Mapping the diverse community economy sector in Christchurch

This project seeks to produce a database, conceptual map, and a literal map of the diverse economic activities contributing to both coping with change and the future renewal of Christchurch. Abstract Post-quake Christchurch has seen a flourishing of alternative economic activities that work to directly support the wellbeing of residents, often through the volunteer and community sector. This project seeks to produce a database, conceptual map, and a literal map of the diverse economic activities contributing to both coping with change and the future renewal of Christchurch. This short paper will outline the project’s goals and theoretical foundations, and will provide opportunities for community groups to register their interest in participating in this mapping project

Delivering Urban Wellbeing through Transformative Community Enterprise: Final Report

Urban communities around the world are using farming and gardening to promote food security, social inclusion and wellbeing (Turner, Henryks and Pearson, 2011). In the New Zealand city of Christchurch, a recently formed social enterprise known as Cultivate currently operates two such urban farms. The farms, which use vacant urban land and green waste to grow and distribute locally grown food, are based around an innovative community form of economy that provides care and training for urban youth. The farms provide a therapeutic environment that is co-created by youth interns, urban farmers, social workers and community volunteers. Cultivate’s urban farms are a valuable example of a creative urban wellbeing initiative that may be useful for other organisations seeking to promote youth wellbeing, hauora,1 social development and urban food security in Aotearoa New Zealand and further afield. To document and measure the holistic impact of Cultivate, we collaborated with Cultivate staff, youth interns and other stakeholders to extend an already existing assessment tool: the Community Economy Return on Investment (CEROI). The CEROI tool was workshopped with urban designers, planners, and community practitioners to test its potential for documenting the non-monetary return of Cultivate’s work, and then communicating this return to those involved in other urban wellbeing projects. This report summarises the research and explains how we used the CEROI tool to document and measure the transformative social and environmental outcomes of Cultivate’s activities. Cultivate is the site in which effort, relationships, money and materials are brought together. It is a site which produces a significant amount of food, but its benefits also extend to changed lives, changed relationships, and a more positive sense of Christchurch as a post-disaster city. These returns on Cultivate’s activities are not captured by notions of profit, ‘savings from helping young people to avoid the justice system’, or even the production of ‘good workers for the economy’. Instead, they might be described as ‘something more’. This research responds to the need to develop a language and an approach to thinking about value that helps us to represent this ‘something more’. We show how the concept of return on investment from a community economies perspective can enable us to describe and document this return in a more holistic sense (especially in comparison to conventional financial accounting approaches). We also suggest that the Cultivate case study offers an important example of how mental wellbeing and access to therapeutic urban environments can be addressed through the work of a self-sustaining community enterprise. In offering this perspective, we acknowledge that further work is required to refine the CEROI tool, so that it can be used to support the work of other community and social enterprises

From Absences to Emergences::Foregrounding traditional and Indigenous climate change adaptation knowledges and practices from Fiji, Vietnam and the Philippines

The differential impacts of climate change have highlighted the need to implement fit-for-purpose interventions that are reflective of the needs of vulnerable communities. However, adaptation projects tend to favour technocratic, market-driven, and Eurocentric approaches that inadvertently disregard the place-based and contextual adaptation strategies of many communities in the Global South. The paper aims to decolonise climate change adaptation guided by the critical tenets of ‘Decolonising Climate Adaptation Scholarship’ (DCAS). It presents empirical case studies from Fiji, Vietnam, and the Philippines and reveals the different ways that Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) and strategies are devalued and suppressed by modernist and developmentalist approaches to climate adaptation. The paper then foregrounds some of the adaptive techniques that resist and remain, or have been re-worked in hybrid ways with ILK. Ultimately, this paper combats the delegitimisation of ILK by mainstream climate change adaptation scholarship and highlights the need for awareness and openness to other forms of knowing and being

Feminist geographies in Aotearoa New Zealand: cultural, social and political moments

Aotearoa New Zealand is a nation of promise, potential and enigma: it was the first country in the world where women gained the vote in 1893 and now boasts the youngest woman world leader in 2017. It is also a postcolonial nation where structural racism, homophobia, and sexism persist, yet it has also given legal personhood to a river. Our Country Report foregrounds Aotearoa New Zealand feminist geographic scholarship that responds to, reflects, and sometimes resists such contrasts and contradictions at the national scale. We employ the lens of the 2017 national election to critically engage with current gendered and indigenous politics in the country. Analyzing these politics through three ‘feminist moments,’ our paper highlights the breadth and scope of current Aotearoa New Zealand feminist geographic scholarship and directions

Employment and Compliance with Pandemic Influenza Mitigation Recommendations

Noncompliance may result from job insecurity and financial problems associated with missing work

Designing an environmental flow framework for impounded river systems through modelling of invertebrate habitat quality

Many rivers have undergone flow modification by impoundments to provide services such as water supply and hydropower. There is an established consensus that typical modified flow regimes do not sufficiently cater to the needs of downstream ecosystems, and more must be done to understand and mitigate their associated impacts. This study presents a novel, transferable framework by which a small-scale impoundment in North West England is assessed through the use of linked hydro-ecological modelling in SRH-2D and CASiMiR, utilising flow velocity measurements and macroinvertebrate sampling data. Model predictions of habitat quality were supplemented by established ecological principles such as the importance of flow heterogeneity. Results are used to design environmental flow regimes, with the aim of improving ecological metrics whilst considering conflicting water demands. Based on an analysis of historical flow records, the implementation of designer flows over a 12 month period demonstrated increased peak species habitat qualities of 23–26%, characteristics such as flow heterogeneity were more naturalised, and 22% less water was released from the impoundment. Should outcomes be validated by in-stream flow experiment, there is great potential for further development and application of this method, including regional transferability for the rapid designation of environmental flows across a number of sites of similar magnitude and geography

Awkward engagements in mothering : embodying and experimenting in northwest China

15 page(s

Reconciling tourism, cultural change and empowerment in a Tibetan host community

Tourism to Tibetan regions has become increasingly popular amongst Westerners in the last few decades, as interest in Tibetan culture and religion has grown. This interest in things Tibetan has combined with the literature on development and tourism in indigenous communities to result in a conceptualisation of Tibetan culture as a fragile cultural relic that must be preserved and protected from outside influences. However, the indigenous Tibetan communities of Western China’s Jiuzhaigou National Nature Reserve have told a different story of their experiences with tourism and development. Mass tourism in Jiuzhaigou has in fact been harnessed for community development and cultural revitalisation through local women’s communal businesses. Yet their development and empowerment has been to some extent bittersweet, as the women fear that their decision to use tourism revenue to offer their children choice through the Chinese education system may ultimately erode their traditional culture. The dilemma for the people of Jiuzhaigou is similar to that for many indigenous groups: how can a desire to preserve traditional culture be reconciled with a desire to empower the next generation

Exploring the potential of mass tourism in the facilitation of community development : a case study of Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, Western China : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, New Zealand

It is not generally thought that there is great potential for sustainable and empowering local-level development through mass tourism; however the majority of world tourism continues to be at the large scale. This is especially so in China, where mass tourism is pursued as a means of developing the western regions where ethnic minority groups mostly reside. Instead of advising only small-scale community tourism based on theories of participation and empowerment, there is a need to examine realistically the potential of mass tourism for local-level development that is both sustainable and empowering. This thesis uses the case study of Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, Sichuan, China to explore the possibilities for the development of resident Tibetan communities hosting more than a million Chinese tourists per year. According to the values of the Tibetan village Panyazhai, well-being has indeed been enhanced through mass tourism, in a manner that is moving towards sustainability and empowerment. The thesis concludes that in Jiuzhaigou regulation is the key to sustainable and empowering development, and appropriate regulation is best achieved through partnerships between local communities and the State that involve both formal and personal relationships