Editorial : environmental governance of urban and regional development – scales and sectors, conflict and cooperation

Recent years have continued to see a concern for the detrimental environmental impacts of human economic activities particularly in the form of enhanced global warming, sea level rise, land degradation and deforestation. Although it can be argued that economic development and growth remain the priority for governments at a variety of spatial scales or levels, these same governments also express a desire through a growing number of policy initiatives to make such development more sustainable and environmentally-friendly. A growing interest amongst policy makers has been in identifying the ways in which environmental protection measures can be made complementary to economic development aims. Rather than seeing the environment and the economy in opposition, there has been a focus on the growth potential from developing a green or low-carbon economy (OECD, 2011). At the urban and regional scale governments have increasingly begun to try and position themselves as destinations for new forms of green economy investments as a source of a new round of capital accumulation (GIBBS and O’NEILL, 2014). In total then, questions around the environment, climate change and sustainability look set to grow in importance for decision makers in cities and regions

Insights into embedded policy paradigms and Kazakhstan's future trajectory

This chapter delineates the lessons from the book by linking the conclusions from different chapters and highlighting the implications for Kazakhstan’s future policy and governance in the light of the ambitious Kazakhstan-2050 strategy that has been on the nation’s agenda since its adoption in 2012. The chapter identifies four themes that were reiterated by the authors throughout the book. The overarching theme is sustainability of Kazakhstan’s development as the future of some sectors does not appear to be resting on policies that are best suited to meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century. The other themes may be summarised as calls to ensure advancement in four areas: economic restructuring, participatory governance, intersectoral thinking in policymaking, and policy integration, rather than fragmentation. This concluding chapter discusses each of these themes in detail and draws the learning points for adjustments in policy and governance

Justice at Sea: Fishers’ politics and marine conservation in coastal Odisha, India

This is a paper about the politics of fishing rights in and around the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in coastal Odisha, in eastern India. Claims to the resources of this sanctuary are politicised through the creation of a particularly damaging narrative by influential Odiya environmental actors about Bengalis, as illegal immigrants who have hurt the ecosystem through their fishing practices. Anchored within a theoretical framework of justice as recognition, the paper considers the making of a regional Odiya environmentalism that is, potentially, deeply exclusionary. It details how an argument about ‘illegal Bengalis’ depriving ‘indigenous Odiyas’ of their legitimate ‘traditional fishing rights’ derives from particular notions of indigeneity and territory. But the paper also shows that such environmentalism is tenuous, and fits uneasily with the everyday social landscape of fishing in coastal Odisha. It concludes that a wider class conflict between small fishers and the state over a sanctuary sets the context in which questions about legitimate resource rights are raised, sometimes with important effects, like when out at sea

A new lepto-hadronic model applied to the first simultaneous multiwavelength data set for Cygnus X--1

Cygnus X--1 is the first Galactic source confirmed to host an accreting black hole. It has been detected across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio to GeV $\gamma$-rays. The source's radio through mid-infrared radiation is thought to originate from the relativistic jets. The observed high degree of linear polarisation in the MeV X-rays suggests that the relativistic jets dominate in this regime as well, whereas a hot accretion flow dominates the soft X-ray band. The origin of the GeV non-thermal emission is still debated, with both leptonic and hadronic scenarios deemed to be viable. In this work, we present results from a new semi-analytical, multi-zone jet model applied to the broad-band spectral energy distribution of Cygnus X--1 for both leptonic and hadronic scenarios. We try to break this degeneracy by fitting the first-ever high-quality, simultaneous multiwavelength data set obtained from the CHOCBOX campaign (Cygnus X--1 Hard state Observations of a Complete Binary Orbit in X-rays). Our model parameterises dynamical properties, such as the jet velocity profile, the magnetic field, and the energy density. Moreover, the model combines these dynamical properties with a self-consistent radiative transfer calculation including secondary cascades, both of leptonic and hadronic origin. We conclude that sensitive TeV $\gamma$-ray telescopes like Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will definitively answer the question of whether hadronic processes occur inside the relativistic jets of Cygnus X--1.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The Big Society and the Conjunction of Crises: Justifying Welfare Reform and Undermining Social Housing

The idea of the “Big Society” can be seen as culmination of a long-standing debate about the regulation of welfare. Situating the concept within governance theory, the article considers how the UK coalition government has justified a radical restructuring of welfare provision, and considers its implications for housing provision. Although drawing on earlier modernization processes, the article contends that the genesis for welfare reform was based on an analysis that the government was forced to respond to a unique conjunction of crises: in morality, the state, ideology and economics. The government has therefore embarked upon a programme, which has served to undermine the legitimacy of the social housing sector (most notably in England), with detrimental consequences for residents and raising significant dilemmas for those working in the housing sector