Education as Re-Embedding: Stroud Communiversity, Walking the Land and the Enduring Spell of the Sensuous

How we know, is at least as important as what we know: Before educationalists can begin to teach sustainability, we need to explore our own views of the world and how these are formed. The paper explores the ontological assumptions that underpin, usually implicitly, the pedagogical relationship and opens up the question of how people know each other and the world they share. Using understandings based in a phenomenological approach and guided by social constructionism, it suggests that the most appropriate pedagogical method for teaching sustainability is one based on situated learning and reflexive practice. To support its ontological questioning, the paper highlights two alternative culture’s ways of understanding and recording the world: Those of the Inca who inhabited pre-Columbian Peru, which was based on the quipu system of knotted strings, and the complex social and religious system of the songlines of the original people of Australia. As an indication of the sorts of teaching experiences that an emancipatory and relational pedagogy might give rise to, the paper offers examples of two community learning experiences in the exemplar sustainable community of Stroud, Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom where the authors live

The government won't release its analyses of Brexit's impact. We have a right to see them

The government has refused to publish its sector-by-sector analyses of the impact of Brexit, arguing that releasing them they would undermine its negotiating position. Molly Scott Cato (MEP for the South West) says businesspeople trying to plan for the future have a right to know what the likely effects of leaving the EU will be. It was, I thought, a fairly ..

Energy, security, and climate: rethinking the UK’s place within Europe

Molly Scott Cato discusses the link between post-Brexit energy and security policy, especially in the context of the war in Ukraine

Rethinking the Factors of Production for a World of Common Ownership and Sustainability

The classical economists bequeathed us an understanding of the nature of economies in terms of three factors of production: land, labor, and capital. If we are to transcend the unsustainable and inequitable economy we live with today, an intellectual reinterpretation of these three factors is a vital first step. In this paper we provide such a liberating reinterpretation with examples from European and Latin American praxis. </jats:p

Facing Down Facebook: Reclaiming Democracy in the Age of (Anti) Social Media

A report examining the role Facebook has played in abuses of personal data for political purposes and the spread of disinformation, particularly during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016. The report examines the growth of Facebook and details the ways in which the social media giant has consistently misrepresented facts to the public and to regulators in order to conceal the ongoing abuses to which it has been party. To ensure that such abuses are curtailed in future, the report ends with some key policy recommendations to EU and UK policy-makers

Realising the Potential: A review of the credit union movement in Wales

This is a report of research commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government into the credit union movement in Wales. The objectives of the research were to investigate the profile, operation, governance, support structures, current performance and services, and future development and sustainability of credit unions in Wales

Facts about our ecological crisis are incontrovertible: we must take action

Humans cannot continue to violate the fundamental laws of nature or science with impunity, say 94 signatories including Dr Alison Green and Molly Scott Cato MEP. Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbria Jem Bendell joined others in calling for a wider debate about sustainability, featured in The Guardian. We the undersigned represent diverse academic disciplines, and the views expressed here are those of the signatories and not their organisations. While our academic perspectives and expertise may differ, we are united on one point: we will not tolerate the failure of this or any other government to take robust and emergency action in respect of the worsening ecological crisis. The science is clear, the facts are incontrovertible, and it is unconscionable to us that our children and grandchildren should have to bear the terrifying brunt of an unprecedented disaster of our own making

(Dis)connected communities and sustainable place-making

Why, despite a recent surge in the UK in “sustainable communities” policy discourse, do so many community-led sustainability initiatives remain fragmented, marginal and disconnected from local government strategies? How can community- and government-led sustainability initiatives be better integrated such that they add significantly to a denser matrix and cluster of sustainable places? These questions, we argue, lie at the heart of current sustainable place-making debates. With particular reference to two spatial scales of analysis and action, the small town of Stroud, England and the city of Cardiff, Wales, we explore the twin processes of disconnection and connection between community sustainability activists and local state actors. We conclude that whilst there will always remain a need for community groups to protect the freedom which comes from acting independently, for community activists and policy-makers alike, there are nevertheless a series of mutual benefits to be had from co-production. However, in setting out these benefits we also emphasise the dual need for local government to play a much more nuanced, integrative and facilitatory role, in addition to, but separate from, its more traditional regulatory role

Livelihoods, Wellbeing and the Risk to Life During Volcanic Eruptions

A forensic analysis of fatalities and displacements from recent volcanic eruptions (1986–2015) provides insights into factors that influence actions to protect life in high-risk environments. Unlike many other geophysical hazard events, volcanic eruptions may be prolonged, and of variable intensity. This is reflected in patterns of volcanic fatalities. A global survey reveals that 63% of primary volcanic deaths occur after the first week of activity, with >44% of these deaths associated with citizens returning to an established high-hazard zone. Evacuations during volcanic eruptions are protracted and this allows time for competing pressures to arise. Examination of detailed data from three volcanic crises (La Soufriere, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Soufrière Hills, Montserrat and Tungurahua, Ecuador) suggests that the need to preserve livelihoods plays a strong role in protecting life. A dynamic, associated with pull (e.g., protecting assets, place attachment) and push factors (e.g., poor shelter conditions), can draw evacuees to return during high-risk periods. Similar considerations can restrain people with previous experience of volcanic hazards and displacement, from evacuating. Our global analysis shows that these pressures, when coupled with forecasting uncertainties and the rapid landscape change associated with volcanic eruptions, mean that the physical and social vulnerability of populations change significantly during the course of an eruption. Ongoing risk to life is shaped by hazard experience and action; timescales of hazard escalation and their relationship to warning and action; and the timescales over which evacuation conditions are tolerable to livelihood and asset preservation, and mental and physical wellbeing in shelters