Bosnia and Hercegovina

Bosnia-Hercegovina declared sovereignty and seceded from the residue of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) in October 1991, following similar action, first by Slovenia, then by Croatia and after a plebiscite, boycotted by many ethnic Serbs, in which a majority of those voting backed independence. The following April, Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH[a]) was recognised as a legal entity by the EU and USA. A month later it was admitted to the UN. With secession came internal conflict and external aggression, fomented by nationalists in the Croat and Muslim as well as Serb communities. The war left a quarter of a million people dead, maimed or traumatised, and the economy, infrastructure and physical and social fabric of the country in ruins. It seems fitting to dedicate this chapter to the large numbers of Bosnians (of all nationalities as well as none) who tried their utmost to prevent the war and who continue today to work for a multiethnic, democratic and environmentally healthy Bosnia. In particular, it is dedicated to those who remained in its capital Sarajevo throughout its siege by those who hoped to destroy both the city and the ideals that it represented

Yugoslavia

Present-day Yugoslavia covers the territory of what was left of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Socialistićka Federativna Republika Jugoslavija (SFRJ) following the secession, from late 1991, first of Slovenia, then, successively, of Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and finally, Macedonia. This ‘rump’ - the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Savezna Republika Jugoslavija (SRJ) consists constitutionally of two sovereign republics, Serbia and Montenegro. Each has a separate government, legal and administrative system within the Federal constitution. They are often separately represented at international fora: within SRJ their relationship is uneasy and its future uncertain. Serbia today includes the former (SFRJ) ‘autonomous provinces’ of Vojvodina to the North and Kosovo to the south. Since 1987, both were progressively assimilated - administratively and politically - into the Republic of Serbia and were formally stripped of their autonomy under a new constitution adopted by Serbia in September 1990. Both SRJ and its constituent entities have uncertain status in international law. The declaration in April 1992 by Serbia and Montenegro that SRJ was the legal successor of the SFRJ was a de facto recognition of the secession of the other four republics. However, the United Nations ruled in September of that year that this could not automatically be the case and excluded SRJ from the General Assembly; subsequently the recognition of SRJ by other nations has been uncertain. Kosovo is presently under military control of NATO (and Russian) armed forces (KFOR), its administration in the hands of a United Nations mission (UNMIK); its future can only be a matter of conjecture. Examination of environmental issues in Yugoslavia must be informed by two principal considerations: • The physical and ecological characteristics of the region, and its social and economic development up to and including the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in 1991 • Events since 1991, including socioeconomic changes, the effect of external sanctions consequent on Yugoslavia’s involvement in the civil war in neighbouring Bosnia and Hercegovina (1992-95) and, most recently, the civil war in Kosovo and the intervention of NATO. The latter, in particular, cast a shadow over any analysis of Yugoslavia and its future, including the matters dealt with in this chapter, which therefore includes an assessment of environmental damage and prospects for environmental remediation against the backcloth of an analysis of the pre-1999 situation in the region

Self-Help and the London Mechanics' Institution - Birkbeck after (George) Birkbeck

The London Mechanics’ Institute is notable not only for its place in the history of the Mechanics’ Institute movement, but also for the conflicts which surrounded its formation in 1823. The story of the eclipse of its initiators Thomas Hodgskin and J C Robertson by the liberal modernisers Brougham, Place and others is reasonably well known. Well before George Birkbeck’s own death in 1841 the battle for ‘popular control’ had largely been lost (although it continued to surface in different forms for the next century). ‘Useful knowledge’, pioneered in Birkbeck’s own early lectures in Glasgow, promoted widely in the Mechanics’ Magazine, and elevated to a social movement in Brougham’s Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, had by mid-century become almost hegemonic and was manifest in its most systematic form in William Ellis’ Birkbeck Schools, launched (not without opposition) in the summer of 1848 in the Institute’s lecture theatre. The Birkbeck Schools contributed significantly to the 1870 Education Act which through its Board Schools extended ‘workers’ education’, pioneered by the Mechanics’ Institutes, to their children. In 1851 a ‘third Birkbeck’ appeared (in addition to the Institute and the Schools) whose history to date has received little attention. By the 1850s, ‘penny savings banks’ had been set up in a number of mechanics’ institutes, however the ‘Birkbeck Bank’ was very different. An ultra vires umbrella for the Birkbeck Building Society and the Birkbeck Freehold Land Society, it became a significant constituent of the English property based financial system. Until at least 1885, the Bank had a close relationship with the London Mechanics’ Institution, sharing more than the name of George Birkbeck. The Institute and the Bank occupied joint premises, had overlapping governance and the Bank’s monies sustained the College at critical times of financial crisis. They also reflected an ideology of progressive philanthropic liberalism that was at times hotly contested by the radical champions of the social classes that both Institute and Bank had been initially formed to assist. Just as the Mechanics’ Institution was attacked from its foundation for having betrayed the ideals of its radical originators, the Birkbeck Building Society was condemned by Frederick Engels in The Housing Question (1872) for being irrelevant to the improvement of living conditions for the urban poor. The educational endeavours of Birkbeck’s Mechanics’ Institution and the financial enterprise of the Birkbeck Bank reflected parallel motivations and concealed comparable tensions. The Mechanics’ Institution embodied two distinct and contending visions of the role of working-class education within alternative political programmes of social change and political emancipation, versus individual betterment and self-realisation. The Birkbeck Bank’s initial vision of property ownership as a means of extending the franchise in order to change society gave way to one of financial prudence and owner-occupation as a route to social stability through personal fulfilment. In these conflicts between radicalism and liberal reform, the latter was, perhaps inevitably, ascendant

Ambiguity reduction by objective model selection, with an application to the costs of the EU 2030 climate targets

I estimate the cost of meeting the EU 2030 targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction, using statistical emulators of ten alternative models. Assuming a first-best policy implementation, I find that total and marginal costs are modest. The statistical emulators allow me to compute the risk premiums, which are small, because the EU is rich and the policy impact is small. The ensemble of ten models allows me to compute the ambiguity premium, which is small for the same reason. I construct a counterfactual estimate of recent emissions without the climate policy and use that to test the predictive skill of the ten models. The models that show the lowest cost of emission reduction also have the lowest skill for Europe in recent times

Proofing rural lifeling learning

The countryside covers 85% of England’s land surface and the people who live and work in it comprise one fifth of the population. Yet in lifelong learning discourse, (as so often elsewhere) the countryside rarely receives much specific attention as the focus for elaboration and critique of policy. This Occasional Paper builds on a recent ‘rural proofing’ study undertaken for the Countryside Agency, which reviewed the application of government lifelong learning policies in, and their implications for, rural areas. In particular it attempted to identify and examine existing evidence for differential impacts of lifelong learning policies for rural people and businesses compared to their urban counterparts. The Countryside Agency study shows how little attention has to date been paid specifically to rural aspects of lifelong learning policy. It emphasises well known and long standing problems of access to learning opportunity, to do with inadequate and localised provision within a dispersed population, which are exacerbated by poor transport, concealed poverty (and other dimensions of social exclusion) and (for vocational training) by the specific difficulties faced by small rural enterprises. Beyond this, however, it confirms how little information exists regarding rural needs and uptake, which might allow such problems to be addressed in policy terms. It argues that existing research activities, (for example those of the Centre for the Wider benefits of Learning) should accommodate the rural dimension. In particular, local plans of the 47 regional Learning and Skills Councils (LSC) currently in production should be monitored to see to what extent they take the rural dimension into account, and how. It asserts that Non Departmental Public Bodies outside DfES (including Defra funded agencies such as the Countryside Agency) also have a role to play, in incorporating lifelong learning into their own policies (in the case of the CA especially within protected landscapes which are the focus of a number of new initiatives related to sustainable rural governance). Alongside these conclusions, however, lie other considerations. Neither lifelong learning nor rural proofing are unproblematic categories. This paper examines some of the political and ideological assumptions and constructs which underpin the categories of ‘lifelong learning’ and ‘rural proofing’. It argues that rural proofing (a government commitment to subjecting all its policies to scrutiny for rural relevance or bias) needs to reflect on its own assumptions as well as recognise contested paradigms of lifelong learning (as an umbrella term for all post school ‘adult learning’). It argues that the distinction between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ needs to be mapped onto contested paradigms of lifelong learning, and, with them, seen in an historical context. Within New Labour, lifelong learning and rural governance are both subsets of a broader agenda that has to do with entrepreneurship and competitiveness; economic well-being and environmental quality; social inclusion, citizenship, civic participation and social engagement. It concludes that the new administrative and funding structures of lifelong learning may permit a closer strategic focus on perceived regional needs, particularly those to do with skills and employment. However they are unlikely to encourage a revival and re-focusing of non-vocational (and especially non-formal) learning opportunities. Moreover to the degree that the emphasis on widening participation and social inclusion may secure access to work for some, they do little in themselves to address structural problems of rural inequality and poverty. Current instrumental trends in lifelong learning are closely focused on perceived ‘human capital’ requirements but do not necessarily take into account the specific requirements either of rural enterprises or of the diversity of rural people and their needs. Any radical developments in rural areas will need to be part of a new rural settlement in which longstanding social and economic problems of rural areas are addressed

Russell Square: a lifelong resource for teaching and learning

A quarter of a century ago, in 1978, Birkbeck College’s Faculty of Continuing Education (FCE, then the Department for Extra-Mural Studies of the federal University) moved to the offices that it now occupies in numbers 26 and 25 Russell Square. Then, as now, FCE was the one of the largest and most active extra-mural departments of any British university, with an enormous range of courses covering virtually every subject taught in ‘internal’ university departments and many more besides 1. Some of these courses have, from time to time, used Russell Square as a learning resource. Many more staff and students alike have (along with thousands of local workers, tourists and residents) used the square’s gardens for relaxation and recovery, without reflecting on its origins or present significance. This Occasional Paper examines the past and present fabric of Russell Square (‘the Square’) as a resource for teaching and learning. It is a composite narrative assembled by FCE staff whose disciplines range from nature conservation through garden history and architectural history to social policy. It deconstructs the Square as an entity and attempts to decipher some of its ‘meanings’ that provide links between subjects taught within FCE. We hope that it will stimulate discussion about the way this single ‘place’ – our Square - can be ‘seen’ or interpreted in different ways for diverse purposes, and about the way that it can be used as a resource for teaching and learning across disciplines

‘Really useful’ knowledge? The London Mechanics’ Institution and the struggle for (independent) working class education

The London Mechanics’ Institute (LMI), founded in 1823 was not the first such institution, but by general consent it was the most important. The institutional history of the LMI (and of the subsequent growth of mechanics institutions and associated bodies) is relatively well known, in outline at least. However the LMI’s origins were controversial and contested at the time and subsequent accounts have tended to ignore the fundamental issues of principle - focused on constituency, curriculum, and control - that surrounded them. This paper revisits the events surrounding the formation of the LMI in 1823-4. It concludes that whilst the question of precedence may be resolved by provisionally describing J C Robertson and Thomas Hodgskin as ‘founders’ of the Institute which George Birkbeck ‘inaugurated’ the more important issues of collective vs. individual models of ‘self-help’, of ‘useful’ versus ‘really useful’ knowledge, of what working-class education might be and whether it can ever be ‘independent’ are still with us, two centuries on