Living Conditions and Poverty in Russia

A couple of serious economic crises recently (1992 and 1998) have drastically cut living standards (by half in 1992) in Russia. Life expectancy for men is now just 58.8 years, down five years from 1990. For women, it is now 72 years, two years less than a dozen years ago. Infant mortality is still high compared with Western European countries, although it is steadily falling. The population is showing a downward trend. High divorce rates and children living with their parents to solve the problems of scarce housing explain the high frequency of lone parent families and complex households. The transition to the market economy disrupted the labour market. The drop in earnings has been accompanied by an increase in inequality and poverty: lone parent families, large families and seniors are faced with particularly disadvantageous living conditions, especially in the small towns.Multiple Dimensions of Poverty, Socialist Country in Transition, Russia

Blazing the trail: Social innovation supporting wildfire-resilient territories in Catalonia (Spain)

Mediterranean territories have co-evolved and been shaped by fire throughout history. However, global environmental change conditions are increasing the size, intensity and severity of wildfires, which have gone from a regular natural disturbance to a serious threat for civil protection, surpassing firefighting capacities. Therefore, building resilience in fire-prone territories is an increasingly relevant policy and management objective. However, the notion of resilience has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to key social issues such as socio-political dynamics, power imbalances and societal change. At the same time, social science contributions to wildfire research are still rather limited. In this paper, we bridge social innovation theory to resilience theory in order to create a territorially embedded and socially sensitive framework for assessing socio-ecological resilience. From this perspective, we then examine how Forest Defence Groups (ADFs, by their Catalan acronym) have evolved from grassroots, bottom-up initiatives to well-established bottom-linked institutions and we evaluate their contributions to socio-ecological resilience in the territories where they operate. Our results show that ADFs contribute in several aspects to socio-ecological resilience and that the pave the way for opening up spaces of dialogue and collaboration through which local communities can engage with the issues that directly affect them, such as wildfires.This research received funding from the SIMRA project, funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 677622. During the writing phase it also received funding from the Pyrolife project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme MSCA-ITN2019 – Innovative Training Networks, under grant agreement No 860787

More fodder for the oven? Dealing with forest-related conflicts arising from the production and use of energy wood in Europe

Results from the COOL project201

PESFOR-W: Improving the design and environmental effectiveness of woodlands for water Payments for Ecosystem Services

ABSTRACT: The EU Water Framework Directive aims to ensure restoration of Europe?s water bodies to ?good ecological status? by 2027. Many Member States will struggle to meet this target, with around half of EU river catchments currently reporting below standard water quality. Diffuse pollution from agriculture represents a major pressure, affecting over 90% of river basins. Accumulating evidence shows that recent improvements to agricultural practices are benefiting water quality but in many cases will be insufficient to achieve WFD objectives. There is growing support for land use change to help bridge the gap, with a particular focus on targeted tree planting to intercept and reduce the delivery of diffuse pollutants to water. This form of integrated catchment management offers multiple benefits to society but a significant cost to landowners and managers. New economic instruments, in combination with spatial targeting, need to be developed to ensure cost effective solutions - including tree planting for water benefits - are realised. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are flexible, incentive-based mechanisms that could play an important role in promoting land use change to deliver water quality targets. The PESFOR-W COST Action will consolidate learning from existing woodlands for water PES schemes in Europe and help standardize approaches to evaluating the environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of woodland measures. It will also create a European network through which PES schemes can be facilitated, extended and improved, for example by incorporating other ecosystem services linking with aims of the wider forestscarbon policy nexus