Dirty coal : voluntary international environmental agreements and sustainable development in the People\u27s Republic of China

Agenda 21 is the voluminous policy document that emanated from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Using a brief case study of China’s energy use—specifically its use of coal—this article illustrates how the objectives of Agenda 21 are reflected in China’s economic development policies and practices. We address these kinds of questions: Has China endeavoured to implement environmentally sustainable development, as reflected in the chapters of Agenda 21? What does the case of energy use tell us about the utility of Agenda 21 objectives in China and other developing countries? What are some of the political and economic factors that influenced this process? More broadly, what does the Chinese case tell us about the implementation of voluntary international environmental agreements in the developing world? We conclude that China has been stimulated by Agenda 21 and other international instruments, along with other factors, to shift its economic development toward a more environmentally sustainable trajectory, as reflected in its changing policies on energy derived from coal burning. However, because economic growth remains central to development goals, these policies are only a start toward environmentally sustainable development. Environmental decline still outpaces sustainable development

The future size and composition of the private rented sector: an LSE London project for Shelter

Current forecasts suggest that perhaps one in four households in England and maybe one in three in London might be living in the private rented sector by 2025. However, there has been little attempt to identify which household types are likely to be most affected. The brief for this study was both to fill this gap and to look somewhat further ahead. Shelter has asked LSE London to ‘produce plausible modelling, forecasting how many privately renting households there will be in England in 2028, what their demographic composition will be and what proportion of each demographic group will be privately renting.’ The findings would be used to provide an evidence base from which to discuss how policy towards the private rented sector might better serve the full range of households likely to be living in the sector

Daily expression of a clock gene in the brain and pituitary of the Malabar grouper (Epinephelus malabaricus)

Recent studies have revealed that, in addition to regulating the circadian system, clock genes such as cryptochrome (Cry) genes are involved in seasonal and lunar rhythmicity in fish. This study clarified the transcriptional characteristics of a Cry subtype (mgCry2) in the brain of the Malabar grouper, Epinephelus malabaricus, which is an important aquaculture species that spawns around the new moon. The cDNA sequence of mgCry2 showed high identity (97-99%) with fish Cry2 and had an open reading frame encoding a protein with 170 amino acids. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that mgCRY2 had high identity with CRY in other fish species. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) showed the widespread distribution of mgCry2 in neural (brain, pituitary, and retina) and peripheral (heart, liver, kidney, spleen, gill, intestine, and ovary) tissues. When immature Malabar groupers were reared under a light-dark cycle (LD=12:12) and the amounts of mgCry2 mRNA in the telencephalon and diencephalon were measured at 4-h intervals, the levels increased during photophase and decreased during scotophase. Day-night variation in mgCry2 mRNA abundance was also observed in the pituitary. These daily profiles suggest that mgCry2 is a light-responsive gene in neural tissues. In situ hybridization analyses showed that mgCry2 was strongly transcribed in the nucleus lateralis tuberis of the ventral hypothalamus, peripheral area of the proximal pars distalis, and the pars intermedia of the pituitary. We conclude that clock genes expressed in the pituitary and diencephalon play a role in entraining the endocrine network of the Malabar grouper to periodic changes in external cues

Community-led housing and loneliness: Research into the impact of community-led housing and co-housing solutions

In the 2018 publication ‘A connected society: A Strategy for tackling loneliness – laying the foundations for change’, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) committed to fund research fund research into innovative community-led housing projects to understand how these can help to tackle loneliness and support social connections. DLUHC commissioned the London School of Economics and Political Science to carry out this piece of research to address an identified evidence gap around the link between loneliness and participation in community-led housing (cohousing in particular).Community-led housing is an umbrella term for a range of models that includes cohousing, community land trusts (CLTs), cooperatives, self-help and self-build housing

‘A Slow Build-Up of a History of Kindness’: Exploring the Potential of Community-Led Housing in Alleviating Loneliness

This article explores the potential of community-led housing (CLH) in combatting loneliness, and represents a mixed-methods research project carried out from just before the beginning of the pandemic, through 2020. Methods comprised a nationwide quantitative online survey of members of CLH groups (N = 221 respondents from England and Wales), followed by five case studies of communities representing a range of different CLH models. This qualitative element comprised participant observation, and semi-structured interviews at each group. The article also considers data from a smaller research project carried out by the same team in July 2020, that aimed to capture the experience of the pandemic for CLH groups, and comprising an online questionnaire followed by 18 semi-structured interviews. We conclude that members of CLH projects are measurably less lonely than those with comparable levels of social connection in wider society, and that such benefits are achieved through combinations of multiple different elements that include physical design, social design and through social processes. Notably, not all aspects of communities that contribute positively are a result of explicit intentionality, albeit the concept is considered key to at least one of the models

Household income distribution estimates: The example of Pay to Stay impacts in Local Authority areas in two English regions

Drawing on household income distributions, this pilot study estimates the localised impact and scale of Pay to Stay (PTS) for London and the West Midlands. The test results show that the new social rent regime will affect local authority (LA) areas unevenly – Pay to Stay affected household (PTS HH) proportions were estimated to range from around 6 to 16% while the counts ranged from around 300 to 6,500 households. PTS requires English local authority landlords to charge market (or quasi-market) rents to tenants on higher incomes

Experimental review of the Cambridge Travel to Work Area as a tool for informing housing policy

A Travel-to-work Area (TTWA) theoretically represents a self-contained labour market area in which all commuting occurs within the boundary of that area. It has been re-defined once a decade when analyses on commuting patterns drawn from the UK Censuses were completed. In December 2015, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) published TTWAs based on the 2011 Census results. TTWAs are used primarily to aid understanding of labour markets across the UK. However, residential location and commuting patterns can also contribute to understanding local housing markets. The conventional assumption is that local labour markets are spatial proxies for housing markets. Indeed, housing professionals have been employing TTWAs in this way in their strategic plans. One of the issues in using existing TTWA s in this way is that they do not allow for overlap. Consider a household with two earners, one of whom is commuting within the TTWA while the other is commuting to a business hub outside their TTWA. For example, Cambridge TTWA has now expanded as far south as Hertford and Harlow – settlements containing many London commuters. Taking Cambridge as our example we attempt in this paper to experimentally identify commuting areas for Cambridge that lie within the boundaries of other employment hubs, such as Ely. In this way we can start to address the reality that TTWAs, certainly in terms of local housing markets, are not discrete – they overlap. The remainder of this brief report is structured as follows: Section 2 considers various alternative local housing market definitions and compares them to the 2011 Cambridge TTWA. Section 3 selects several employment hubs closest to Cambridge City, and uses Lower Super Output Areas as the basis for identifying the relevant local housing market area for the city and surrounding areas. In Section 4 we consider the housing needs (availability and affordability) of households of two earners, one of whom is commuting to work in the Ely employment hub while the other is commuting to Cambridge employment hub – producing a more complex but more accurate picture of local housing needs. Section 5 discusses the findings and suggests further research in respect of local housing markets in and around the Cambridge TTWA and beyon

Estimated net income distribution of working households by household type and locality: Bromley 2014

Landlords in the social rented sector are currently in need of delivering more hybrid housing options – most notably the Affordable Rent (AR) Programme. The target of 80% of market rents implies prospective tenants will be on moderate, but not the lowest, incomes, and are thus less likely to be on Housing Benefit; an appropriate or optimal level of AR in each local market is still not settled, and is the subject of debate amongst housing providers. One of the bases for setting an AR is household income net of income-related benefits, such as Housing Benefit. Calculating this is not easy because lack of detailed information on household income components in local areas. For instance, the Family Resource Survey (FRS), commissioned by DWP, has critical data on household incomes but only at very limited geographical levels. 1 There is also a considerable time lag between data collection, publication and use in the planning context for housing provision. Cambridge Centre for Housing & Planning Research (CCHPR) has been approached by several housing associations and local authorities to provide estimates of the latest net income distribution of working households by type at or lower than local authority area level. Net income means income net of housing and other income-related benefits but includes non-income related benefits. As an example, CCHPR has estimated net income distribution for eight household types in the London Borough of Bromley at Mid-Super Output Area (MSOA) level, for July 2014, using micro-simulation models developed from our own experience and studies