The environment and emancipation in critical security studies: the case of the Canadian Arctic

The traditionally dominant discourse of The Great White North views Canada as a land of vast wilderness and abundant resources. However, this discourse excludes growing environmental risk and prevalent insecurity felt by vulnerable populations in Canadian society, namely indigenous groups whose livelihoods are deeply dependent upon their relationship with their environments. The effect of the relationship between the physical environment and conceptions of security can contribute to a deeper understanding of traditional and critical accounts of security. This article investigates traditional Canadian environmental security discourses and alternative environmental security discourses promoted by Arctic Inuit groups. It examines how these discourses impact the analytic and normative goals of critical security studies and interprets the way in which they affect the concept of emancipation. It argues that Canadian security is co-constituted with its understanding of the environment, and that the Canadian case compels an expansion of the notion of the referent object of security to include the environment – a change which throws it into contrast with other schools of critical security, whose visions of emancipation might not, as currently theorized, be equipped to overcome these phenomena

Entangling carbon lock-in: India’s coal constituency

This article investigates how energy security in the Anthropocene is entangled in diffuse ways with materiality. In particular we examine the social-material entanglement of humans and coal in India and how coal manifests itself differently across social life in the country. Focusing on a single material allows us to study how the Anthropocene creates, and is created by, particular appropriations of the material world. It offers a corrective to some Anthropocene literature that avoids discussing the complex, “everyday,” social impacts that fossil fuels have, particularly in the developing world. These intertwined impacts add to the complexity and difficulty in the process of decarbonizing societies, or in transitioning to a sustainable energy future

Transformation through transdisciplinary practice: cultivating new lines of sight for urban transformation

In this editorial introduction, we introduce the special issue ?Transforming Urban Sustainability?, which seeks to understand the pursuit and practice of transformative change for urban sustainability. Uniquely, the contributions to the Special Issue were developed through trans-disciplinary collaborations and in this editorial we reflect on these practices and consider how they can catalyze transformative change in and through academic practice. We also review existing conceptual approaches to transformation and develop a heuristic device that helps us to appreciate its multiple and diverse dimensions. Through this heuristic, we generate lines of sight through which to view transformation and position the contributions in the Special Issue in relation to these. We conclude by suggesting that to advance both the understanding and traction of transformative action we need to recognise its multiplicity and actively engage with its different facets

Anxiety Levels in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder:A Meta-Analysis

The aim of the current study was to meta-analytically examine whether anxiety levels in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are elevated. A total of 83 articles were selected from a systematic literature search and were included in the meta-analyses. Results demonstrated that children with ASD had higher anxiety levels compared to typically developing children, and this difference increased with IQ. Youth with ASD also tended to have higher anxiety levels compared to clinically referred children, and this difference increased with age. Children with ASD had higher anxiety levels compared to youth with externalizing or developmental problems, but not when compared to youth with internalizing problems. The study findings highlight the importance of more research in order to fully understand the nature and development of anxiety in children with ASD. More specifically, the results suggest that especially high-functioning adolescents with ASD may be at risk for developing anxiety disorders. Therefore, it seems important to carefully follow and monitor children with ASD transcending to adolescenc

From passengers to crew: introductory reflections

It is only very recently that we humans have come to recognize our place on this Earth. As Marshall McLuhan once put it: “On Spaceship Earth there are no passengers; everybody is a member of the crew” ([1], p. 50). While we have never been simply passengers, our status as crew has mattered little for almost all of human history; to paraphrase Harari [2] we have been decidedly “insignificant” crew members. This changed drastically with our capture of fossil fuels, or “ancient sunlight” as Hartmann [3] calls it, to drive the machine of successive industrial revolutions [4]. Thanks to these developments, the Earth has transitioned out of the Holocene and into what is now being termed the Anthropocene, an age in which our status as crew members is hugely significant. We have become “geological actors” [5] whose actions have shaped, and are reshaping, the systems that have kept Spaceship Earth on its course for some 10, 000 years. The consequences of this new era are both profoundly global and acutely local: with the pushing of our planetary boundaries, safe spaces for humans and other species are shrinking, giving way to less favourable and less stable planetary conditions for the lifeforms evolved in the previous Holocene era.Full Tex

Can you standardise transformation? Reflections on the transformative potential of benchmarking as a mode of governance

This paper is a collaborative effort between academic researchers and practitioners to consider the conditions under which global benchmarking may be used as a tool for supporting urban transformation. Reflecting on WWF’s One Planet City Challenge and UN-Habitat’s Guiding Principles for City Climate Action Planning, the paper suggests that the practice of global benchmarking can be transformative through encouraging organisational learning and reflection, building relationships between cities and global and trans-local organisations, and governing for structurally transformative qualities. However, the practice of benchmarking is not without potential tensions: they may reify existing practices rather than reforming them, be less usable for or accessible to cities in lower income countries, and may neglect issues of climate justice, which are not easily reduced to comparative measures of success or failure. This suggests that a wholesale reliance on benchmarking as a mode of governing climate change might risk marginalising certain issues and amplifying others. We conclude by recommending improved material and technical support for urban data collection and suggest that benchmarking should be combined with a broader suite of performance indicators and reflective practices in order to support urban transformation

Urban transformative potential in a changing climate

The SDGs and CitiesIPCC offer an unprecedented opportunity for urban transformation, but bold, integrated action to address the constraints imposed by economic, cultural and political dynamics is needed. We move beyond a narrow, technocentric view and identify five key knowledge pathways to catalyse urban transformation