Community-based groundwater and ecosystem restoration in semi-arid north Rajasthan (2): Reviving cultural meaning and value

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. Cultural and other less directly exploited ecosystem services tend to be excluded from decision-making, yet may underlie strong ties between people and their surroundings providing significant incentives for engagement with ecosystem conservation. Overlooking non-marketed services leads to non-systemic, utilitarian understandings and narrow solutions. Aquatic species were recorded in eleven ponded sections of three sub-catchments in semi-arid north-east Rajasthan that had been regenerated through community-based management activities, along with local associated medicinal, spiritual and other cultural values. Local religious and traditional beliefs reinforce awareness of the co-dependence of people with nature. Socially held values may be incommensurable with quantification and monetisation methods applied to marketed services, other than by rough proxies, but can be significant in engendering engagement in landscape regeneration. Pervasive global declines in habitat quantity and quality, with their implications for human wellbeing through loss of ecosystem services, raise questions about the adequacy of interpretations of sustainable development that fail to recognise the need not merely to reduce pressures upon but to actively regenerate the supportive capacities of damaged ecosystems. Lessons from the study region can inform this global need for practical action and policy reform to restore ecosystems as fundamental resources underpinning continuing human security and opportunity

La ciudad para todos: El futuro de los asentamientos humanos en América Latina y el Caribe

El informe presenta una visión regional sobre la ciudad y la gestión urbana en América Latina y el Caribe a los participantes de la Segunda Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Asentamientos Humanos - Hábitat II en Estambul (1996). Fue preparado por la Comisión Latinoamericana y del Caribe sobre los Asentamientos Humanos que fue creada en 1995 por iniciativa del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo y del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo. Contiene un conjunto de orientaciones estratégicas para atender a los desafíos futuros de la vivienda, la productividad y la calidad de vida en las ciudades. Incluye experiencias exitosas de la región y una síntesis de posiciones de la región en la Conferencia de Hábitat II. Discute en detalle los siguientes casos: planificación urbana de Curitiba, el Consejo de Integración de Programas de Urbanización Popular en el Estado de Ceará, el Fondo Nacional de Habitaciones Populares (FONHAPO) de México, y la formalización de la propiedad informal en Perú.

Planning Issues and Sustainable Development

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. There is a growing use of sustainable development by planners. The concept is being adopted without much controversy to create more holistic planning frameworks and community-based planning processes. However, there is no clear agreement on what sustainability means in terms of city size, urban form, and transportation. The debates are summarized and some resolution suggested