactions in a Washington DC, classroom that features a play-based approach to child development. The pioneers of early childhood education helped frame play as a method of learning. However, the racial memory of a place continuously disturbs this pioneering conceptualisation of the play-based approach. Adopting Avery Gordon’s (2008) notion of haunting, this essay unsettles the play-based approach to learning by evoking our sense of unease, which derives from articulating children’s play with the racial history of the local community. We invite the readers into our affective connections with the place to show how child’s play becomes a gesture by which to create a space to remember or honour a ghost. In doing so, we hope to show how we critically mobilised the pioneering conceptualisation of the play-based approach.

Reach, Adoption, and Implementation Strategies of a Telehealth Fall Prevention Program: Perspectives From Francophone Communities Across Canada.

Introduction. A fall may impact a person's physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. Fall prevention programs are being implemented to reduce these negative outcomes. However, linguistic barriers in health services may reduce access to such prevention programs. A telehealth fall prevention program was designed to increase access to such programs in French for Francophone minority communities in Canada. This capacity-building project aimed to support community partners to deliver this telehealth program and document strategies used to reach, adopt, and implement the program within various Francophone and Acadian Minority Communities. Methods. A sequential explanatory mixed methodology was used to document reach, adoption, and implementation strategies and describe the lived experiences of program facilitators and organization representatives. Reach, adoption, and implementation were documented and analyzed descriptively, while lived experiences were analyzed using content analysis following the Consortium Framework for Implementation Research. Results. Twelve organization representatives or program facilitators from eight organizations operating in four different provinces participated in the study. Three themes emerged from the qualitative data on reach and adoption: external context, internal context, and capacity building. Four themes were identified as barriers and facilitators to implementation: level of preparation and time management, interpersonal relations and telepresence, exercise facilitation and safety, and technological problem-solving. Conclusion. Using tailored reach and adoption strategies such as prioritizing provinces with higher proportions of needs and training local community program facilitators may lead to the successful implementation of a new telehealth fall prevention program. Results from this study could potentially inform other primary prevention programs or telehealth program implementation.

Elite Coalitions and Rebel Control in Northern Côte d’Ivoire

ABSTRACT How do armed movements gain civilian compliance and prevent counter-mobilization in localities under their wartime control? This paper argues that rebel capacity to control civilians is contingent on the coalitions formed between rebel mid-level commanders and elite groups embedded in local communities. Rebels are confronted with coalitional choices because local communities are contested and comprised of multiple sets of elite groups. Coalitional choices influence rebel control because they determine whether rebels ally with strong or weak local partners. Where rebel allies are weak, they should confront serious challenges to eliciting civilian compliance. Where rebel allies are stronger, rebels should confront less resistance. I argue that the availability of elites as potential allies for armed movements depends on their pre-conflict proximity to the state. This paper develops this argument through a comparison of three localities governed by the Forces Nouvelles (FN) in Côte d’Ivoire (2002–2011).

Socio-environmental Opportunities for Organic Material Management in California's Sustainability Transition.

Contemporary resource management is doubly burdened by high rates of organic material disposal in landfills, generating potent greenhouse gases (GHG), and globally degraded soils, which threaten future food security. Expansion of composting can provide a resilient alternative, by avoiding landfill GHG emissions, returning valuable nutrients to the soil to ensure continued agricultural production, and sequestering carbon while supporting local communities. Recognizing this opportunity, California has set ambitious organics diversion targets in the Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Law (SB1383) which will require significant increases (5 to 8 million tonnes per year) in organic material processing capacity. This paper develops a spatial optimization model to consider how to handle this flow of additional material while achieving myriad social and ecological benefits through compost production. We consider community-based and on-farm facilities alongside centralized, large-scale infrastructure to explore decentralized and diversified alternative futures of composting infrastructure in the state of California. We find using a diversity of facilities would provide opportunity for cost savings while achieving significant emissions reductions of approximately 3.4 ± 1 MMT CO2e and demonstrate that it is possible to incorporate community protection into compost infrastructure planning while meeting economic and environmental objectives.

유아 놀이중심 교육과정을 반영한 기후·생태계 프로그램 효과성 연구

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a climate-ecosystem program reflect-ing an early childhood play-based curriculum on early childhood development (nature), environmental con-servation attitudes, ecological literacy, and early childhood playfulness. Methods The study participants are 5-year-old children from a kindergarten in Gyeonggi Province, with 13 in-dividuals in the experimental group and 15 individuals in the control group. SPSS 23.0 was used to determine the mean, standard deviation, and reliability coefficient of the study variables. The homogeneity test was conducted using the pre-test mean scores between groups, and the difference between the experimental and control groups was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test based on post-test mean scores. Pre-post differences between the experimental and comparison groups were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results The main research results are as follows: First, the simple difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the study variables revealed improvement in the experimental group(from 0.13 to 1.02 points), while the comparison group showed both an increase(from 0.01 to 0.36 points) and a decrease(from -0.26 to -0.03 points). There was no statistically significant difference in pretest mean scores between the experimental and comparison groups, confirming homogeneity. The pre-post difference test of the experimental group showed statistically significant differences in early childhood development (nature) and environmental conservation atti-tudes and subscales (conservation attitude, recycling attitude, environmental pollution prevention attitude), eco-logical literacy and subscales (nature's rights, intention to support, resource protection, ecological sensitivity, eco-logical social environment, ecological development_reverse, nature governance_reverse, ecological crisis indif-ference), and early childhood playfulness and some subscales (physical spontaneity, social spontaneity, sense of humor). On the other hand, there were no statistically significant differences in the cognitive spontaneity and ex-pression of pleasure sub-domains of preschoolers' playfulness. The pre-post difference test for the comparison group found statistical significance only for ecological sensitivity, a sub-scale of ecological literacy, and physical spontaneity, a sub-scale of preschoolers' playfulness. Second, the factors that resulted in statistically significant differences in post-hoc mean scores between the experimental and comparison groups were environmental con-servation attitudes and their sub-scales, recycling attitudes, ecological literacy and its sub-scales, supportive in-tention, ecological sensitivity, nature dominance(reverse), and ecological crisis indifference. Conclusions The results of this study confirm the effectiveness of climate and ecosystem programs through play. As an extension of this study, we aim to propose collaborative activities with the local community through a living lab approach.

A system mapping activity to visualize lithium’s interconnectedness to societal and environmental aspects of the green energy transition

Abstract Lithium’s role in the global green energy transition provides an engaging context to visualize the interconnectedness of chemistry to seismic shifts taking place in society. Lithium has seen a dramatic increase in utilization, but given lithium’s current low rates of recyclability, this development is exacerbating the e-waste problem. Equally important, we posit that lithium extraction, from either brine or ore, and the associated impacts on the environment and local communities should not be so easily decoupled from the shift in human behaviors causing its demand. Presented here is a mapping activity that was trialed in professional learning workshops organized in New Zealand for secondary/high school chemistry teachers. In their mapping activity response, the teachers were able to connect typical school chemistry content (batteries, chemical processes) with environmental (planetary systems) and social, economic, and ethical considerations (useful products, unintended consequences, inequity in access to water) of the ongoing electrification of society. The teachers indicated a positive intention to utilize the activity, or one similar with a different chemical process or product, in their own classrooms. A school-ready version of the activity is provided in the supplementary information, which was revised based on feedback from the teachers attending the workshops.

Reducing Commercial Tobacco Sales to Youth On and Around California Tribal Reservations with a Reward and Reminder Retail Intervention.

High prevalence of commercial tobacco product (CTP) use among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth is a public health crisis. A multi-level Tribal-community-based participatory research project under Tribal public health authority implemented a retailer-focused intervention to reduce AI/AN youth CTP use. We sought resolutions in support of a retailer-focused CTP intervention from Tribal Nations organized by a tribally-directed research program. We identified tobacco retail outlets operating on and within 5 miles of 9 Tribal reservations, and CTP products sold at these outlets. We conducted a four-wave Reward and Reminder intervention with apparent minor buyers. Clerks who complied with the law received a modest reward and commendation in social media posts to the local Tribal communities, while clerks who sold without age verification were reminded of the laws. Of 18 retail outlets selling CTP, 8 sold e-cigarettes, and all sold combustible cigarettes. The Reward and Reminder intervention showed an approximate 25% reduction in sales of CTP to apparent minors, with a 33% baseline CTP sales rate without age verification and an 8% intervention CTP sales rate without age verification. The intervention increased awareness of laws prohibiting CTP sales to minors and mandating age verification for young adults seeking to buy CTP. The intervention, which had support from all governing Tribal Nations, builds the evidence base of effective practices which Tribal public health authorities may utilize to reduce youth access to CTP on and around Tribal reservations. Sovereign Tribes have authority over commercial businesses operating on their lands. Tobacco 21 laws aiming to restrict commercial tobacco availability to youth are supported by Tribes. A retailer intervention in which apparent minors attempt commercial tobacco purchases can offer accountability feedback to retailers both on and near Tribal reservations. Obtaining Tribal support and publicizing the interventions helps mobilize Tribal communities to support commercial tobacco prevention and promote healthy youth.

Looking for It: Language, Literacy, and History in Place

Within this article, we explore how teachers, researchers, and community members—including youth—worked in collaborative conversations and place-based projects to explore the languages, stories, and histories of their local Georgia communities. By examining the process of “looking for it,” as one youth researcher puts it, this article explores three inquiry practices Georgia youth use to identify and sustain community language and literacy practices: personal storytelling, walking histories, and breaking bread. These community literacies resulted in youth having a stronger sense of self and community and understanding the relationship between them. Additionally, the practices spurred critical thinking, historical inquiry, and socioemotional learning. Community exploration through community literacies created the foundation for place-based language, literacy, and history research to take root and flourish.

Research with Black Communities to Inform Co-Development of a Framework for Anti-Racist Health and Community Programming.

The effects of systemic racism were exacerbated and amplified throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The resurgence of the "Black Lives Matter" movement in North America brought awareness to the public, especially white people, of the impacts of systemic racism in society and the urgent need for large-scale and institutional anti-racism work. In collaboration with a local Community Health Centre, this research focused on identifying priority areas for tailored and co-developed anti-Black racism interventions in health services and community programming, as well as examining how purposeful relationships can be created with African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) communities in London, Ontario. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in either French or English with nine formal or informal leaders from London's ACB communities. Interpretive description methodology guided analysis and interpretation. Participants indicated that anti-Black racism is ever-present in the community and in their lives, with systemic racism causing the most harm. Racism should be addressed by creating ACB-specific services, and education for non-Black communities; increased representation, inclusion, and engagement of ACB people within organizations, especially in leadership roles, are essential. A framework based on study findings to guide how organizations can develop authentic and purposeful relationships with ACB communities is presented. Organizations will continue to perpetuate systemic racism unless they actively seek to be anti-racist and implement strategies and policies to this end. The proposed framework can guide partnerships between health and community organizations and ACB communities, and support co-development of strategies to address anti-Black racism.

Modelling and Measuring Local Community Engagement (LCE)

Modelling and Measuring Local Community Engagement (LCE)

Consistent community assembly but contingent species pool effects drive β-diversity patterns of multiple microbial groups in desert biocrust systems.

One of the key goals of ecology is to understand how communities are assembled. The species co-existence theory suggests that community β-diversity is influenced by species pool and community assembly processes, such as environmental filtering, dispersal events, ecological drift and biotic interactions. However, it remains unclear whether there are similar β-diversity patterns among different soil microbial groups and whether all these mechanisms play significant roles in mediating β-diversity patterns. By conducting a broad survey across Chinese deserts, we aimed to address these questions by investing biological soil crusts (biocrusts). Through amplicon-sequencing, we acquired β-diversity data for multiple microbial groups, that is, soil total bacteria, diazotrophs, phoD-harbouring taxa, and fungi. Our results have shown varying distance decay rates of β-diversity across microbial groups, with soil total bacteria showing a weaker distance-decay relationship than other groups. The impact of the species pool on community β-diversity varied across microbial groups, with soil total bacteria and diazotrophs being significantly influenced. While the contributions of specific assembly processes to community β-diversity patterns varied among different microbial groups, significant effects of local community assembly processes on β-diversity patterns were consistently observed across all groups. Homogenous selection and dispersal limitation emerged as crucial processes for all groups. Precipitation and soil C:P were the key factors mediating β-diversity for all groups. This study has substantially advanced our understanding of how the communities of multiple microbial groups are structured in desert biocrust systems.

An ecologically sound and participatory monitoring network for pan-Arctic seabirds.

In a warming Arctic, circumpolar long-term monitoring programs are key to advancing ecological knowledge and informing environmental policies. Calls for better involvement of Arctic peoples in all stages of the monitoring process are widespread, although such transformation of Arctic science is still in its infancy. Seabirds stand out as ecological sentinels of environmental changes, and priority has been given to implement the Circumpolar Seabird Monitoring Plan (CSMP). We assessed the representativeness of a pan-Arctic seabird monitoring network focused on the black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) by comparing the distribution of environmental variables for all known versus monitored colonies. We found that with respect to its spatiotemporal coverage, this monitoring network does not fully embrace current and future environmental gradients. To improve the current scheme, we designed a method to identify colonies whose inclusion in the monitoring network will improve its ecological representativeness, limit logistical constraints, and improve involvement of Arctic peoples. We thereby highlight that inclusion of study sites in the Bering Sea, Siberia, western Russia, northern Norway, and southeastern Greenland could improve the current monitoring network and that their proximity to local populations might allow increased involvement of local communities. Our framework can be applied to improve existing monitoring networks in other ecoregions and sociological contexts.

Upwind Despite Headwind? Degrowth Transformations Amidst Shrinkage and Eroding Democracy in an East German Small Town

Spatial transformation follows the logic of a growth-oriented economy that values cities according to their place in the chain of capitalist wealth production. Many cities in East Germany have lost their significance as sites of production and are consequently facing population decline and the weakening of social bonds in the community. For this reason, citizens of the East German small town of Zella-Mehlis (state of Thuringia) have begun to reflect on alternative models for urban development. In this article, the process of arriving at a degrowth strategy, as provided by the academic discourse, will be documented. It will be demonstrated that the process of shrinkage has not only left little space for a degrowth planning approach put into practice. Moreover, the article reveals that the costs of the growth economy on society are not limited to population shrinkage, but also have a severe impact on the sociability of the local community. The rise of right-wing populists and climate change-denying actors mirrors the decreasing social ability for collective learning processes needed for a shift to a solidary degrowth strategy. However, the case study shows how ambivalent these developments are: Long-term participatory processes within the public–civic partnership framework of the Aufwind (German for upwind) initiative in Zella-Mehlis can challenge path dependencies and open new degrowth-inspired perspectives. The article is informed by many years of intensive field research in a qualitative mixed-method design and focuses on the close links between shrinkage processes, the local degrowth agenda, and the consequences of an eroding democracy.

코리안 디아스포라, 고려인 주제의 실천적 다문화 역사학습의 실제

Objectives This study has an autobiographical character as it is a study that looks back and reflects on ‘my’ class based on my experience at K Elementary School. In the process of research and practice, I continuously tried to reflect the contextual characteristics of the school and region. I recognized the characteristics of the village's mul-ticultural situation, the current status of K Elementary School, the situation faced by Koryoin students, the diffi-culties in communication between Korean and Koryoin students, and the difficulties that fellow teachers face in teaching Koryoin students. Based on this awareness, we designed and implemented a practical multicultural his-tory class for solidarity and togetherness beyond discrimination. Methods First, the topic of forced migration of Koryo people, a minority history, was reviewed from the per-spective of memory and forgetting, and the direction of practical multicultural history education was set through analysis of multicultural education theory and curriculum. Next, I designed and implemented a practical multi-cultural history class on the topic of forced migration of Koryo people and analyzed the process and results. Results The analysis and implications are that, first, the memory of the forced migration of Goryeo people, a for-gotten minority history, was discovered and recalled. Second, it is the acquisition of multicultural com-petency(cultivation of multicultural cultural literacy) based on empathy and interculturalism beyond the assim-ilationist perspective. Third, they had participation and practical experience for solidarity and companionship. Fourth, I looked back on what kind of multicultural teacher I am as a teacher who practices multicultural education. Conclusions The implications of the study are that, in terms of research methods, history classes were autobio-graphically reflected and analyzed based on personal memory data and accumulated cultural artifacts (research notes, student output, photos, videos, etc.). Through this, teachers in the field will be able to understand the de-sign and execution aspects of history classes in detail and use it as a reference for their own class practice research. Next, in terms of research content, history education was practiced with the theme of multiculturalism. Because I recognized the limitations of traditional history education and designed and implemented practical mul-ticultural classes by reflecting the contextual uniqueness of local communities and school, it can be a meaningful reference for schools in multicultural situations. Lastly, the focus on the history of minorities, the Koryo people and forced migration of Koryo people, can be a good example of migration history education.

A Review of the AGE Barometer 2023: EU Good Practices and Barriers in the Empowerment of Elderly in the Labour Market - The Case of Hungary

The 2023 edition of the AGE Barometer was released by the Age Platform Europe, aimed at consolidating data from European statistics and national-level sources and enriched by feedback from 19 European countries, including Hungary. The publication aimed at empowering older people in the labour market and promoting sustainable and high-quality working lives for them. The Barometer revealed that the European Union (EU) is far from reaching its 78% employment target for adults aged 20 to 64 with its current state of just 62.3%. This could be due to various barriers to the integration of older people in the labour market, which include inadequate supportive policies, ageism, and unfavourable workplace conditions. Conversely, these are broadly stated in the context of the EU; hence, a deeper analysis of these results, with a special focus on the case of a single country, such as Hungary, is relevant to establish a clearer understanding of the national and local framework of these findings and in determining facilitating policies and programmes as well as gaps in promoting elderly inclusion in the labour sector. Using various methods such as critical analysis, desk and literature review, and thematic analysis, this article examined the Barometer report and other relevant publications. The Barometer 2023 effectively provided general issues and actionable areas in supporting older people in the labour market, combating ageism, and ensuring an age-friendly work environment in the EU landscape. Moreover, it revealed that Hungary performed better in employing older persons compared to the EU average, likely associated with a favourable environment for older workers through its legal protection systems, financial incentives, equal treatment policy, and initiatives such as pensioner cooperatives and information technology education. However, this still falls below the target, and based on the analysis and review of existing relevant publications, this could be associated with some unfavourable policies, gender disparities, a continuous rise in the ageing population, an increased number of migrant workers, technology challenges, ageism, political mayhems, cultural and traditional constraints, and other challenges that continue to threaten the marketability of older people, thereby resulting in consequences for their financial, physical, social, psychological, and environmental wellbeing. Moreover, the report also stated few good practices in promoting elderly employment in the county, contrary to numerous efforts implemented by both the Hungarian government, non-government organisations, and other institutions, which remained unrecognised, perhaps due to limited data availability and gaps in the reporting schemes. Finally, the Barometer 2023 report was realized to be included and used as a part of the technical working papers of the European Economic and Social Committee, being the EU advisory body that deals on the issues and opinions regarding this matter. The latest edition of the Barometer has the potential to spark positive changes among policymakers and decision-makers in acknowledging the economic potential of the elderly and in eliminating barriers that hinder elderly integration in the labour market. In the case of Hungary, substantial policies, programmes, and welfare services exist that facilitate elderly employment; however, challenges were also identified, hence the precise recommendations provided in the Barometer report must transform into reality, taking into consideration the unique national, local, and cultural peculiarities of Hungary and its local communities. It is also suggested that systematic data collection and good practice documentation must be facilitated in Hungary, and feedback from the other 18 countries in the Barometer report must be thoroughly reviewed or benchmarked for possible inspiration and replication. Lastly, the potentials of the Barometer 2023 to be used at all levels of decision-making must be maximized.