Search

The climate change and security nexus is an evolving area of research and policy. At the outset of work in this field, major research concentrated on how climate change is adversely impacting human well-being. However, in recent years, academics began to reflect critically on the social, cultural and political construction of vulnerabilities and developing understandings of climate change as a risk multiplier. Different aspects of the conflict–security nexus and its future trajectories became subject to critical academic scrutiny, including at a 2021 conference at Hamburg University where more than 100 scholars of relevant research interests from across the globe discussed and debated twenty-eight presented research papers. A total of sixty-five scholars from over twenty institutions have contributed to those research papers and participated in extensive discussions. The conclusion of these discussions highlights how climate change is an opportunity to reflect upon everyday injustices in distribution and access to resources as integral to concerns with security and conflict. A holistic approach to the nexus of climate change and security is thus vital to efforts to promote and realise societal development efforts while minimising social and environmental injustice. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current literature on livelihoods and poverty in the periphery of Mexico City focus mainly on new illegal settlers, overlooking the fact that the poor in peri-urban areas not only move in, but also resided in the area before urban encroachment and therefore have a rural background, with different needs and purposes. This paper examines the transformation of campesinos households' livelihoods on the periphery of Mexico City, by adopting a framework inspired by the Sustainable Livelihoods approach. Evidence collected over a period of six years in three villages in Chalco municipality suggests that campesinos' rural assets (land, crops, animals), along with natural assets (water, soil and air), have become increasingly more undermined as urbanisation progresses, whereas, on the other hand, peri-urbanisation has supported the acquisition of mainly urban assets, such as education, access to primary healthcare services, off-farm employment and access to basic infrastructure and services. Nevertheless, most of the urban assets that campesinos households have acquired have a low functionality, in terms of satisfying their preceding and emerging needs. Hence, campesinos were in a vulnerable position, because they had scarce rural, but also limited urban, assets and, therefore, limited options in selecting strategies for adaptation to the peri-urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this viewpoint I argue for a perspective on climate change in African cities that focuses on challenges and also opportunities for action. Delivering climate change adaptation in cities in the first instance requires addressing immediate infrastructure and service provision needs, because increasing climate change resilience in cities also requires improving the delivery of services to all citizens. However, there is a risk that climate change discourses facilitate the deployment of technocratic, expert-led forms of planning, particularly when climate change is used as an excuse to facilitate the intervention of international planning consultants who most often know little about the local context of planning. This paper advocates instead approaches to climate change action that harness opportunities on the ground to engage with the creative potential that urban citizens already have and to draw attention to the need to develop planning skills from within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flooding presents one of the main risks to contemporary and future cities, especially those in coastal zones. Given the social–political nature and construction of urban flood risks, it is of crucial importance to understand how such risks are experienced and addressed, and by whom. This article aims to contribute to this by focusing on a particular actor, i.e. entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It asks how SMEs experience, perceive and address risks. This knowledge not only can help to improve flood governance by including one group's specific risks and opportunities but also provides new insights into how risk perceptions are constructed and shape subsequent strategies. The findings are based on a comparative study of SMEs in Jakarta, Metro Manila and Bangkok. Using a mixed methods design, the studies show that entrepreneurs distinguish between frequent everyday floods and scarce major floods, but only consider major floods a risk. The latter is explained by a combination of risk normalisation and incremental and independent everyday practices. Strategies aim at keeping the business going in the short run. There are substantial differences between medium and small companies. Finally, the research confirms that attention for SMEs in flood policies or support is nil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]