Pond Appeal Series: Teaching Community Stakeholders to Manage Pestiferous Aquatic Midge Emergences from Storm Water Retention Ponds

Saint Lucie West (Florida) residents living adjacent to storm water retention ponds complained about the emergence of large swarms of pestiferous aquatic midges. Pond Appeal is a program developed by the Saint Lucie County Cooperative Extension to educate residents about pond best management practices that would result in a reduction in midge emergences. One hundred and fifty people participated in the program. All participants indicated they increased their understanding of pond management techniques and adopted practice changes that enabled them to better manage these ponds. This resulted in a reduction in pestiferous aquatic midges and improved quality of life

The undebated issue of justice: silent discourses in Dutch flood risk management

Flood risk for all types of flooding is projected to increase based on climate change projections and increases in damage potential. These challenges are likely to aggravate issues of justice in flood risk management (henceforth FRM). Based on a discursive-institutionalist perspective, this paper explores justice in Dutch FRM: how do institutions allocate the responsibilities and costs for FRM for different types of flooding? What are the underlying conceptions of justice? What are the future challenges with regard to climate change? The research revealed that a dichotomy is visible in the Dutch approach to FRM: despite an abundance of rules, regulations and resources spent, flood risk or its management, are only marginally discussed in terms of justice. Despite that the current institutional arrangement has material outcomes that treat particular groups of citizens differently, depending on the type of flooding they are prone to, area they live in (unembanked/embanked) or category of user (e.g. household, industry, farmer). The paper argues that the debate on justice will (re)emerge, since the differences in distributional outcomes are likely to become increasingly uneven as a result of increasing flood risk. The Netherlands should be prepared for this debate by generating the relevant facts and figures. An inclusive debate on the distribution of burdens of FRM could contribute to more effective and legitimate FRM

Conceptualizing age-friendly communities

On the political and policy front, interest has increased in making communities more "age-friendly", an ongoing trend since the World Health Organization launched its global Age-Friendly Cities project. We conceptualize age-friendly communities by building on the WHO framework and applying an ecological perspective. We thereby aim to make explicit key assumptions of the interplay between the person and the environment to advance research or policy decisions in this area. Ecological premises (e.g., there must be a fit between the older adult and environmental conditions) suggest the need for a holistic and interdisciplinary research approach. Such an approach is needed because age-friendly domains (the physical environment, housing, the social environment, opportunities for participation, informal and formal community supports and health services, transportation, communication, and information) cannot be treated in isolation from intrapersonal factors, such as age, gender, income, and functional status, and other levels of influence, including the policy environment. © Canadian Association on Gerontology 2011