Coping with hardship through friendship: the importance of peer social capital among children affected by HIV in Kenya

Children living in households affected by HIV face numerous challenges as they take on significant household-sustaining and caregiving roles, often in conditions of poverty. To respond to their hardships, we must identify and understand the support systems they are already part of. For this reason, and to emphasise the agentic capabilities of children, this article explores how vulnerable children cope with hardship through peer social capital. The study draws on the perspectives of 48 HIV-affected and caregiving children who through PhotoVoice and draw-and-write exercises produced 184 photographs and 56 drawings, each accompanied with a written reflection. The themes emerging from the essays reveal that schools provide children with a useful platform to establish and draw on a mix of friendship structures. The children were found to strategically establish formalised friendship groups that have the explicit purpose of members supporting each other during times of hardship. The children also formed more natural friendship groups based on mutual attraction, with the implicit expectation that they will help each other out during times of hardship. In practice, the study found that children help each other through sharing (e.g. schools material and food) as well as through practical support (e.g. with domestic duties, securing food, and income-generation) — thus demonstrating that children are able to both accumulate and benefit from ‘peer social capital.’ The study concludes that a key coping strategy of HIV-affected and caregiving children is to mobilise and participate in friendship groups which are characterised by sharing and reciprocity of support. Development responses to support children affected by the HIV epidemic need to take heed of children's ability to draw on peer social capital

Selecting Indicators for Assessing Neighbourhood Sustainability:The Metropolitan Lagos Workflow

Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment Frameworks (NSAFs) are increasingly touted as crucial in planning and designing sustainable urban neighbourhoods. Ostensibly, NSAFs ensure that sustainability concerns are duly addressed following the recognition that neighbourhoods are key building blocks of urban areas. While the NSAF discourse has largely involved developed countries, the selection of appropriate indicators to use in an NSAF has remained a problem often because of little robust evidence to support the selected indicators. Also, as develoing countries are largely absent in this discourse, this paper presents an exemplar approach and workflow for selecting NSAF indicators for a Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) context. Positivist techniques (weighted average, co-efficiency of variation, and content validity in ratio) are used to rank the significance of the stakeholders’ indicated perceptions and preferences collected using questionnaire surveys from metropolitan Lagos. This paper’s significance lies in showcasing the robust methodological approach and sound evidence-base for selecting the indicators based on input form diaparate stakeholders: including data requirements and workflow that SSA countries can easily adopt

The effects of recent austerity on environmental protection decisions:evidence and perspectives from Scotland

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish the evidence for, the why and how recent austerity policy atmosphere associated with the UK government affected environmental protection decisions within planning in Scotland. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative analysis based on perspectives gathered via questionnaire survey targeted at stakeholders involved in planning in Scotland was undertaken. The questionnaire responses were analysed thematically, supplemented by using statistical tests of significance and variance to show how responses differed across participants. Findings: The evidence showed that austerity policy atmosphere resulted in a pervasive neoliberal imperative of resuscitating the economy; whilst producing subtle and adverse effects on environmental decisions. This was best understood within a neo-Gramscian perspective of hegemony, borrowed from the field of political economy of states. Research limitations/implications: The gathered views were constrained within unknown biases that the participants may have had; and because the case study approach was not equipped to generalize the results beyond the study, more research testing cause-effect between the austerity and selected environmental parameters is needed, from various contexts. Practical implications: Decision-making frameworks should explicitly acknowledge the unique pressures during austerity periods; and contemplate resilient decision-making frameworks that can withstand the hegemonic tendencies which prioritise economic goals above environmental ones. Originality/value: Whilst the area of austerity’s impacts on the environment remains poorly evidenced, empirically, this seminal paper uses robust analysis to establish how the austerity policy atmosphere affects environmental decisions. This is insight into what may be happening in other similar situations outside Scotland, raising concern as to whether and how we should approach the challenge of hegemonic ideas

Dissecting the Offshore Wind and Mariculture Multi-Use Discourse:A new Approach using targeted SWOT Analysis

Coastal seas around the world are under increasing anthropogenic pressures due to the rapid expansion of maritime industry and coastal urbanisation. Multi-use (MU) of ocean space, meaning the use of the same space by multiple resource users, has emerged as one strategy to address spatial conflicts resulting from an increasing use density. The proposed multi-use of offshore wind farms (OWF) and mariculture (MAQ) is one of the most-researched examples of such a potentially symbiotic relationship. Two decades of public and academic discourse have produced an abundance of research regarding various facets of this particular combination. Nevertheless, the latest research projects of the EUs Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme have identified a number of persistent barriers to continued multi-use development. The past and current public discourse has created a situation where technological readiness has outpaced societal readiness and the discussion is often complicated by the diversity of backgrounds and perceptions of the participants of this discourse. This study aims to dissect the common discourse on OWF and mariculture multi-use by utilising a targeted SWOT analysis approach based on stakeholder knowledge. This approach reveals two distinct narratives based around societal and economic considerations respectively. From this, we derive a set of tailor-made recommendations for policy makers and regulators as well as funding agencies, businesses and researchers