What drives long-run biodiversity change? New insights from combining economics, palaeoecology and environmental history

This paper presents a new approach to understanding the effects of economic factors on biodiversity change over the long run. We illustrate this approach by studying the determinants of biodiversity change in upland Scotland from 1600-2000. The measure of biodiversity used is a proxy for plant species diversity, constructed using statistical analysis of paleoecological (pollen) data. We assemble a new data set of historical land use and prices over 11 sites during this 400 year period; this data set also includes information on changes in agricultural technology, climate and land ownership. A panel model is then estimated, which controls for both supply and demand shifts over time. A main result is that prices, which act in our model as a proxy for livestock numbers, do indeed impact on biodiversity, with higher prices leading to lower biodiversity

Economic determinants of biodiversity change over a 400 year period in the Scottish uplands

This study shows how data from very different disciplines can be combined to address questions relevant to contemporary conservation and understanding. This novel, interdisciplinary approach provides new insights into the role of economic factors as a driver of biodiversity loss in the uplands. Biodiversity levels have varied considerably over 400 years, partly as a function of land management, suggesting that establishing baselines or “natural” target levels for biodiversity is likely to be problematic. Changes in livestock grazing pressures brought about by changes in prices had statistically significant effects on estimated plant diversity, as did land abandonment. This suggests that longterm management of upland areas for the conservation of diversity should focus on grazing pressures as a key policy attribute. Another policy implication is that drastic cuts in grazing pressures – such as might occur under current reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy - can have adverse biodiversity consequences

Remembering and forgetting the Scottish Highlands: Sir James Mackintosh and the forging of a British imperial identity

This article explores the formation of British imperial identity through a focus on the career of Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832), a well-known Whig intellectual and imperial careerist who originally hailed from the Highlands of Scotland. Using Mackintosh's unpublished letters and autobiography, the article shows how he imagined and narrated his relationship to the Scottish Highlands from the vantage points of Bombay and London. In contrast to recent historiography that has focused on the translation of Scottish society, culture, and identity in British imperial spaces, this article argues that disidentification from the Highlands of Scotland and the erasure of different peoples, cultures, and textures of life was integral to Mackintosh's configuration of a British imperial identity

Geography, memory and non-representational geographies

I discuss the presence of memory within geography, particularly in relation to the interweavingnon-representational ⁄ peformative ⁄ affective ‘turns’. Memory seems under-considered in these nonrepresentationalgeographies (nrgs) which focus on the affective performativities of the present and the richness and creative potentials therein. As memory is a fundamental aspect of becoming, the roles it plays in the peformative moment need to be considered. Richness, potential and creativity emerges not simply from the moment per se, but from the legacies of the past carried into the present, not least through memory which underpins imagination, creativity and (productive) affective exchange. Emerging work on geography and memory does show some ‘non-representational’ traits and thus there is a potential for bringing this kind of work more fully into nrg. This is set in wider contexts of geographical approaches to memory, and the notion of ecologies of memories which form of interlinkages between individuals, various social collectives, materialities, texts, and past ⁄ present ⁄ future timespaces