Local and National Interests in Using Public Forests: Lessons from the Pacific Northwest[, Part] II

12 pages. Contains references

Assessing the Health of the Body Politic: Are the Cures Worse than the Disease?

7 pages. Contains footnotes

The National Forest Management Act in a Changing Society, 1976-1996: How Well Has It Worked in the Past 20 Years? Will It Work in the 21st Century?

12 pages

Landscape Loopholes: Moments for Change

Social-ecological systems are breaking down at local, regional, and global scales, and sustainability seems an increasingly distant aspiration. Social harmony and economic systems are connected to ecological systems and climate, in multiple complex ways, at many scales. Adapting research practice to match integration opportunities within social-ecological systems could contribute foresight capabilities emerging from landscape change studies, which can be coupled with emerging policy transformation opportunities. The shaping of landscapes by human imagination and physical action creates meaningful contexts for building sustainability. However, the policy landscape is often dominated by circularity and “lock-in” to unsustainable pathways that are hard to escape. Moments for change emerge through timely convergence of circumstances, within a landscape context, that provide a window of opportunity—a “landscape loophole”—through which the transformation to more sustainable social-ecological relationships might be achieved. Creating future options redundancy (FOR) plans, a variety of possible pathways and alternative landscape futures within the characteristics and capacity of a region, could facilitate policy shifts and adaptive capacity, and reduce risk through reflexive future options. The convergence of circumstances providing loophole opportunities to escape existing lock-in might be understood, and even predicted, by closely coupling landscape sciences and policy research

Health information on firefighter websites: Structured analysis

© Mostin A Hu, Joy C MacDermid, Shannon Killip, Margaret Lomotan, FIREWELL. Background: Owing to the fact that firefighters have unique health risks, access to firefighter-specific internet-based health information is a potential mechanism for achieving better health and work outcomes. Objective: The objective of our study was to identify the amount and nature of health information resources available on Canadian firefighter-specific websites and the extent to which resources are consistent across websites as a surrogate indicator of diffusion of information. Methods: A search of health resources on firefighter websites (union and employer) for all Canadian provinces, major cities and a subset of smaller cities, and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) website was conducted on Google (July 2017). Content was identified and classified based on the type of resource, health focus, and location. The quantity and nature of the resources were summarized using descriptive statistics. Results: Among all (N=313) websites reviewed, 41 websites had health information with a cumulative total of 128 resources that addressed firefighter mental (59/128, 46.1%), physical (43/128, 33.6%), and work health (26/128, 20.3%). The highest density of information was found on international and national websites (13 resources per website) and the least on local websites (1 resource per 7 websites). Three provinces (Ontario, Québec, and British Columbia) hosted 81% (65/80) of the provincial, territorial and local resources. General mental health (20/59, 34%), posttraumatic stress disorder (14/59, 24%), and suicide (14/59, 24%) were the most prevalent topics within the mental health resources, whereas half (21/43, 49%) of all physical health resources were on cancer. No resources from Northern Canada were found. Musculoskeletal health was not mentioned in any of the resources identified. There was minimal cross-linking of resources across sites (only 4 resources were duplicated across sites), and there was no clear indication of how the content was vetted or evaluated for quality. Conclusions: There was wide variation in the amount and type of information available on different firefighter websites with limited diffusion of information across jurisdictions. Quality evaluation and coordination of resources should be considered to enhance firefighters’ access to quality health information to meet their specific needs. Mental health and cancer information aligned with high rates of these health problems in firefighters, whereas the lack of information on musculoskeletal health was discordant with their high rate of work injury claims for these problems