REDD at the crossroads? The opportunities and challenges of REDD for conservation and human welfare in South West Uganda

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) in the tropics could slow climate change while contributing to biodiversity conservation and to improvement of people’s livelihoods. In this study we assessed the opportunities and challenges of implementing REDD in South West (SW) Uganda. We consulted key stakeholders and reviewed regional literature particularly focusing on the opportunities for conservation and human welfare benefits. We structured our study using the Simpson and Vira (2010) framework for assessing policy interventions. The leading drivers of forest loss and degradation include escalating timber trade, fuel-wood extraction and agricultural expansion. Generally, local stakeholders had limited awareness of REDD, and local expectations appeared un-realistically high. Mechanisms for allocating and administering REDD payments remained unknown. However, Civil Society Organisations appeared the most popular option to manage REDD funding as government agencies had limited credibility. For REDD to succeed, the challenges we have highlighted will need to be addressed: key to success will be improvements in foundational knowledge, enabling institutions and social conditions. Our results have implications for potential REDD activities around the world which face similar challenges.This work was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to Mbarara University of Science and Technology.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Inderscience via http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJESD.2015.07013

Provinciality and the Art World: The Midland Group 1961- 1977

This paper takes as its focus the Midland Group Gallery in order to first, make a case for the consideration of the geographies of art galleries. Second, highlight the importance of galleries in the context of cultural geographies of the sixties. Third, discuss the role of provinciality in the operation of art worlds. In so doing it explicates one set of geographies surrounding the gallery – those of the local, regional and international networks that connected to produce art works and art space. It reveals how the interactions between places and practices outside of metropolitan and regional hierarchies provides a more nuanced insight into how art worlds operated during the sixties, a period of growing internationalism of art, and how contested definitions of the provincial played an integral role in this. The paper charts the operations of the Midland Group Gallery and the spaces that it occupied to demonstrate how it was representative of a post-war discourse of provincialism and a corresponding re-evaluation of regional cultural activity

Introduction : screen Londons

Our aim, in editing the ‘London Issue’ of this journal, is to contribute to a conversation between scholars of British cinema and television, London historians and scholars of the cinematic city. In 2007, introducing the themed issue on ‘Space and Place in British Cinema and Television’, Steve Chibnall and Julian Petley observed that it would have been possible to fill the whole journal with essays about the representation of London. This issue does just that, responding to the increased interest in cinematic and, to a lesser extent, televisual, Londons, while also demonstrating the continuing fertility of the paradigms of ‘space and place’ for scholars of the moving image1. It includes a wide range of approaches to the topic of London on screen, with varying attention to British institutions of the moving image – such as Channel Four or the British Board of Film Classification – as well as to concepts such as genre, narration and memory. As a whole, the issue, through its juxtapositions of method and approach, shows something of the complexity of encounters between the terms ‘London’, ‘cinema’ and ‘television’ within British film and television studies

The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy-makers as their agents, and policy-makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms

The changing patterns of group politics in Britain

Two interpretations of ways in which group politics in Britain have presented challenges to democracy are reviewed: neo-corporatism or pluralistic stagnation and the rise of single issue interest groups. The disappearance of the first paradigm created a political space for the second to emerge. A three-phase model of group activity is developed: a phase centred around production interests, followed by the development of broadly based 'other regarding' groups, succeeded by fragmented, inner directed groups focusing on particular interests. Explanations of the decay of corporatism are reviewed. Single issue group activity has increased as party membership has declined and is facilitated by changes in traditional media and the development of the internet. Such groups can overload the policy-making process and frustrate depoliticisation. Debates about the constitution and governance have largely ignored these issues and there is need for a debate

Five ways to enhance the impact of climate science

Policy-making is rarely driven by evidence alone. Thus, climate scientists who adopt an ‘evidence-based’ mindset, expecting more science to lead automatically to better policy, are likely to be disappointed. Instead, embracing an ‘evidence-informed’ attitude to policy-making will be more productive, recognising that evidence must be deployed in such a way as to interact persuasively with other factors. Using the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC as inspiration, this commentary argues that climate scientists would do well to consider five ideas and ultimately embrace an evidence-informed approach to presenting evidence.This work is taken from a larger PhD project currently being undertaken in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. This work is very kindly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/I901957/1) and by the Homerton College Charter Scholarship scheme. I would like to thank S. E. Owens, A. Donovan and W. M. Adams for comments, and D. Watson for help with the figures.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available in Nature Climate Change 4, 522–524 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2270 . http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n7/full/nclimate2270.htm

Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications

AbstractWe question whether the increasingly popular, radical idea of turning half the Earth into a network of protected areas is either feasible or just. We argue that this Half-Earth plan would have widespread negative consequences for human populations and would not meet its conservation objectives. It offers no agenda for managing biodiversity within a human half of Earth. We call instead for alternative radical action that is both more effective and more equitable, focused directly on the main drivers of biodiversity loss by shifting the global economy from its current foundation in growth while simultaneously redressing inequality.</jats:p

‘An almost continuous picture of sordid vice’: The Keeler Affair, the Profumo Scandal and ‘Political’ Film Censorship in the 1960s

In 1963, the Profumo affair brought Christine Keeler to public attention and transformed her, briefly, into one of the most talked about women in the world. Seeking to exploit her notoriety, Topaz Films entered into an agreement with Keeler to make a cinematic version of her life story, The Keeler Affair. This article explores some of the controversies surrounding The Keeler Affair, especially in terms of the way in which the British Board of Film Censors dealt with the film. The Keeler Affair was submitted to the BBFC on two occasions – once when it was completed and then again in 1969 when Keeler's memoirs were serialised in the News of the World – and was rejected both times. On the second occasion, The Keeler Affair was also submitted to, and rejected by, the Greater London Council. The article seeks to establish some of the political factors that shaped the BBFC's and the GLC's attitudes towards politically contentious films, and demonstrates that the decisions made by the censors were guided not simply by the content of The Keeler Affair, but also by personal relationships, shared Establishment attitudes, concerns about public perceptions of the film industry and a desire not to be drawn into political controversies. Consequently, the article serves to reinforce the idea that censorship is best understood as a dynamic process shaped by a host of determining factors, many of which might best be described as extra- or para-cinematic

Creating restoration landscapes: partnerships in large-scale conservation in the UK

It is increasingly recognized that ecological restoration demands conservation action beyond the borders of existing protected areas. This requires the coordination of land uses and management over a larger area, usually with a range of partners, which presents novel institutional challenges for conservation planners. Interviews were undertaken with managers of a purposive sample of large-scale conservation areas in the UK. Interviews were open-ended and analyzed using standard qualitative methods. Results show a wide variety of organizations are involved in large-scale conservation projects, and that partnerships take time to create and demand resilience in the face of different organizational practices, staff turnover, and short-term funding. Successful partnerships with local communities depend on the establishment of trust and the availability of external funds to support conservation land uses. We conclude that there is no single institutional model for large-scale conservation: success depends on finding institutional strategies that secure long-term conservation outcomes, and ensure that conservation gains are not reversed when funding runs out, private owners change priorities, or land changes hands

'Drowning in here in his bloody sea' : exploring TV cop drama's representations of the impact of stress in modern policing

The Criminal Justice System is a part of society that is both familiar and hidden. It is familiar in that a large part of daily news and television drama is devoted to it (Carrabine, 2008; Jewkes, 2011). It is hidden in the sense that the majority of the population have little, if any, direct contact with the Criminal Justice System, meaning that the media may be a major force in shaping their views on crime and policing (Carrabine, 2008). As Reiner (2000) notes, the debate about the relationship between the media, policing, and crime has been a key feature of wider societal concerns about crime since the establishment of the modern police force. He outlines the recurring themes in post-war debates in this field. For Conservatives there has been an ongoing concern that the media is criminongenic, as it serves to undermine traditional institutions, including the police. From the viewpoint of radical criminology, the impact of the media is two-fold: it exaggerates legitimate concerns about crime and emphasises the bureaucratic and other restrictions under which the police operate (Reiner, 2000). This is seen as undermining due process and legitimatising what can be termed a ‘maverick’ approach to policing. An early example of this can be seen in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies (Siegel, 1971) where Harry Callaghan acts as a one-man law enforcement system outside of the formal legal process, a process portrayed as corrupt, inefficient, and concerned with offenders’ rights rather than protecting victims. From a policing perspective, Reiner (2000) argues that film and TV drama creates a simplistic narrative of crime solving that is almost completely divorced from the reality of modern police work, a finding consistent with more recent work by Cummins et al., (2014)