The environmental security debate and its significance for climate change

Policymakers, military strategists and academics all increasingly hail climate change as a security issue. This article revisits the (comparatively) long-standing “environmental security debate” and asks what lessons that earlier debate holds for the push towards making climate change a security issue. Two important claims are made. First, the emerging climate security debate is in many ways a re-run of the earlier dispute. It features many of the same proponents and many of the same disagreements. These disagreements concern, amongst other things, the nature of the threat, the referent object of security and the appropriate policy responses. Second, given its many different interpretations, from an environmentalist perspective, securitisation of the climate is not necessarily a positive development

Cost-effective external interference for promoting the evolution of cooperation.

The problem of promoting the evolution of cooperative behaviour within populations of self-regarding individuals has been intensively investigated across diverse fields of behavioural, social and computational sciences. In most studies, cooperation is assumed to emerge from the combined actions of participating individuals within the populations, without taking into account the possibility of external interference and how it can be performed in a cost-efficient way. Here, we bridge this gap by studying a cost-efficient interference model based on evolutionary game theory, where an exogenous decision-maker aims to ensure high levels of cooperation from a population of individuals playing the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma, at a minimal cost. We derive analytical conditions for which an interference scheme or strategy can guarantee a given level of cooperation while at the same time minimising the total cost of investment (for rewarding cooperative behaviours), and show that the results are highly sensitive to the intensity of selection by interference. Interestingly, we show that a simple class of interference that makes investment decisions based on the population composition can lead to significantly more cost-efficient outcomes than standard institutional incentive strategies, especially in the case of weak selection.</p

The past and future(s) of environmental peacebuilding

Environmental peacebuilding is a rapidly growing field of research and practice at the intersection of environment, conflict, peace and security. Focusing on these linkages is crucial in a time when the environment is a core issue of international politics and the number of armed conflicts remains high. This article introduces a special issue with a particular emphasis on environmental opportunities for building and sustaining peace. We first detail the definitions, theoretical assumptions and intellectual background of environmental peacebuilding. The article then provides context for the special issue by briefly reviewing core findings and debates of the first two generations of environmental peacebuilding research. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps that should be addressed in the next generation of research, and to which the articles in this special issue contribute: bottom-up approaches, gender, conflict-sensitive programming, use of big data and frontier technology, and monitoring and evaluation

Adult Day Health Center Participation and Health-Related Quality of Life

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the association between Adult Day Health Center (ADHC) participation and health-related quality of life. Design and Methods: Case-controlled prospective study utilizing the Medical Outcomes Survey Form 36 (SF-36) to compare newly enrolled participants from 16 ADHC programs with comparable community-dwelling older adults who did not attend an ADHC. Assessments were conducted at study enrollment, 6 and 12 months. Results: ADHC participants (n = 57) and comparison group subjects (n = 67) were similar at baseline in age, ethnic diversity, medical conditions, depression, cognition, immigration history, education, income, and marital status. Significantly more comparison group subjects lived alone (p = .002). One year after enrollment, the SF-36 domains role physical and role emotional improved significantly. Adjusted role physical scores for ADHC participants improved (23 vs. 36) but declined for the comparison group (38 vs. 26, time by group interaction p = .01), and role emotional scores improved for ADHC participants (62 vs.70) but declined for the comparison group (65 vs. 48, time by group interaction p = .02). Secondary analyses revealed that changes in daily physical functioning, depressed affect, or cognitive functioning did not explain the improvements found in role physical and role emotional scores for ADHC participants. No significant differences in trends for the 2 groups occurred for the SF-36 domains physical functioning, social functioning, and mental health. Implications: ADHC participation may enhance older adults’ quality of life. Quality of life may be a key measure to inform care planning, program improvement, and policy development of ADHC