Interrogating sustainable productivism: lessons from the ‘Almerían miracle’

Many have suggested that a new form of sustainable agricultural productivism is needed in response to the challenges to food security posed by climate change and population growth. This paper employs elements of ecological modernisation theory and focusses on sustainability challenges and solutions, as well as the knowledge networks and production rationale to assess whether the intensive horticultural industry located in the Spanish province of Almería represents sustainable productivism. The Almerían horticultural industry, lauded as an example of neo-endogenous growth, manifests a range of sustainable technologies addressing environmental impacts. Yet, we argue that Almerían horticulture represents ‘weak ecological modernisation’ and its main sustainability challenges are posed by water scarcity, a demand led production rationale and the precarious situation of family farms that at present provide a degree of economic embeddedness in this highly industrialised production model. A competitive imperative yields marketing organisations huge sway in production decision-making, and while a cost-price squeeze has driven efficiency in the use of farm inputs and product innovation, it has paradoxically made further advances in sustainable water management very difficult to achieve. Transforming the Almerían horticultural industry into a truly sustainable model of productivism would require the concerted efforts of individual farmers and marketing organisations as well as regional and local water governance institutions and land use planning. A significant obstacle to this remains the dominant normative perception that justifies groundwater abstraction on the grounds of its high economic returns and the perceived inability of small farmers to invest in desalinated water or further technological solutions

A framework to assess integration in flood risk management: implications for governance, policy, and practice

Over decades the concept of integration has been promoted to enhance alignment between policy domains, and to manage trade-offs and maximize synergies across management practices. Integrated approaches have the potential to enable better outcomes for flood risk management (FRM) and society as a whole. However, achieving integration in practice is a recurring challenge, especially for FRM where multiple actors need to work together across fragmented policy domains. To disentangle this complexity of integration, a framework is proposed for assessing integration and identifying different degrees of integration. This framework is based on evidence from a literature review, 50 interviews with FRM-related professionals in England, and participant observation at 24 meetings relevant for FRM. The framework sets out the context of integration, assesses the governance capacity for integration through the strength of relationships between different types of actors (bridging, bonding, and linking) and the mechanisms (actor-, rule- and resource-based) that influence them, and the realization of integration in practice through knowledge, policies, and interventions. The framework is applied for FRM in England and used to identify degrees of integration: high, intermediate, low, and minimal. An important characteristic of the framework is the interconnectivity between the governance capacity and realization of integration. The framework provides further theoretical insights into the concept of integration, while offering an approach for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to recognize current degrees of integration in FRM and identify the critical elements for improvement. It is recommended that further research and practice-based applications of the framework are completed in different geographical and institutional contexts. Specifically, such applications can create further understanding of the interactions and dependencies between elements of the governance capacity and realization of integration

Beyond agriculture: alternative geographies of rural land investment and place effects across the United Kingdom

Global land ownership patterns have been shifting in recent decades, as institutional and non-traditional investors redirect capital into rural areas. Such investment is a stimulating alternative for innovative profit-driven land uses that move beyond agriculture. This paper explores how ‘new money’ economies have created place effects in three rural case studies across the United Kingdom, through concepts of built, natural, social, and economic capital. The case studies are informed by secondary research, site visits, and interviews, providing snapshots of investment impact. They represent diverse transformations in rural land use via new forms of direct investment, active investment, and processes of financing rather than financialisation, with distinct spatial and temporal characteristics. The case studies include new wine production in Kent, England; transforming the Menie Estate into Trump International Golf Links Scotland (TIGLS); and farm diversification in Northern Ireland. The conclusions tell three investment stories, where place effects reflect the dichotomies, contestation, and symbiosis between investors and local contexts. New land uses create place effects where economic potential often conflicts with natural capital impacts, although they foster knowledge creation and exchange. The underlying values of the investors and their navigation of local politics also have key roles to play in shaping the built, natural, social, and economic place effects

Engendering ecosystem services for urban transformation:the role of natural capital in reducing poverty and building resilient urban communities

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005) recognises a number of concerns in the relationship between human development and ecosystem services. People are integral parts of ecosystems, and a dynamic interactive relationship exists between human activity and ecosystems, with changing human activity driving ecosystem changes, and ecosystem changes causing changes in people's well-being. Ecosystems have rapidly changed over the last 50 years, largely to meet growing demands for related services such as food, water, timber, fibre, and fuel. Human demands on ecosystem services (ES) has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of species on the planet. The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services may involve significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices for themanagement of ecosystems. The MEA notes the pattern of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ associated with ecosystem changes has not been adequately taken into account in management decisions, in particular the impact of these changes on poor people, women, and indigenous peoples.Degradation of ecosystem services are often being borne disproportionately by the poor, women, and indigenous peoples, and are contributing to growing inequities and disparities across groups of people, and are sometimes the principal factor causing poverty, conflicts, or the migration of refugees in developing countries. Growing urbanisation and climate change present further important challenges for the future, and how urban development is undertaken and managed has implications for present and future wellbeing. However, cities can be planned and built to ensure sustainability for people and planet and ES can be used to improve wellbeing and reduce poverty. The MEA suggests the notion of ES encapsulates the dynamic processes through which natural capital when mobilised, provides a range of services, goods and benefits that are critical to sustaining life e.g. oxygen, food, water, recreational and psychological benefits. Ecosystem Services frameworks allow us to conceptualise environmental functions as an explicit link between natural capital and human wellbeing.This report focusses on how natural capital and its associated ecosystem services (ES) can be understood within the context of the urban environment. It focuses on how different ES can be incorporated into sustainable urban development and planning, as a natural asset that can reduce peoples risk and vulnerability, and improve their wellbeing

Guidance for engendering ecosystem services for urban transformation

Growing urbanisation and climate change present a number of important challenges to ensuring more sustainable development in the future. All human activities impact on the natural environment, especially cities. How urban development is undertaken and managed has implications for present and future wellbeing. This guidance focusses on how natural capital and its associated ecosystem services (ES) can be understood within the context of the urban environment. It focuses on how different ES can be incorporated into sustainable urban development and planning, as a natural asset that can reduce peoples risk and vulnerability, and improve their wellbeing.This summary guidance aims to highlight how natural capital based ES can be seen as an ‘asset’ which can improve the well-being of communities, and the women and men, girls and boys that live within them.It draws on existing findings about how environmental assets such as parks, street trees, water features and private gardens can contribute to human well-being, applied to the Brazilian context through an exploratory study centred in Nova Contagem, a peripheral suburb of Belo Horizonte.It uses experience of undertaking the study to provide practical guidance in how to:-Undertake an assessment of the environmental assets present in a community-Evaluate the potential for urban environmental assets to yield ecosystem services - services such as Regulating (cooling shade), Provisioning (food and fuel), and Cultural (space for gathering / taking exercise) - and the nature of the goods, benefits, and at times dis-benefits, natural capital assets deliverThe findings of the study provide guidance around:-How people understand what the environment is, and how they value, or not, different types of urban environmental assets-The ecosystem services and dis-services they derive from the natural environment-How environmental assets interact with other assets to improve well beingThe premise of the study is that access to urban environmental assets and the ecosystem services they provide, is not equal for all within a community or a household, and in particular women and men will have different access to these and other assets. The study then also provides insights into:-Differences in women and men’s understandings of the environment and its potential for improving well being-Differences in women and men’s access to environmental assets and the ecosystem services they may provide-Actions that could be taken to improve gender equality of access to ecosystem servicesUltimately the guide seeks to provide recommendations on what local authorities and community organisations can do to ensure that the existing environmental assets are valued and protected and the beneficial services are maximised and made accessible to all, while the dis-services are minimised

Urban environmental quality and wellbeing in the context of incomplete urbanization in Brazil: integrating directly experienced ecosystem services into planning

The benefits of urban greenspace to residents are increasingly recognized as important to planning for sustainable and healthy cities. However, the way that people interact with and benefit from urban greenspace is context dependent and conditioned by a range of social and material factors. This paper applies and expands the ecosystems services based approach to understanding urban environmental quality and the way in which greenspace is appropriated by residents in the context of incomplete urbanization in three peri-urban target areas in Brazil. We develop and employ the notion of indirect (scientifically detected) and directly experienced ecosystems services, and undertake a science based ecosystem services assessment and a qualitative analysis of interviews, walking narratives and images captured with a smartphone application to understand what functions urban greenspace serves in the daily life of the studied neighborhoods. Findings demonstrate how elements of urban greenspace and what can be termed ecosystem services serve both material and signifying functions and produce subjective and collective benefits and dis-benefits that hinge on aspects of livability such as quality of urban service delivery, housing status and perceptions of crime and neighborhood character. We identify factors that enable, hinder and motivate both active material and interpretative interactions with urban greenspace. The findings suggest that the relationship between ecosystem service provision and wellbeing is better understood as reciprocal rather than one way. Although at the neighborhood scale, fear of crime and poor access to urban services can hinder positive engagements with urban greenspace and experienced benefits form ES, urban squares and fringe vegetation is also being appropriated to address experienced disadvantages. Presently however these local interactions and ecosystem service benefits are overlooked in formal planning and conservation efforts and are increasingly compromised by growing population density and environmental degradation. We make recommendations for a nuanced assessment of the material and interpretative human-nature interactions and associated ecosystem services in an urban context, and discuss the potential for planning initiatives that could be employed to articulate and nurture these important interactions in our target areas

Interpreting agri-environmental policy : a comparative analysis of policy implementation in Finland and the UK

Imperial Users onl

Payments for ecosystem services and the rural economy

The popular view of the decline of farming as a consumption shift in the rural economies of developed countries places emphasis on the amenity value of rural landscapes. Similarly, food quality rather than quantity, and the potential of managing land for water quality and flood regulation have gained significance. While attributes of amenity value, food quality and reduced flood risk can be described as non-market goods (or services), their consumer demand suggests that to secure their production they should incur a price. The notion of ecosystem services (ES, chapters 9 and 47 in this volume) offers a way of articulating the benefit that societies derive from healthy and diverse ecosystems. Payments for the provision of such ES connect the demand for the benefits they provide and the management practices that support them. Payments for providing (or maintaining) ES can be calculated in a range of ways and between a range of parties depending on where and how the ES are produced and who they benefit. In a developing country context, PES can provide sustainable alternatives to existing livelihood strategies and enhance local embeddedness. Nevertheless, much criticism has been levelled at the scientific validity and ethics of assigning monetary value to complex ‘services’ such as habitat or freshwater provision. Yet, many suggest that this is instrumental in achieving socially just conservation outcomes and crucial for recognising the value of the natural capital on which our economies depend. The chapter critically examines the opportunities and challenges of linking the management of ES to economic opportunity

European integration and rural development: actors, institutions and power [Book Review]

Book review of: European Integration and Rural Development: Actors, Institutions and Power, Michael Kull, Surrey, Ashgate, 2014, 202 pp., ISBN 978-1-4094-6854-7. Published in the journals 'Book Reviews' section: "Vasconcelos-De-Lima, E. L., Juntti, M., Sparling, W., Ward, S. V., & Frank, A. I. (2016). Book Reviews. Town Planning Review, 87(1), 105–115. doi:10.3828/tpr.2016.8