Socio-environmental Processes Research Articles

Participation as a Global Urban Strategy Towards Resilience

A recurring theme in urban planning and urban design, citizen participation has been adopted by international organisations (UNECE, 1998; UN, 2016; OECD, 2022) and, has recently, been reinstated in different conceptualizations, planning scales and political meanings, both through formal processes incorporated into legal planning frameworks or led by the local authorities and through citizen-led initiatives with varying degrees of interaction and conflict with formal urban policies (Cornwall, 2009; Miraftab, 2004; Kapsali 2023). The paper discusses the way participation in public space production is conceptualised in prominent urban strategies towards resilience as triggered, formulated and promoted globally by the Rockefeller Foundation Initiative “100 Resilient Cities”. First, the emergence of philanthropic foundations as new social actors of urban development in Greece, is understood as part of a new governance regime formulated in the context of austerity politics. A brief examination of prominent projects of public space creation that were funded by foundations during the crisis illuminates specific hegemonic discourses endorsed through the foundations’ granting initiatives for public space. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation and embarks on a critique of the way participation is conceptualized within the initiative and in the “Resilience strategies” of Athens and Thessaloniki. Notwithstanding their inclusive rhetoric, participation is instigated by an international benevolent foundation, facilitated by global consultants acting in parallel and not from within locally instituted planning processes. It is argued that within the framework of this global initiative, participation becomes a matter of techno-managerial “know-how” and its potential to unsettle unjust socio-environmental processes and act towards justice and democracy is questioned.

Understanding Pressures to Archaeological Heritage in the Face of Climate Change: An Integrated Approach to Coastal-Zone Assessments in Ireland

Coastal heritage and archaeological sites are part of a complex system of socioenvironmental processes whose conditions are placed at risk from increasing climate-change pressures and impacts. Cultural-heritage managers are working to increase understanding of these pressures and create ways to assess, mitigate, and/or adapt to change. Coastal-zone assessments (CZA) are a recognized methodology in several national management plans to gather detailed data in order to provide an informed assessment of current resources and any associated hazards and risks. A collaborative and innovative partnership is seeking to expand on current CZA models by integrating social, historical, and geomorphological criteria into archaeological site assessment, with aims toward the development of a resource-priority index for coastal-heritage managers in Ireland.

A guideline for spatio‐temporal consistency in water quality modelling in rural areas

A guideline for spatio‐temporal consistency in water quality modelling in rural areas

Everyday Life in extremis

Everyday Life <i>in extremis</i>

Upscaling in socio-environmental systems modelling: Current challenges, promising strategies and insights from ecology

Sustainability challenges in socio-environmental systems (SES) are inherently multiscale, with global-level changes emerging from socio-environmental processes that operate across different spatial, temporal, and organisational scales. Models of SES therefore need to incorporate multiple scales, which requires sound methodologies for transferring information between scales. Due to the increasing global connectivity of SES, upscaling – increasing the extent or decreasing the resolution of a modelling study – is becoming progressively more important. However, upscaling in SES models has received less attention than in other fields (e.g., ecology or hydrology) and therefore remains a pressing challenge. To advance the understanding of upscaling in SES, we take three steps. First, we review existing upscaling approaches in SES as well as other disciplines. Second, we identify four main challenges that are particularly relevant to upscaling in SES: 1) heterogeneity, 2) interactions, 3) learning and adaptation, and 4) emergent phenomena. Third, we present an approach that facilitates the transfer of existing upscaling methods to SES, using two good practice examples from ecology. To describe and compare these methods, we propose a scheme of five general upscaling strategies. This scheme builds upon and unifies existing schemes and provides a standardised way to classify and represent existing as well as new upscaling methods. We demonstrate how the scheme can help to transparently present upscaling methods and uncover scaling assumptions, as well as to identify limits for the transfer of upscaling methods. We finish by pointing out research avenues on upscaling in SES to address the identified upscaling challenges.

“El Viudo De Pescado”

“El Viudo De Pescado”

Geoarchaeological and Paleo-Hydrological Overview of the Central-Western Mediterranean Early Neolithic Human–Environment Interactions

Abstract Climate change is still a subject of debate for archaeologist-neolithicists. Its exact chronology, internal pattern, variations in space and time, and impacts on sites and ecosystems and on coastal dynamic and river systems have yet to be assessed. Only a strict comparative approach at high chronological resolution will allow us to make progress on the causality of the socio-environmental processes at work during Neolithisation. Post-depositional impacts on the Early Neolithic hidden reserve also remain underestimated, which has led to the perpetuation of terms such as “Macedonian desert” and “archaeological silence” in the literature on the Neolithic. Off-site geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental approaches provide some answers to these questions and opens up new research perspectives.

Procesos socioambientales, educación y jóvenes indígenas en Chiapas. Una aproximación etnográfica

This article aims to carry out an ethnographic approach to the interactions indigenous Tsotsil, Tseltal, Ch’ol and Zoque youth have with their natural and social environment and with the land as an axis of sociocultural and economic life throughout Chiapas. It is argued that in these interactions, known as socio-environmental processes, formal education and pluriactivity, related to migratory phenomena, constitute spheres of social experience where young people reflect or act. Finally, the interviews carried out with local social actors and the ethnographic documentation in general, provided a comparative view whose value lies in the explanatory possibilities of why Indigenous young students of high school or university could be considered socioenvironmental subjects and the ways in which they are facing environmental problems.

Longitudinal study of the cascading effects of racial discrimination on parenting and adjustment among African American youth

ABSTRACT Attachment theory posits that parenting plays akey role in children’s attachment and subsequent development. Given the normativity of racial discrimination on everyday life experiences of African American families, there is a need to integrate historical and socio-environmental processes in studies to understand how minoritized parents raise secure and stable children. Results from the current study revealed direct associations between mothers’ reports of discrimination and heightened depression and anxiety. Maternal discriminatory experiences were indirectly associated with more negative parenting and compromised parent-child relationship quality, through mothers’ psychological functioning. Elevated emotional and behavioral management problems among youth were directly associated with exposure to racial discrimination. Exposure to discrimination during middle childhood facilitated adapted or learned strategies to manage similar situations as youth transitioned into adolescence, with reduced patterns of depressive symptomology. No significant gender effects emerged. Implications for theoretical advancement and future research are provided.

Cumulative Socionatural Displacements: Reconceptualizing Climate Displacements in a World Already on the Move

Climate-induced displacement is attracting increasing media, state, and scholarly attention, albeit often in a way that situates migration as either an example of climate adaptation or a failure thereof. Whether depicted as success or failure, both framings can invisibilize the preexisting socioenvironmental processes that render climate-induced migrations necessary—or, conversely, that can inhibit them entirely. Perspectives on displacement and environmental migration from within political ecology and human geography offer an alternative register, looking beyond unidirectional socioeconomic or environmental drivers to document how uneven development reproduces displacements relationally and historically. Drawing on these theorizations, as well as empirical research from agrarian Southeast Asia, this article develops the notion of cumulative socionatural displacements as one approach for conceptualizing socioecologically driven displacement in a world already on the move. We demonstrate this approach through an analysis of displacement in Southeast Asia that begins by tracing the evolving state, market, and agroecological relations that have made mobility integral to agrarian viability while setting the stage for more intense climate impacts. In doing so, we also center the long-term (nonclimatic) environmental changes that are often sidelined in both anthropocentric debates on rural displacements and climate doomsday scenarios. We argue that examining climate-induced migration as just one facet of cumulative socionatural displacements is necessary for overcoming the ontological and political impasses engendered by prevailing narratives that collapse climate migration into convenient but misleading binaries.

Place-responsive Pedagogies in the Anthropocene: attuning with the more-than-human

Drawing on New Materialist frameworks for environmental and sustainability education, we extend and deepen our understanding of contemporary place-responsive pedagogies in the light of our human-impacted geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and its allied environmental concerns. Empirically, in a new and original way, we explore the role of the more-than-human in educators’ planning and enactment of place-responsive pedagogies. We show that place-responsive pedagogies are derived from ongoing attunements reciprocally made by all participants to each other – educators, learners, and the more-than-human – and between the place of learning and these participants. Findings show that these attunements emerge from socio-environmental processes and features of a place, but this article also shows the critical importance of (i) what educators and learners are able to notice and respond to, (ii) how educators choose to build upon this noticing and response-making, and (iii) how they actively incorporate the agencies of the more-than-human into teaching and learning. Wider implications for researching environmental and sustainability education are considered.

From section to landscape(s): reconstructions of environmental and landscape changes for the past 8000 years around the site of Wakarida (Ethiopia) using chronostratigraphy

In Northern Tigray (Ethiopia), the combined presence in the valley bottoms of sedimentary fills several meters thick and of archaeological remains of human settlements (homes, camps) raises the question of the socio-environmental processes at the origin of these deposits and their interactions with human populations. However, in certain (national, legislative) contexts, it can be difficult to apply very advanced techniques or to perform a large number of analyses. This paper shows that a chronostratigraphic approach based on laser granulometry, loss on ignition and radiocarbon dating provides satisfactory answers to the main geoarchaeological questions. Our specific objective was to reconstruct the landscape and environmental changes in the region around the Wakarida archaeological site, based on the sedimentary deposits in the valley bottoms. These deposits are now cultivated by the inhabitants, thanks to the construction of agricultural terraces in the 20th century. Archaeological excavations unearthed an urban settlement at Wakarida which dates from the classical Aksumite (150–400/450 AD) and post-Aksumite (800/850 AD) periods, and traces of earlier archaeological occupations (pre- and proto-Aksumite periods, 800–50 BC) in the study area. These remains raise questions about the influence of societies on their environment. A method based on a combination of fieldwork, sedimentological analyses and dating was used to answer these questions. This chronostratigraphic study is partially based on the identification of chronological inversions, revealing ablation and depositional phases in the sedimentary cascades, which have to be taken into account to understand the evolution of the site. We identified several phases in the establishment of the present-day landscape around the Wakarida site. During the Northgrippian (Early Holocene), the valleys were progressively filled by low-energy alluvial and/or colluvial processes. During the Meghalayan (Middle Holocene), ablation processes alternated with depositions resulting from climatic processes and possible anthropogenic influences. From the 1st millennium BC, the impact of the population on its environment (deforestation) has resulted in chronological inversions in the deposits, particularly around the 14th and 17th centuries AD.

Ecoartivism in Times of Climate Change and Toxic Waste Emergencies: A Theoretical Perspective through the Lens of ziREjA's Photography and Performance Art

Ecoartivism in Times of Climate Change and Toxic Waste Emergencies:A Theoretical Perspective through the Lens of ziREjA's Photography and Performance Art Rosita Scerbo The 21st century ecological crisis is a tragic reality. In recent years, contemporary artists have become advocates for climate change solutions and environmental activism, addressing issues like ecological practices, toxic waste, sustainability, loss of biodiversity, and pollution. In this context, this study aims to explore and analyze the photography and performance art of Irene Sanfiel (ziREjA), an award-winning contemporary artist based in Tenerife, a Spanish archipelago located in the Atlantic Ocean. The different sections of my investigation will introduce a selection of theoretical approaches that will attempt to conceptualize some fundamental notions such as eco-art, ecology, and ARTivism (Buckland 2010; Bunting 2014; Cheetham 2013; Andrews 2004; Lippard 2007; Morton 2010). On the one hand, one of the main focuses of this essay will be her trash art images that include the human figure, different representations of climate change, and trash accumulation's exponential effects, and its related problems. Some of her activist projects' objects of my study, such as "La maga vestida", gather photographs of ziREja wearing the traditional Tenerife folkloric dress in the insular garbage management service. The female subject is always surrounded by a waste mountain that shows the reality of the island and a side that is not often shown to the public. The Spanish artist plays with concepts related to gender, body, tradition, trash accumulation, and responsibility, thus turning her activist work into a powerful weapon against our destructive treatment of the earth. Other photographic projects, such as "itrash coreografías con la basura" and "yesWetrash", play with the image of the body adjacent to trash and sometimes use irony and comedy employing contradictory and oxymoron illustrations to engage the viewers and provoke them to think about the consequences that our actions and decisions have on the future of the planet. On the other hand, another center of attention of this research will be ziRejA's performance art and how it dialogues with ecological and social problems. Her eco-art installations show the disposition of the garbage in different parts of the city to make the spectators reflect on how much waste is produced by an average citizen ("Trash comes back to the city") or make the viewers contemplate the relation between trash and [End Page 141] the body through contemporary experimental dance performances ("iTrash"). Ultimately, this investigation will consider how these different uses address environmental issues and connect with her audiences and how they engage with her activist goals. The entirety of the art pieces analyzed in this study was produced on the famous island of Tenerife, ziREjA's own native land and well-known location of mass tourism and damaging socioenvironmental processes. As the most populous island of the Canary Islands, Tenerife receives about 5 million tourists each year (Andrews 2004) who contribute drastically to the increase of the toxic waste emergency. This large island in the Atlantic Ocean represents perfectly the innovative concept of "slow violence" introduced by Rob Nixon as the violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, and other environmental emergencies that take place gradually and often invisibly. Nixon highlights the inattention we have paid to the lethality of many environmental crises, and we will see how this approach resonates with ziREjA's activist work. Historical Overview Ecological art or Eco-art is a practice in the art world that aims to preserve and repair the different life forms and resources of the earth. This approach to art applies the principles of ecosystems to living species and their environment and it includes wilderness, rural, suburban, and urban locations (Weintraub 2012). It is essential to clarify that this is a distinct genre from Environmental art that instead focuses its attention on functional ecological systems-restoration. This genre takes part in socially engaged, activist, and community-based interventions. Another specific aspect of Ecological art is based on the fact that this practice deals with economics, ethics, politics, culture, and aesthetic values and the way these impact the conditions of ecosystems. Ecological art brings together artists, scientists, philosophers, and activists who work in a collaboratively on restoration...

Planetary health in practice: sensing air pollution and transforming urban environments

Often, health is seen to be a matter of attending to individuals and their behaviour, or of studying populations in order to manage disease. However, pollution is a problem of the health of environments, as much as it is a problem of the health of bodies. To understand health and pollution, it is necessary to examine energy-intensive infrastructures and developed environments that produce air pollutants and impair ecosystems. In other words, air pollution requires approaches to health that are planetary in scope and that account for the socio-environmental processes and relations that make health possible. Planetary health is often approached as a broad analysis of earth systems. However, diverse and situated environmental practices also contribute to the formation of planetary health. This article asks how citizen-sensing practices tune into the problem of air pollution in Southeast London, and in so doing differently configure pollution and planetary health. While many sensing technologies promise to make citizens into more capable political actors through the collection of data, this research investigates how communities use sensors in distinct ways to support, activate or extend community-led projects in urban environments. Rather than citizen-sensing practices contributing to improved air quality through the abstract circulation of data, we found that environmental monitoring became enmeshed in ongoing and broader struggles to improve the health of urban environments. These practices not only challenge the official scripts of sensing devices, they also remake the usual ways of demarcating health in relation to air pollution by shifting away from individual behaviour and toward collective environmental actions. This article then asks how community proposals for urban design and action conjoin with citizen-sensing practices to generate strategies for reworking and reconstituting health toward more planetary compositions.

Analysis of Land Transition Features and Mechanisms in Peripheral Areas of Kyoto (1950–1960)

This article analyzes land transition in the peripheral areas of Kyoto City during a period of fast economic growth in Japan. Disorganized urban growth during periods of urban transition consumed farmland and forestland, with a lasting impact on the city’s environment. The article reports changes in land use and land cover (LULC), population, roads and other transportation infrastructure and the factors behind these changes. The analysis is based on classification of a georeferenced mosaic of black-and-white aerial photos processed with the use of remote sensing technology to reconstruct the city’s LULC change for the years 1950 and 1960. This information is complemented by GIS data, and information derived from the consultation of primary and secondary historical sources. The results show that the urbanization patterns in periods of urban transition and economic growth which vary in different parts of the city determine LULC trajectories. Complex factors and mechanisms at the local level shape these dynamics. The article provides insights into the complex socioenvironmental processes that shape urban land systems and how their unforeseen consequences can impact the transition to sustainable cities.

Desertification risk, economic resilience and social issues: From theory to practice

Land degradation and early forms of desertification in both advanced economies and emerging countries reflect complex socio-environmental processes driven by multiple interactions between biophysical and socioeconomic forces across different spatial scales. The present study investigates desertification risk, land degradation, and socio-demographic dynamics through the lens of “resilience,” adopting complex adaptive systems (CAS) thinking. The resilience of socio-environmental systems exposed to land degradation is defined as the capacity of a regional economy to respond to crises and reorganize by making changes to preserve functions, structure, and feedback, and to promote future development options. By reviewing the socioeconomic resilience of local socio-ecological systems exposed to land degradation, this study achieves a better comprehension of the multifaceted processes that lead to a higher risk of desertification and the intimate relationship with underlying population trends and demographic dynamics. A comprehensive approach based on resilience thinking was formulated to review both environmental and socio-demographic issues at the landscape scale, and provide a suitable foundation for sustainability science and regional development policies.

Socioenvironmental Aspects Related to Mangrove Forests under the Influence of Oil Exploitation Activities in Northeastern Brazil: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Soares, M.L.G.; Castro, E.M.N.V., and Pellegrini, J.A.C., 2020. Socioenvironmental aspects related to mangrove forests under the influence of oil explotation activities in Northeastern Brazil: An interdisciplinary approach. In: Malvárez, G. and Navas, F. (eds.), Global Coastal Issues of 2020. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 95, pp. 88-91. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.This study analyses, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the connections between environmental vulnerability of the mangrove forests of Garapuá (Bahia, Brazil) and the social vulnerability of the shellfish collectors and fishermen, from the tensions inflicted with the insertion of the oil industry. It presents the interpretation of complex phenomena and integrated management of the environment, incorporating both the social and biological aspects. The analysis of local socioenvironmental processes was focused on the integration of (a) the characterization of mangrove forests structural types, by using quantitative methods, that allowed a classification of mangrove forests vulnerability to oil spill considering three components (susceptibility, sensitivity and resilience) and (b) the characterization of social tensions, through field observations and semi-structured interviews, from the point of view of the qualitative approach, that allows an analysis of the social vulnerability to changes in the community livelihoods, which are closely related to the health of the mangrove system. As a result of these analysis we found 12 Structural Types for the studied forests, comprising different levels of environmental vulnerability to oil spills. Regarding social context, some aspects related to health, education, income, transportation, religion and social organization that emerged from the interviews point to an evident fragility of the social structure. Besides this, the intense pressure for land occupation, coupled with the arrival of the oil industry, increases the vulnerability of these biological formations and, as a consequence, increases the vulnerability of the local community. The study also demonstrates that interdisciplinary analyses strengthen the debate in different segments of society (companies, environmental agencies, non-governmental organisations, universities, social groups, etc.) and, consequently, tends to foment the transformation of the socioenvironmental reality experienced by social groups without decision power.

Áreas Naturales Protegidas como territorios en disputa: intereses, resistencias y acciones colectivas en la gestión compartida

Como en muchos países del mundo, el gobierno de México ha decretado en diversas regiones Áreas Naturales Protegidas (ANP) a fin de conservar los ecosistemas existentes. Sin embargo, el cumplimiento de los objetivos por los que fueron creadas estas áreas se ha visto limitado debido una visión predominantemente ecológica que no toma en consideración los intereses, la estructura y la cultura de los actores implicados; falencia que podría subsanarse a través de procesos de participación social y de una mayor inclusión en la toma de decisiones, ya que la ausencia de estos procesos ha contribuido a que surjan o se agraven conflictos socioambientales. Con base en resultados de diagnósticos participativos, cartografía social, entrevistas y recorridos participativos, analizamos el escenario complejo de intereses, resistencias y acciones colectivas en torno al ANP Archipiélago de Bosques y Selvas de la Región Capital del Estado de Veracruz, México, y esbozamos reflexiones sobre la gestión compartida del territorio y sobre esquemas de conservación para que éstos puedan ser social y ambientalmente justos. Argumentamos que la perspectiva de territorio permite un entendimiento más complejo de los actores e intereses implicados, lo cual resulta necesario para transformar conflictos desde la acción colectiva y para aportar a procesos socioambientales.

Socio-environmental tensioning in coastal communities: an interdisciplinary study in the mangroves of southern Bahia

Abstract This article analyzes the connections between environmental vulnerability of the mangrove forests of Garapuá (Bahia, Brazil) and the social vulnerability of the shellfish colectors and fishermen, from the tensions inflicted with the insertion of the oil industry. From an interdisciplinary perspective, it presents the interpretation of complex phenomena and integrated management of the environment, incorporating the opening of the human spirit to the vision of totality. The seizure of the dialectical logic of local socio-environmental processes was based on the characterization of mangrove forests, using quantitative methods, and integration with the research process through field observations and semi-structured interviews, from the point of view of the qualitative approach. The article aimed to demonstrate that interdisciplinary analysis strengthens the debate in different segments of society (companies, environmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations, universities, communities, etc.) and, consequently, tends to favor the transformation of the socio-environmental reality experienced by social groups without decision power.

Exploring Low-Carbon Futures: A Web Service Approach to Linking Diverse Climate-Energy-Economy Models

The use of simulation models is essential when exploring transitions to low-carbon futures and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. There are many models developed to understand socio-environmental processes and interactions, and analyze alternative scenarios, but hardly one single model can serve all the needs. There is much expectation in climate-energy research that constructing new purposeful models out of existing models used as building blocks can meet particular needs of research and policy analysis. Integration of existing models, however, implies sophisticated coordination of inputs and outputs across different scales, definitions, data and software. This paper presents an online integration platform which links various independent models to enhance their scope and functionality. We illustrate the functionality of this web platform using several simulation models developed as standalone tools for analyzing energy, climate and economy dynamics. The models differ in levels of complexity, assumptions, modeling paradigms and programming languages, and operate at different temporal and spatial scales, from individual to global. To illustrate the integration process and the internal details of our integration framework we link an Integrated Assessment Model (GCAM), a Computable General Equilibrium model (EXIOMOD), and an Agent Based Model (BENCH). This toolkit is generic for similar integrated modeling studies. It still requires extensive pre-integration assessment to identify the ‘appropriate’ models and links between them. After that, using the web service approach we can streamline module coupling, enabling interoperability between different systems and providing open access to information for a wider community of users.