Safeguarding people living in vulnerable conditions in the COVID-19 era through universal health coverage and social protection

The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. The pandemic not only induced a public health crisis, but has led to severe economic, social, and educational crises. Across economies and societies, the distributional consequences of the pandemic have been uneven. Among groups living in vulnerable conditions, the pandemic substantially magnified the inequality gaps, with possible negative implications for these individuals' long-term physical, socioeconomic, and mental wellbeing. This Viewpoint proposes priority, programmatic, and policy recommendations that governments, resource partners, and relevant stakeholders should consider in formulating medium-term to long-term strategies for preventing the spread of COVID-19, addressing the virus's impacts, and decreasing health inequalities. The world is at a never more crucial moment, requiring collaboration and cooperation from all sectors to mitigate the inequality gaps and improve people's health and wellbeing with universal health coverage and social protection, in addition to implementation of the health in all policies approach

Predicting collective behaviour at the Hajj: place, space, and the process of cooperation

Around 2 million pilgrims attend the annual Hajj to Mecca and the holy places, which are subject to dense crowding. Both architecture and psychology can be part of disaster risk reduction in relation to crowding, since both can affect the nature of collective behaviour – particularly cooperation – among pilgrims. To date, collective behaviour at the Hajj has not been systematically investigated from a psychological perspective. We examined determinants of cooperation in the Grand Mosque and plaza during the pilgrimage. A questionnaire survey of 1194 pilgrims found that the Mosque was perceived by pilgrims as one of the most crowded ritual locations. Being in the plaza (compared to the Mosque) predicted the extent of cooperation, though crowd density did not. Shared social identity with the crowd explained more of the variance than both location and density. We examined some of the process underlying cooperation. The link between shared social identity and giving support to others was stronger in the plaza than in the Mosque, and suggests the role of place and space in modulating processes of cooperation in crowds. These findings have implications for disaster risk reduction and for applications such as computer simulations of crowds in pilgrimage locations

The autonomous city: towards a critical geography of occupation

This paper explores the recent resurgence of occupation-based practices across the globe, from the seizure of public space to the assembling of improvised protest camps. It re-examines the relationship between the figure of occupation and the affirmation of an alternative ‘right to the city’. The paper develops a critical understanding of occupation as a political process that prefigures and materializes the social order which it seeks to enact. The paper highlights the constituent role of occupation as an autonomous form of urban dwelling, as a radical politics of infrastructure and as a set of relations that produce common spaces for political action

Integrating ecosystem services into environmental decision‐making

Natural capital describes the stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources available to society. From this flows ecosystem services, which are the societal benefits derived from natural capital. These highly influential ways of thinking about environmental management have been the subject of much debate among practitioners and academic ecologists. However, they have gained significant traction in key national environmental policy documents, including the Natural Environment White Paper and the 25 Year Environment Plan, policies in the devolved administrations, such as the Environment Wales Act (2016), and the establishment of the Natural Capital Committee. The UK is the first country (and still one of the few) to produce a national ecosystem assessment (UKNEA, 2011), in response to the global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005). The original classification proposed in the MEA (of supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services) has been extended by the hierarchical classification of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES, 2018)

Forum on International Initiatives on Copyright

Explore the future of copyright with international experts on the subject. This session was offered in conjunction with the 3rd International Conference on the Universal Digital Library (ICUDL 2007), hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and the School of Computer Science