Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „Climate-City Contract“

With a population of close to 13 million, and an annual growth rate of 2.86 percent, Rwanda plans to position itself as a climate resilient, low carbon, low unemployment, reduced poverty country, with a strong services sector by 2050. Its projected increase in its urbanization rate from a current value of 18.4 percent to 35 percent by 2024 is driven by strong political will, significant investments in infrastructure, service provision, and human capital development. Rwanda’s secondary cities, identified as economic nodes of growth, are currently undergoing revision of their masterplans in consideration of climate change realities and the pressure on infrastructure and services due to rapid urbanization. Currently, cities in Rwanda do not yet have a system of public open spaces. Where available, such spaces are usually hardly accessible and need upgrading. To address this, the Ministry of Infrastructure, Rwanda Housing Authority, City of Kigali and six secondary cities have committed to deliver on public open space related activities and targets under the yearly performance contract ‘Imihigo’. The outcomes of their commitments support the climate-responsive revision of masterplans of the City of Kigali and six secondary cities. This paper presents public open space initiatives in Kigali and the results of the technical assessment of public open spaces and participatory planning and design workshop in Nyagatare, secondary city in Rwanda’s. It also discusses ongoing policy changes and initiatives that aim to promote public open spaces as crucial for urban public health.

With the widespread realisation of the significance of climate change, urban communities are increasingly seeking to ensure resilience to future uncertainties in urban water supplies, yet change seems slow with many cities facing ongoing investment in the conventional approach. This is because transforming cities to more sustainable urban water cities, or to Water Sensitive Cities, requires a major overhaul of the hydro-social contract that underpins conventional approaches. This paper provides an overview of the emerging research and practice focused on system resilience and principles of sustainable urban water management Three key pillars that need to underpin the development and practice of a Water Sensitive City are proposed: (i) access to a diversity of water sources underpinned by a diversity of centralised and decentralised infrastructure; (ii) provision of ecosystem services for the built and natural environment; and (iii) socio-political capital for sustainability and water sensitive behaviours. While there is not one example in the world of a Water Sensitive City, there are cities that lead on distinct and varying attributes of the water sensitive approach and examples from Australia and Singapore are presented.

Guantánamo is infamous as a site of extra-legal detention in the wake of 9/11; more than a single site, it is part of a web of the United States’ militarization operating in the Global South. An area of the military base is now being revitalized as a new camp for climate change–related mass migration events predicted to occur throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. In February 2018, RQ Construction, LLC (Carlsbad, California) won a 23-million-dollar contract to build a “Contingency Mass Migration Complex” at Guantánamo to house migrants and personnel at the military base in a massive tent city. Though less explicitly worded, other large Department of Defense awards for work at Guantánamo point toward extensive infrastructure development as recently as March 2019. The United States’ militarized response to climate-based migration is an extension of the logic through which economic and political refugees are branded criminals or terrorists.

Effective planning of a solid waste recycling program is a substantial challenge for the current waste management system in Key West, Florida. Solid waste management strategies have to be reorganized in light of the social and economic recycling, recovery, and reuse philosophical approaches which are dramatically changing consumer behaviors across the globe. The growing concern for environmental issues and the goal of local sustainable development have moved the management of solid waste to the forefront of the public agenda. This paper focuses on efforts to agree upon a city-wide initiative to increase waste diversion within the prevailing political, environmental, and economic climate in which waste disposal activities had dominated the market. It discusses how the traditional two-party solid waste hauling contract was altered by the addition of outside third-party interests forcing a multi-party negotiation processes.

This auto-ethnographic essay revisits the story of the Beirut City Center Dome, also known as the “Egg,” a 1960s brutalist-modernist cinema abandoned to snipers during Lebanon’s civil war, which briefly became a stage for a direct action politics in the early days of Lebanon’s October 2019 uprising. One of the uprising’s most ambitious aims was the ushering in of a new social contract beyond sectarian divisions. The essay tests the argument that a postwar model of expert-driven peace, which involves compartmentalizing the political society while devolving power into real-estate investors–prime ministers, crucially depends on the constant reproduction of technomoral hierarchies between experts and their subjects. In the context of mass mobilization, the essay considers “real estate” to be a fitting metaphor to describe the process through which potentially emancipatory projects fail to materialize within a toxic climate that tends to equate political critique with purity competitions and boundary work.

<p>In this article, we investigate the nexus of green city branding and municipal climate networks. In recent decades, a number of formal transnational municipal climate networks have emerged and their membership continues to increase. In parallel, city branding that is based on green policies, has gained importance. Based on quantitative and qualitative data, we assess how and to what extent German cities use their membership in transnational municipal climate networks to communicate green city brands. In contrast to our expectations, we encountered very few indications of green city branding efforts by German cities. Our analysis shows that in general, branding considerations only play a negligible role in the involvement of cities in transnational municipal climate networks or climate policies. Instead, it seems that German cities use their membership in climate networks, to genuinely improve local climate change strategies. We therefore suggest that research on green city branding should be more sensitive to the particular context of cities and efforts should be made to unveil the underlying motives for the communication of green policies.</p>

The hot and dry climate conditions in Erbil city has a main effect on the energy consumption and thermal performance of the house. In the last decade, residential sector in Kurdistan region government has consumed about 50% of total energy consumption. The contemporary dwelling did not consider climate consideration therefore; there was difficulty in achieving or obtaining thermal comfort conditions, without using electrical or mechanical devices like air- conditioning. In contrast, traditional houses carefully and effectively designed with climate conditions. In the present study, in order to determine suitable architectural strategy that may be benefit in future housing designs, the climate response strategies and thermal comfort examined in both traditional and contemporary houses in Erbil city and evaluated in terms of building form, orientation, occupancy migration, plan arrangement, window, ventilation, shading, Vegetation, water bodies building materials and Urban Fabric. At the end of this study, a simplified evaluation and comparison between contemporary and traditional house are given.

Urban authorities and a range of private and civil society actors have come to view housing as a key arena in which to address climate change whilst also pursuing wider social, economic and environmental objectives. Housing has been a critical area for urban studies, but often considered in sectoral terms and work on urban responses to climate change has followed this positioning. By contrast, an Urban Political Ecology (UPE) perspective would position housing in more integrated terms as part of the metabolism of the city. Yet so far there has been relatively little written in UPE about either housing or climate change. This paper therefore seeks to bring UPE into dialogue with the emergent literature focused on governing climate change through housing. It does so through a detailed study of the ‘Retrofit Philly “Coolest Block” Contest’. We argue that this contest highlights the ways climate change is changing the way housing is embedded in the circulations of the city, pointing to changes in who is governing housing, how housing is being governed and who is able to access the benefits of (climate change-branded) action on housing.

This research aims to determine the effect of organizational climate and work ability towards organizational commitment and its impact on the employee performance. Endogenous variable in this research is the performance of employees, while, the exogenous variables are the organizational climate and work ability. This research proposes organizational commitment to be the intervening variable. This research using a 55 samples who are taken from the employees of Perindagkop and SMEs in Pontianak City. The type of research was a descriptive survey research with questionnaire as the main data collecting media. Method of sampling in this research is census method where the entire population being sampled. Data were analyzed using path analysis (Path Analysis) facilitated by SPSS for Windows 22.0. The results showed that the organizational climate and the ability to work in a positive and significant effect on organizational commitment and the performance of employees. In contrast, the variable organizational commitment has no significant effect to employee performance. It means that organizational commitment to the organization of the Perindagkop and SMEs Pontianak City has no effect on employee performance improvement.

Farmers in the Roxas mountain range, City of Koronadal used to have bountiful harvests during the time when the city was still free from climate-related hazards. However, this situation has recently changed due to the increasing climate-related risk events. Moreover, localized baseline scientific climate information is limited to foster the development of appropriate adaptations and policies toward climate-resilient communities. This study assessed the climate trends and the changes, impacts, and adaptation strategies of farm households in five barangays in the Roxas mountain range, Koronadal City, South Cotabato. The study conducted household surveys with 265 respondents, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. In using Mann-Kendall test statistics, time series analysis and one-way analysis of variance, the findings from 1981 to 2012 show increasing trends with significant changes (p <0.01) in mean minimum temperature, increasing by 0.74 °C for three decades. In contrast, mean maximum temperature showed a decreasing trend with an average decrease of 0.65 °C, p <0.01). In three decadal periods, an average increase of 0.04 °C in monthly mean temperature was observed. Rainfall patterns during the same period also show significant changes in the months of June (p <0.01), August, and December (p <0.05); these findings suggest that climate change occurred. Floods, landslides, and droughts were experienced by the communities, which had devastating socioeconomic and environmental impacts. The existing adaptation strategies are just stop-gap solutions that address the effects of climate change but do not consider the root causes. To consider future changes in climate patterns, the socioeconomic and political structure and processes of the communities need to change; this can be achieved if multifaceted drivers of climate change hazards and their impacts are appropriately and immediately addressed. Some grassroot-level transformative adaptation strategies identified in the study consist of socioeconomic facets, specifically, investment in children’s education, financial management, family planning, and development of alternative on-farm and nonfarm livelihood options. The environmental aspect, which includes promoting agroforestry system, water impoundment technologies, and advanced early warning system, were also considered.

Cities cover 3% of the world’s surface but they emit 72% of all globally produced greenhouse gas emissions. Cities are therefore an essential part when trying to overcome climate change. To address this crisis Climate-City Contracts [Klimatkontrakt] was adopted in Sweden 2020 by nine Swedish cities, four governmental agencies and Viable Cities. The goal is to form climate neutral cities. To achieve this the cities will start co-creation processes together with its citizens. The processes will aim to find new solutions to combat climate change. This bachelor thesis provides a unique perspective of how that can be achieved in Umeå, which is one of the cities that signed the contract. The research aim is to examine public officials, in Umeå municipality, views of co-creation within the framework of Klimatkontrakt Umeå 2030. Thus creating a greater understanding of how public officials within Umeå perceive the possibilities for citizens to become a co-creating actor. To achieve the research aim interviews were conducted with four public officials in Umeå municipality. The interviews showed that the public officials can see many positive effects as a result of future co-creation processes. Different target groups will also become the focal point when Umeå will co-create with its citizens. The process can also take many forms, such as different kinds of dialogues, which may lead to a reorganization which allows Umeå to better co-create with its citizens.

Empire of Ruins explores the meaning of ruins in American culture, from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, arguing that photographs have been the chief means by which the significance of ruins has been created in American culture. The book traces a historical argument that begins in the nineteenth century, when Americans yearned for the ruins of Europe, then moves to the discovery of Native American ruins in the Southwest. Later chapters explore the visualization of inner city ruins, abandoned factories, and shopping malls, and the “creative destruction” of buildings in order to make way for bigger ones. In addition, it analyzes the imagery of the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster; the ruins of the industrial landscape through mining operations; the ruins created by natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy; and the ruins produced by climate change, including the melting of the ice caps. Empire of Ruins considers, in conclusion, the way the picturing of ruins has served to mark revolutionary moments in political culture, symbolizing the choices societies must make. Empire of Ruins focuses mainly on photography, but it encompasses painting, literature, and popular films as well, in order to provide a larger picture of the cultural meaning of ruins. At the same time, it examines the powerful aesthetic attraction of ruin imagery in photographs and films, showing how the Destructive Sublime, a new category of experience, evokes contrary responses in viewers.

Worldwide, half a million people die from air pollution each year-more than perish in all wars combined. One in every five mammal species on the planet is threatened with extinction. Our climate is warming, our forests are in decline, and every day we hear news of the latest ecological crisis. What will it really take to move society onto a more sustainable path? Many of us are already doing the "little things" to help the earth, like recycling or buying organic produce. These are important steps-but they're not enough. In Who Rules the Earth?, Paul Steinberg, a leading scholar of environmental politics, shows that the shift toward a sustainable world requires modifying the very rules that guide human behavior and shape the ways we interact with the earth. We know these rules by familiar names like city codes, product design standards, business contracts, public policies, cultural norms, and national constitutions. Though these rules are largely invisible, their impact across the planet has been dramatic. By changing the rules, Ontario, Canada has cut the levels of pesticides in its waterways in half. The city of Copenhagen has adopted new planning codes that will reduce its carbon footprint to zero by 2025. In the United States, a handful of industry mavericks designed new rules to promote greener buildings, and transformed the world's largest industry into a more sustainable enterprise. Steinberg takes the reader on a series of journeys, from a familiar walk on the beach to a remote village deep in the jungles of Peru, helping the reader to "see" the social rules that pattern our physical reality and showing why these are the big levers that will ultimately determine the health of our planet. By unveiling the influence of social rules at all levels of society-from private property to government policy, and from the rules governing our oceans to the dynamics of innovation and change within corporations and communities-Who Rules the Earth? is essential reading for anyone who understands that sustainability is not just a personal choice, but a political struggle.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

AbstractMy research group is involved in collaborations with the dynamic ‘Amsterdam Metropolitan Region (MRA)’ and ‘Rotterdam-The Hague Metropolitan Region (MRDH)’, with the objective to investigate the complex governance challenges and opportunities related to urban sustainability transitions, mainly through transdisciplinary collaboration. The resulting knowledge and skills are used to support and engage with Transformative Social-Ecological Innovation (TSEI) in-the-making, which in turn will generate new knowledge and skills (i.e. in iterative learning cycles). This chapter starts with a brief overview of urban sustainability challenges (Sect. 7.1). Research activities are centred around the transition to climate-resilient and healthy cities (Sect. 7.2), feeding and greening megacities (Sect. 7.3), as well as the transition from linear to circular and regenerative economies and cultures in (mega) cities (Sect. 7.4). In parallel, a new transdisciplinary Minor is developed, called ‘Collaboration for the City of the Future’ (Sect. 7.4).

Chapter 5 turns to Oklahoma, ground zero of the most violent tornadoes on the planet, where an evangelical Protestant culture meets the frontiers of contemporary meteorological research. Deadly tornadoes in Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, have made particularly raw the long-festering question of whether God controls everything that happens. But Oklahomans have also had to confront the converse problem of human complicity in disasters, especially in an era of climate change. Evangelical politicians from Oklahoma have had a disproportionate influence on climate policy in the Trump administration, which has denied the looming crisis of global warming, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. At the local level, Oklahomans have also had to reckon with the challenge of disaster preparedness, especially the funding of school storm shelters, in a state that often resists governmental “intrusion.”

Banaras witnessed accelerated political climate in 2014 as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate decided to represent this as his parliamentary constituency. Suddenly, the city marked with diversity of religions, cultures, and modes of living, was up for polarized electoral campaigns. This chapter analyses the key question which has rarely been fully explored: why did Narendra Modi decide to contest elections from Banaras, a constituency outside his home state of Gujarat? Instead of his mediatized and self-proclaimed image as an efficient administrator and symbol of development, why did he invoke a religious–mythical vocabulary to justify his choice? Weaving insights from the disciplines of cultural–social geography and elections studies together, this chapter discusses how a specific religious imagery of Banaras contrary to its pluralistic livings was mobilized in the 2014 parliamentary elections.

The international protection of tangible cultural heritage overlaps with that of the environment, ranging from the conservation of biodiversity to the prevention of desertification. Against this background, the phenomenon of climate change raises questions that challenge the fundamentals of the World Heritage Convention, which protects cultural heritage and interlinked natural heritage. Global warming critically affects cultural sites of outstanding universal value, such as the city of Venice, and depletes mixed cultural and natural sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, such as Tassili n’Ajjer. Arguably, the World Heritage Convention is lex specialis with respect to international environmental regulation as concerns localized adaptation and mitigation measures protecting sites of outstanding universal value. By contrast, environmental regulation, notably the UNFCCC regime as reviewed in Paris in December 2015, is lex specialis as concerns general mitigation and adaptation, systemically integrating the protection of tangible cultural heritage. This argument also applies to intangible cultural heritage, including a human rights perspective. In fact, the fundamental right to culture has been invoked in international jurisdictions to protect intangible heritage, but still remains lex generalis with respect to the UNFCCC regime. As in a set of nested boxes, such an interactive pattern outlines a basic paradigm to shape the broader intersection between the regulatory regimes protecting tangible cultural heritage and the environment in international law.

The global population is expected to reach over 9 billion by 2050. The ‘second wave of urbanization’ indicates that developing world cities are growing much faster than their developed world counterparts, and most of these people will live in African and Asian cities where city growth rates are the highest. This, ‘second wave of urbanization’ is a core driver of change in the 21st century and follows the first wave of urbanization that took place in developed countries from 1750, lasted 200 years and resulted in the urbanization of 400 million people. By contrast, the second wave of urbanization is projected to see over 3 billion additional people living in cities in a time-span of just 80 years, bringing unprecedented challenges to city doorsteps. In the current era of development, urban sustainability is threatened by heightened global uncertainty and change. In broad terms, these changes consist of the following global factors: economic change, scarcity of resources, rapid technological and social change, environmental and climate change effects. These drivers of change have broad reach, and threaten multiple sectors — such as food, water, energy, transport and waste — that are critical for urban sustainability. In response, this paper discusses cities’ transition to urban energy sustainability and the role of infrastructures, with focus on transportation planning. The paper highlights the case of Egypt as an example of developing countries. The objectives of the paper are; firstly to identify the different factors affecting Egyptian cities’ transition to sustainability, and secondly to analyze the strategic urban planning process in Egypt which is a bottom-up participatory approach leading to urban sustainability. The paper presents a case study from Egypt, illustrating the preparation of a future urban strategic plan for a small Egyptian city. The case study shows how participatory approach can result in innovative solutions leading to sustainable urban energy planning with focus on transportation.