Download or read book Creating Resilient Landscapes in an Era of Climate Change written by Amin Rastandeh and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book delivers a realistic and feasible framework for creating resilient landscapes in an era of anthropogenic climate change. From across six continents, this book presents fifteen case studies of differing sociocultural, economic, and biophysical backgrounds that showcase opportunities and limitations for creating resilient landscapes throughout the world. The potential to create socio-ecological resilience is examined across a wide range of landscapes, including agricultural, island, forest, coastal, and urban landscapes, across sixteen countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Samoa, South Africa, the United States, Turkey, Uruguay, and Vanuatu. Chapters discuss current and future issues around creating a sustainable food system, conserving biodiversity, and climate change adaptation and resilience, with green infrastructure, nature-based architecture, green-tech, and ecosystem services as just a few of the approaches discussed. The book emphasizes solution-oriented approaches for an "ecological hope" that can support landscape resiliency in this chaotic era, and the chapters consider the importance of envisioning an unpredictable future with numerous uncertainties. In this context, the key focus is on how we all can tackle the intertwined impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and large-scale land-cover conversion in urban and non-urban landscapes, with particular attention to the concept of landscape resiliency. The volume provides that much-needed link between theory and practice to deliver forward-thinking, practical solutions. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers who are interested in the complex relationship between landscapes, climate change, biodiversity loss, and land-based conversion at local, national and global scales.

Download or read book Khayelitsha written by Steven Otter and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-09-21 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gunshots came in rapid succession. There were three of them, followed by screeching tyres and a screaming engine. In a matter of seconds I recalled the conversation I’d had with Mary. She’d been right after all. ‘You’ll be fine for a few days,’ she’d said, ‘but after that they’ll turn on you. Our cultures are too different. You won’t live through it, not just because of the cultural differences, but because of the common crime. Find a home here in the suburbs where you belong.’ The three gunshots had been my first, but perhaps for those who’d lived in these streets for years they were only three gunshots among countless others. Who knows? Perhaps three a week, maybe even three a night? ither way, I’d have to get used to them – or leave.

Download or read book Innovating for Healthy Urbanization written by Roy Ahn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful resource identifies wide-scale health challenges facing a rapidly urbanizing planet--including key concerns in nutrition, health status, health care, and safety--and strategies toward possible solutions. Theoretical and empirical analysis focuses on maximizing the benefits of urban living and minimizing negative outcomes across areas for improvement (health education, maternal and child health) and threats to well-being (noise pollution, drug counterfeiting). For each challenge, contributors discuss implications for health, specific practices that fuel them, and emerging ideas for solving them efficiently and effectively. Not only are these issues of immediate salience, they will become dangerously urgent in years to come. Included in the coverage: Food fortification and other innovations to address child malnutrition. Anti-trafficking innovations, urbanization, and global health. Innovations to address global climate change in cities. Innovations in disaster preparedness: implications for urbanization and health. Medical diagnostic innovations in urban developing settings. The case for comprehensive, integrated, and standardized measures of health in cities. Recent studies suggest that urban areas will be a large majority in both the developing and developed worlds. Innovations to Address Urbanization & Global Health is a proactive idea book to be read by undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in public and urban health.

Download or read book Reframing the Role of Public Open Space written by Miriam Bodino and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-02-26 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the growing spatial inequality in contemporary cities, and the opportunity of reframing the role of public open space as a tool of inclusion in a context of an increasing economic gap between the urban poor and rich. The first part outlines the geographical and theoretical frames of reference, which are then tested in the analysis of a case study: Cape Town. This city in South Africa was selected since its spatial aspects of separation are particularly evident due to the legacy of both apartheid and modernism. The examination of the policies of the City of Cape Town confirms the rising attention to public space since the 1990s. This slow progress of desegregation is tested through a critical study of one of the most disadvantaged areas of the city, Khayelitsha. The book explores the relevance and impact of an urban-design project, and reframes the role of public open space not only as a tool for restructuring the apartheid city, but also for reinterpreting other fragmented contemporary cities.

Download or read book Sustaining Life written by Theodore Powers and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnographic account of the South African AIDS movement and activists From the historical roots of AIDS activism in the struggle for African liberation to the everyday work of community education in Khayelitsha, Sustaining Life tells the story of how the rights-based South African AIDS movement successfully transformed public health institutions, enabled access to HIV/AIDS treatment, and sustained the lives of people living with the disease. Typical accounts of the South African epidemic have focused on the political conflict surrounding it, Theodore Powers observes, but have yet to examine the process by which the national HIV/AIDS treatment program achieved near-universal access. In Sustaining Life, Powers demonstrates the ways in which non-state actors, from caregivers to activists, worked within the state to transform policy and state-based institutions in order to improve health-based outcomes. He shows how advocates in the South African AIDS movement channeled the everyday experiences of poor and working-class people living with HIV/AIDS into tangible policy changes at varying institutional levels, revealing the primacy of local action for expanding treatment access. In his analysis of the transformation of the state health system, Powers addresses three key questions: How were the activists of the movement able to overcome an AIDS-dissident faction that was backed by government power? How were state health institutions and HIV/AIDS policy transformed to increase public sector access to treatment? Finally, how should the South African campaign for treatment access inform academic debates on social movements, transnationalism, and the state? Based on extended participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of the South African AIDS movement, Sustaining Life traces how the political principles of the anti-apartheid movement were leveraged to build a broad coalition that changed national HIV/AIDS policy norms and highlights how changes in state-society relations can be produced by local activism.

Download or read book The Politics of Potential written by Michelle Pentecost and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-12 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first one thousand days of human life, or the period between conception and age two, is one of the most pivotal periods of human development. Optimizing nutrition during this time not only prevents childhood malnutrition but also determines future health and potential. The Politics of Potential examines early life interventions in the first one thousand days of life in South Africa, drawing on fieldwork from international conferences, government offices, health-care facilities, and the everyday lives of fifteen women and their families in Cape Town. Michelle Pentecost explores various aspects of a politics of potential, a term that underlines the first one thousand days concept and its effects on clinical care and the lives of childbearing women in South Africa. Why was the First One Thousand Days project so readily adopted by South Africa and many other countries? Pentecost not only explores this question but also discusses the science of intergenerational transmissions of health, disease, and human capital and how this constitutes new forms of intergenerational responsibility. The women who are the target of first one thousdand days interventions are cast as both vulnerable and responsible for the health of future generations, such that, despite its history, intergenerational responsibility in South Africa remains entrenched in powerfully gendered and racialized ways.

Download or read book Citizen and Pariah written by Vanya Gastrow and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoping for a better life, many migrants have made the journey to South Africa and set up as informal spaza shop traders in small towns and township areas, supplying the local residents with essentials. These traders work hard, open their shops early, close late and support their relatives and kinspeople in starting new businesses. But thriving in environments afflicted by unemployment and crime is almost impossible when armed robberies are a daily reality, protection from law enforcement is not a given, and access to justice is effectively out of reach.?Engaging first-hand with small traders and the Somali communities in Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein and Philippi, Vanya Gastrow investigates the predicament of these modernday pariahs - social and political outcasts who belong neither to the elite nor the common people, and who are frequently the focus of xenophobic anger. Tracing national-level regulatory developments in post-apartheid democratic South Africa Gastrow shines a light on how retailers have been politicised and how they have faced growing informal and formal regulatory efforts to curtail their business activities. She demonstrates how democratic and constitutional frameworks can erode in contexts of heightened nationalism, populism and economic inequality. By investigating Somali informal shopkeepers' experiences of crime, justice and regulation in the country, the fragility of law, pluralism and democracy in South Africa is uncomfortably exposed

Download or read book Policing and Boundaries in a Violent Society written by Guy Lamb and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how social and territorial boundaries have influenced the approaches and practices of the South Africa Police Service (SAPS). By means of a historical analysis of South Africa, this book introduces a new concept, ‘police frontierism’, which illuminates the nature of the relationships between the police, policing and boundaries, and can potentially be used for future case study research. Drawing on a wealth of research, this book examines how social and territorial boundaries strongly influenced police practices and behaviour in South Africa, and how social delineations amplify and distort existing police prejudices against those communities on the other side of the boundary. Focusing on cases of high-density police operations, public-order policing and the recent policing of the COVID-19 lockdown, this book argues that poor economic conditions combined with an increased militarisation of the SAPS and a decline in public trust in the police will result in boundaries continuing to fundamentally inform police work in South Africa. This book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in policing in post-colonial societies characterised by high levels of violence, as well as police work and police militarization.

Download or read book South Africa Lesotho Swaziland written by John Bradley and published by Modern Overland. This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the region's history, culture, and wildlife and offers advice on where to eat and stay and what to see.

Download or read book Security Governance Policing and Local Capacity written by Jan Froestad and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The security governance of South Africa has faced immense challenges amid post-apartheid constitutional and political transformations. In many cases, policing and governmental organizations have failed to provide security and other services to the poorest inhabitants. Security Governance, Policing, and Local Capacity explores an experiment that took place in Zwelethemba—located in South Africa’s Western Cape Province—to establish legitimate and effective nonstate security governance within poor urban settlements. There has been, and continues to be, much reticence to endorsing private forms of security governance that operate outside of state institutions within local communities. Those initiatives have often led to situations where force is used illegally and punishment is dispensed arbitrarily and brutally. This book explores the extent to which this model of mobilizing local knowledge and capacity was able to effectively achieve justice, democracy, accountability, and development in this region. Whenever possible, the book includes raw data and a thorough analysis of existing information on security governance. Examining this case and its outcome, the authors provide a theoretical analysis of the model used and present a series of design principles for future applications in local security governance. The book concludes that poor communities are a significant source of untapped resources that can, under certain conditions, be mobilized to significantly enhance safety. This volume is an important examination of experimental models and a presentation of new groundbreaking theory on engaging the local community in solving security governance problems.

Download or read book Asinamanzi written by Minga Mbweck Kongo and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book opens up a new pathway for a contemporary ethnographic exploration of the politics of water in an unequal society, specifically focusing on the challenges faced in Khayelitsha, South Africa. South Africa is confronted with a quadruple threat of water scarcity, energy depletion, inflation, and unemployment, leaving politicians unsure of where to begin in minimizing the damage. Using incompleteness and conviviality as a framework, the book delves into the subjectivities created by the lack of water and its impact on various aspects of life, including medical, ecological, spiritual, and political dimensions. It also examines the inequalities in water access in Cape Town, highlighting the inequitable development patterns and the strategies deployed by residents to cope with inadequate water access. The book demonstrates the complex relationships and intricacies of water and how humans think about, relate to, and respond to water, particularly when it is lacking. Overall, it provides a comprehensive analysis of the complexities of water and its profound significance in different spheres of human life. “The book we have in our hands is a fine work on the intricacies of contemporary life in South Africa (and beyond). Instead of the patronising and condescending viewpoint that usually enables social scientists (especially anthropologists) to address ‘the poor’, Kongo demonstrates the complexities of people’s reasoning and feeling.” Antonádia Borges, Professor of Anthropology, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), Brazil “Minga’s excellent ethnography offers a rare account of the convivial relationships that structure everyday living and mobility in a place of ‘liquid shit’ in the midst of a precarity provoked by the sociopolitical absence of water in a city filled with water for everything, yet insensible to incompleteness as life-craft.” Divine Fuh, Associate Professor, Director of the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape Town “Asinamanzi is a raw book about the impact that a lack of piped water has on people living in informal settlements in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. It describes a world of ‘liquid shit’ that assaults the senses and erodes the dignity and relationships of people living in it. Amidst this ‘incomplete’ existence, residents bravely struggle to establish a ‘convivial’ social life.” Ilana van Wyk, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stellenbosch University “Asinamanzi is about the daily realities of living with water scarcity and raw sewage running through streets and houses. The book examines the social, cultural, religious and health dimensions of water, and provides rich ethnographic insights into what it means to strive to live with dignity in settings characterized by the broken infrastructures of everyday life.” Steven Robins, Professor of Anthropology, Stellenbosch University

Download or read book The Urban Ecologies of Divided Cities written by Amira Osman and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-06-12 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book discusses how division affect the fabric of cities, and people’s sense of identity and agency, and are reflected in physical features, architecture, and urban planning. The question of divided cities represents a complex and multistranded urban Ecology—at once both social and spatial; it cannot be limited to a single science or discipline, such as social or spatial fields. This suggests integrated and cross- disciplinary understandings, as well as integrated or parallel approaches and solutions. Urban ecologies of division manifest in multiple forms. One of their most palpable expressions is conflict, with parallels around the world, and often with correlations in the spatial fabric. Violence in such contexts is often a surface expression of deeper socio-economic or ideological differences. Whether as a result of intervention by authority or by dissent between groups, a divided city inevitably becomes a place of conflict in various forms and intensity, eroding the joy of living and sense of collective belonging to the detriment of all. In effect, it erodes the collective advantage of being part of a more unified society. A city exists in collections of social structures which mutually form a society. A divided city implies divided social structures and, in consequence, a divided society. The papers compiled in this book present many case studies of divided cities, discussing the different causes of divisions and their effects on societies. Some of the causes can be linked to conflicts, wars, colonialism, or legislative political systems. In response to the serious challenges resulting from these divisions, the book aims to provide opportunities for new approaches and possibilities for new interventions and solutions, making it significant to urban planners, architects, and policymakers.

Download or read book Mobilizing for Democracy written by Vera Schatten Coelho and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobilizing for Democracy is an in-depth study into how ordinary citizens and their organizations mobilize to deepen democracy. Featuring a collection of new empirical case studies from Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this important new book illustrates how forms of political mobilization, such as protests, social participation, activism, litigation and lobbying, engage with the formal institutions of representative democracy in ways that are core to the development of democratic politics. No other volume has brought together examples from such a broad Southern spectrum and covering such a diversity of actors: rural and urban dwellers, transnational activists, religious groups, politicians and social leaders. The cases illuminate the crucial contribution that citizen mobilization makes to democratization and the building of state institutions, and reflect the uneasy relationship between citizens and the institutions that are designed to foster their political participation.

Download or read book Telecentres Access and Development written by Sarah Parkinson and published by IDRC. This book was released on 2005 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on field research carried out in 2003, reviews the situation in selected urban and rural communities regarding availability of information and communication technologies (ICT) such as phone shops, Internet cafés, and telecentres providing photocopying, computer typesetting, faxing, computer training or related services. Presents recommendations for policymakers, donor agencies, NGOs and others that may wish to support shared ICT-access centres and their developmental impact.

Download or read book The Apartheid City and Beyond written by David M. Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how apartheid changed South Africa's cities, how people responded to regain some control over urban life, and how the forces of urbanization held back under apartheid will affect the post-apartheid era.

Download or read book New Forms of Procurement written by Marcus C. Jefferies and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last three decades have seen the evolution of Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) and Relationship Contracting (RC) as alternative procurement approaches to traditional methods of delivering public infrastructure. The potential for growth in these new forms of procurement has led to an on-going debate on the nature of requirements, particularly in terms of policy development, encouraging private investment and value for money. A key argument for Governments to procure projects using PPPs and RC is that the process delivers better value for all the stakeholders, including the community and asset end-users. This wide-ranging study of such crucial procurement issues includes international historical context, collaboration and risk management, with a focus on sustainable procurement approaches. The international significance of PPPs and RC procurement is reinforced with case study examples from the UK, Europe, North America, South Africa and the Asia-Pacific. It features cutting-edge research from around the world on subjects such as: Reviews and reflection of the PPP approach Project Alliancing Implementation of RC in developing countries Changes in procurement policy Value for money, collaboration and stakeholder involvement Growth and emergence of PPPs in Asia Risk management Including contributions from some of the world's most prominent academics and practitioners in this field, it is a crucial guide to the strategic choices governments now face for the provision of infrastructure, between using ‘public’ or ‘private’ mechanisms, or a combination of the two.

Download or read book Nine Pints written by Rose George and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening exploration of blood, the lifegiving substance with the power of taboo, the value of diamonds and the promise of breakthrough science Blood carries life, yet the sight of it makes people faint. It is a waste product and a commodity pricier than oil. It can save lives and transmit deadly infections. Each one of us has roughly nine pints of it, yet many don’t even know their own blood type. And for all its ubiquitousness, the few tablespoons of blood discharged by 800 million women are still regarded as taboo: menstruation is perhaps the single most demonized biological event. Rose George, author of The Big Necessity, is renowned for her intrepid work on topics that are invisible but vitally important. In Nine Pints, she takes us from ancient practices of bloodletting to the breakthough of the "liquid biopsy," which promises to diagnose cancer and other diseases with a simple blood test. She introduces Janet Vaughan, who set up the world’s first system of mass blood donation during the Blitz, and Arunachalam Muruganantham, known as “Menstrual Man” for his work on sanitary pads for developing countries. She probes the lucrative business of plasma transfusions, in which the US is known as the “OPEC of plasma.” And she looks to the future, as researchers seek to bring synthetic blood to a hospital near you. Spanning science and politics, stories and global epidemics, Nine Pints reveals our life's blood in an entirely new light. Nine Pints was named one of Bill Gates recommended summer reading titles for 2019.