Urban resilience, the local and the politics of the anthropocene:reflections on the future of the urban environment

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Waltz with development:insights on the developmentalization of climate-induced migration

The idea of migration as an adaptation strategy has gained traction in the debates on climate change and mobility. It emphasises migrants’(economic) agency and praises remittances as source of funding for household and community resilience. The environmental determinism of the previously dominant narratives on ‘climate refugees’ gives way to more accurate understanding of how environmental conditions interact with migration processes, thereby facilitating a convinced engagement by the migration and development communities. This article interrogates the discourses on migration as adaptation through the long-standing ‘migration and development’ debates. We show that, despite their aura of novelty within climate policy, the ‘new’ discourses build on ‘old’ foundations – i.e. the optimistic swings of the “migration anddevelopment pendulum” (de Haas 2012). Moreover, the ‘migration as adaptation’ thesis has not come with a deeper engagement with the structural inequalities that (re)produce socio-ecological vulnerabilities, impeding the mobility of some while forcing others into displacement. Rather, it mirrors the neoliberal version of the classical optimist take on the migration-development nexus, through which mainstream international agendas have tried to foster development and discipline mobility in the last few decades. The extent to which this proves a positive turn in climate (migration) policy is up to debate

‘Floods’ of migrants, flows of care:Between climate displacement and global care chains

This paper explores the growing interface between climate displacement and participation in `global care chains’ under conditions in which climate change is already impacting on lives and livelihoods – especially in the Global South. Early engagements with ‘climate migration’ tended towards alarmist predictions of mass migration, triggering proposals to `secure’ potential host nations against anticipated influxes. Recently, apparently more sober and measured approaches have emerged in which labour migration is viewed as contributing positively to climate `resilience’. We evaluate this policy turn in the light of everyday ‘ground level’ caring practices and adaptive responses to climate stress. The new approach, we argue, encourages more able and resourceful people from under-resourced, climate-vulnerable regions to join trans-local or transnational labour markets – which often equates with predominantly female care workers entering global care chains. Effectively, this means that those best equipped to provide care in places where it is most urgently needed end up providing care in relatively privileged, less climate-vulnerable places. Questioning the climate justice implications of this mobilization against the gradient of vulnerability, we offer suggestions about how climate policy could actually support caring practices in the places where ordinary people struggle at the sharp edge of global climate change

‘Floods’ of migrants, flows of care:Between climate displacement and global care chains

This paper explores the growing interface between climate displacement and participation in `global care chains’ under conditions in which climate change is already impacting on lives and livelihoods – especially in the Global South. Early engagements with ‘climate migration’ tended towards alarmist predictions of mass migration, triggering proposals to `secure’ potential host nations against anticipated influxes. Recently, apparently more sober and measured approaches have emerged in which labour migration is viewed as contributing positively to climate `resilience’. We evaluate this policy turn in the light of everyday ‘ground level’ caring practices and adaptive responses to climate stress. The new approach, we argue, encourages more able and resourceful people from under-resourced, climate-vulnerable regions to join trans-local or transnational labour markets – which often equates with predominantly female care workers entering global care chains. Effectively, this means that those best equipped to provide care in places where it is most urgently needed end up providing care in relatively privileged, less climate-vulnerable places. Questioning the climate justice implications of this mobilization against the gradient of vulnerability, we offer suggestions about how climate policy could actually support caring practices in the places where ordinary people struggle at the sharp edge of global climate change

re-negotiating the role for science in society

The concept of the Anthropocene conveys a radical novelty: humans have become a ‘geological actor’ and are able to influence and affect the biosphere to an extent unprecedented in history. This new state of affairs poses intertwined challenges to ecological, technological, political and normative systems. It also raises hard questions about knowledge and science. The emerging field of tainability Science seeks to respond to such challenges. In this paper we focus on the interface linking sciences and society, and explore attempts within Sustainability Science to conciliate two possibly divergent goals. On the one hand, the sheer urgency of problems related to the Anthropocene (e.g. climate change) calls for science to be more responsive to societal needs and provide quick-and-ready solutions to ’real-world’ problems. On the other hand, a quality benchmark for science is still needed and wanted. How to avoid compromising one of the sides is an open question. In the literature on Sustainability Science, tendencies can be found to give science role to envision optimal, universally valid solutions to these challenges, as well as to negotiate these with society. If not cautiously done, this may lead Sustainability Science towards something akin to ‘social engineering’. Such a development faces risks of the following three kinds: (i) to ‘freeze’ a solution, i.e. losing critical/ reflective perspectives, (ii) to be less open to instances from society, (iii) to neglect the immanent plurality of wills in collective decisions making. We assess some of the assumptions and implications of such approaches, isolating their components with regards to the formulation of scientific questions, the procedures and methods employed, and the processes of transmission (and negotiation) of the results to society. We conclude by arguing that these challenges call for cautiousness when envisioning new forms for the intersections between science and society

About Time!:The Abyss of the Future and End(s) of Subjectivity in (Climate) Dystopias

As the climate emergency becomes tangible, its intractability within current paradigms suggests the need to envision and enact new “worlds” and forms of subjectivity. This has proven difficult, also in popular culture. In literature and film, dystopia and catastrophe are a frequent resort to narrate a post-climate crisis world. Building on scholarship critical of this tendency, the article zooms in on two dystopian novels, The Water Knife (Bacigalupi, 2015) and La galassia dei dementi (Cavazzoni, 2018), and contrasts the subjective positions these two “nightmares” project onto a future disaster – based on a melancholic mourning of loss, and on a shared condition of lack, respectively. The article argues that, while the former risks resuscitating established ways of “being human” – part of the crises that climate change symptomatizes –, the latter can facilitate imagining new and more just socio-ecological constellations

Technical and environmental characterisation of recycled aggregate for reuse in bricks

Waste mud coming from an aggregate washing plant was formerly used as filling material for a pond, aimed at the recovery of an abandoned quarry. Once completed the filling capacity of the pond, the need for identifying a possible reuse of mud produced by the plant arose in order to avoid landfill disposal. Therefore, mud has been geometrically, physically and chemically characterised for its recovery as construction material. A variety of tests was carried out on mud samples as required by EN technical specifications and by Italian environmental standards, focusing particularly on leaching behaviour. The tested material showed satisfactory physical and chemical properties and a release of pollutants below the limits set by the Italian code. Many mix-designs for the production of unfired bricks made of waste mud, sand and straw, stabilised and non-stabilised with lime, gypsum or cement, were developed. The bricks were tested in order to evaluate mechanical properties and leaching behaviour. Mud bricks provided remarkable compressive strength, even if not suitable for structural elements. The use as interior design to minimise humidity changes and to facilitate a thermal insulation is fostered, thus strengthening the so-called green building economy

On the Frontlines of Fear Migration and Climate Change in the Local Context of Sardinia, Italy

Migration and climate change are hot topics generating widespread concerns and fears in European public opinion. However, a striking difference between them is the ‘efficacy’ of the fears that surround the two topics. For migration, the spectre of a looming invasion and similar narratives translate into immense impacts and a securitisation of the matter. For climate change, growing awareness over the prospect of a climate emergency only sporadically translates into urgent action. This article engages with this remarkable difference of great political relevance. While analyses of fear and securitisation of migration and climate have privileged inter-state politics and international discourses, here we investigate how fear is produced, mobilised, and contested in sub-national political arenas. Rather than on a spectacular case (as Lampedusa or a Pacific Island) we focus on Sardinia, an ordinary region that, for both climate change and migration, is not under the spotlight – there are no melting glaciers nor climate refugees. Drawing on focus groups and interviews with Sardinian local authorities, we detail how mayors and municipality feel on the frontline against both climate change and migration. However, rather than as security issues, both emerge tangled with questions such as austerity, spopolamento(depopulation), economic decline, and rural-urban dynamics. But while fears over migration translate into strong citizen pressure mayors feel compelled to react to, concerns about climate change instead lead to a sort of fatalism or deferral. We conclude the paper with reflections on the implications that this important difference has for broader debates on climate and migration

Pneumo- and neurotropism of avian origin Italian highly pathogenic avian influenza H7N1 isolates in experimentally infected mice

AbstractAn experimental infection of mice was performed in order to investigate the potential for interspecies transmission in mammals of Italian HPAI viruses of the H7N1 subtype. Three avian origin isolates were selected, two strains obtained from ostrich (one of which contained a PB2-627 Lysine residue) and one from a chicken. Following intranasal infection of mice, clinical signs and mortality were recorded in the experimental groups challenged with the two ostrich isolates, while only weight loss was observed in those receiving the chicken strain. Viruses were recovered to a varying extent from respiratory and nervous tissues of infected animals. These results suggest that HPAI viruses, other than H5N1 and H7N7, may have zoonotic implications, and support the consensus that AI infections in poultry are to be eradicated rather than contained