Addressing trend-related changes within cumulative effects studies in water resources planning

Inuit circumpolar conference resolutions

Exploring the effects of drastic institutional and socio-economic changes on land system dynamics in Germany between 1883 and 2007

Background Veterans experience a transition when they return home from military service and resume life as a civilian citizen. Transition refers to service members’ passage from military life to civilian life, which often involves emotional, physical, and social changes. Aims The purpose of this participatory action research study was to address the treatment needs of transitioning veterans with three overarching goals: 1) to unite and empower veterans to contribute to the design of their own art therapy programme to meet their self-identified needs, 2) to contribute to a foundation of knowledge that will help shape future art therapy practices with veterans, and 3) to promote the advancement of art therapy within other organisations. Methods Through collective inquiry, the research team examined how veterans experience the art therapy programme in relationship to their needs and utilised PAR methods to identify ways to strengthen art therapy effectiveness. Results Participating veterans identified seven basic principles of art therapy that support healthy veteran transition from military to civilian life based on their personal experiences with art therapy and transition. Conclusions Co-research can yield rich knowledge and meaningful change by engaging the expertise of people with lived experience. Including art making as a research activity can provide a range of opportunities for researchers to engage in the creation of new knowledge. Implications for practice and research The implementation of the participatory action research framework described in this paper provides a case study illustration for other practitioner researchers that demonstrates the accessibility and value of co-research. Plain-language summary Veterans experience a transition when they return home from military service and resume life as a civilian citizen, or a resident who is no longer part of the Armed Forces. Veterans who participated as co-researchers in this study identified the term transition and described it as the passage from military to civilian live. They described that military-to-civilian transition often involved social, emotional and physical changes. The study was conducted by a group of researchers that included ten veterans of the United States Armed Forces and 1 art therapist using Participatory Action Research methodology, which brings together researchers and people who are impacted directly by the identified problem. A main goal of the study was to provide veterans an opportunity to provide input in the design of the art therapy programme where they received services. The researchers were also interested in finding new knowledge about how art therapy helps veterans. This new knowledge was meant to be shared in order to encourage more art therapy programming for veterans. The group of researchers worked together to study how they experienced services in the programme. By examining how well these services met their needs, veteran-researchers were able to recommend ways to improve the art therapy programme.

Adolescent health is now emerging as one of the areas for major healthcare concern. Adolescence is considered as a transitional stage of physical and mental human development between childhood and adulthood. This stage in life is regarded important because it brings about pubertal, social and psychological changes. The World Health Organization has defined adolescent as an individual between 10-19 years of age.1 Around 3 billion, nearly half of the world’s population is estimated to be less than 25 years of age. An estimated 1.3 billion adolescents live in developing countries and with 500 million adolescent girls.2 Adolescents constitute about 32.6% of Pakistan’s population; 65% among them live in rural areas.3 It is unfortunate that there is no reliable objective data from either rural non urban areas of Pakistan concerning adolescent issues. Health is affected by socioeconomic issues and a need exists to study them in the context of adolescent population. Issues such as undernourishment, infections, illiteracy and child birth should be studied in the context of adolescent population. This period of growth and development is extremely important because youth during this time undergo rapid physical, psychological and social changes. These changes make them vulnerable for health threatening behaviours as compared to other age groups. There are health care related specific issues important for consideration in this age group. Increasing prevalence of obesity and its associated issues are an upcoming challenge, becoming more prevalent in both developed and developing countries worldwide and particularly affecting adolescent age group.4 Around 10% of the youth between the ages 5-17 years were reported to be overweight worldwide by the International Obesity Task Force in the year 2000.5,6 It is expected that the proportion of obesity in school-age children will almost double by 2010.4 There are several factors responsible for worsening obesity problem among youth including increase consumption of fast food, soft drinks (67%) and increase in prevalence of sedentary life style.7 The increase prevalence of obesity among youth is a reflection of a western society influence affecting school children and leading to an increase incidence of diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, heart disease, stroke and cancers in later life.8 Mental health issues are also increasing among the youths. Increase prevalence of obesity and overweight leads to low self esteem and psychological issues. Changing trends of the society towards more materialism and artificial standards have increased anxiety in life. Anxiety and depression in younger age groups is increased due to increased expectations from elders, extra burden from teachers and unnecessary competitions in studies by the peers. Overambitious and unrealistic plans of teenagers are also contributory in this context.9 Reproductive health and its related issues are of special concern for the youths. They lack access to reliable and correct information sources related to reproductive and sexual health. It is reported that our youth is less aware about reproductive and sexual health issues as compared to their counterparts in the western world.10 A majority of adolescents lack knowledge about simple matters such as physical changes in boys and menstruation in girls, before attaining puberty.10 A more serious issue is their inability to protect themselves from sexual abuse and their being ill-equipped to handle the reproductive health burden. Recent explosion in electronic media and unchecked easy accessibility of internet facilities have played a profound negative impact on these youngsters. It is a matter of grave concern that preventive and curative services regarding sexual health and diseases are deficient in most of the developing countries. The incidence of sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS is on the rise among the youth that further adds to the dilemma.11 Providing adolescents with access to appropriate information, education and services appears to be the main challenge for health care planners and policy makers.

The number of traumatic brain injury (TBI) cases continues to increase each year and it becomes a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Therefore, this study aimed to explore and describe the lived experiences of TBI survivors utilizing a qualitative phenomenological design. Key informants in the study were nine TBI survivors, ages 23 to 59 years old, who had sustained TBI for more than a year. To generate the needed information, a series of in-depth interviews utilizing semi-structured, self-developed open-ended questions, was employed. Findings showed that the survivors experienced a wide range of physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual changes. These changes affected their independent living, work, and relationships and they struggled to reconstruct their lives by coping with the changes. The physical change commonly reported by the survivors is headache. The mental changes are impaired memory and total memory loss where the survivors have to make checklists, relearn, and observe. The most reported emotional changes are increased anger, increased irritability and depression. However, for social changes there was a marked disruption and reduction of the social world that attributed to the breakdown of their relationships. Lastly, with the spiritual changes, the survivors experienced positive and negative changes such as increased faith and religiosity and loss of faith. Coping strategies of the TBI survivors were identified. However, the strong self-motivation and courage as the survivors’ physical, mental, and emotional coping resources had further alleviated their sufferings. These findings offer insight on how to deal with TBI survivors and what coping strategies can be introduced for faster recovery.

Expectant first-time fathers’ experiences of pregnancy

Ecosystem coupling: A unifying framework to understand the functioning and recovery of ecosystems

Sustainable Land Use and Rural Development in Southeast Asia: Innovations and for Mountainous Areas Holger L. Frohlich, Pepijn Schreinemachers, Karl Stahr, and Gerhard Clemens, eds. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 2013, x+490pp.There is no promising way of sustainably farming sloping land in a market-oriented economy. Farmers are usually required to offer competitive prices and quality of agricultural products in order to survive in the market. That forces them to increase agricultural production, which in turn leaves them no choice apart from sedentary agriculture and land use intensification. Changes in farming system and land use usually entail degradation of sloping land, because in arable land the outflows of soil, its nutritional content, and water exceed their inflows. Preventing or mitigating land degradation, along with keeping products competitive, is the central problem in agricultural development. Although the issue seems to be straightforward, several factors-from a range of ecological to cultural settings-are intricately tangled. This is likely to be one of the reasons why many agricultural development projects have not been as successful as expected. This volume is a result of the Uplands Program, which is an agricultural development project in northern Thailand and northern Vietnam to help solve the problem.The objectives of this volume as outlined in Chapter 1 are as follows: first, to investigate drivers, consequences, and challenges of change mainly in land use and agricultural intensification; second, to describe how technology-based innovation processes can address the challenges; and third, to describe how knowledge creation can support changes in policies and institutions. The volume is divided into four parts, an introduction followed by one part for each of the objectives: Part 1, Overview and Synthesis; Part 2, Environmental and Social Challenges; Part 3, Technology-Based Innovation Processes; and Part 4, Policies and Institutional Innovations.This project assumes that four drivers of change from traditional swidden cultivation to permanent field cultivation, mainly cash crops, are: economic development, policy change, introduction of new technologies, and population growth. As a result, as discussed in Part 2, mainly due to annual cash crop cultivation, soil erosion increases and pesticide-contaminated water runs off to the valley bottom (Chapters 3 and 4). In other words, sloping land is becoming a region where crops do not grow, and the watershed is getting to be contaminated by pesticide. To keep the soil environment usable as arable land, appropriate soil management is necessary. So, Karl Stahr et al. examine methodologies for making soil maps at a low cost (Chapter 2). Camille Saint-Macary et al. confirm that poverty is associated with land degradation since poor people have limited capital to invest in long-term soil conservation (Chapter 5). In Part 3, techniques of appropriate water use in sloping land cultivation (Chapter 6), effective cropping systems for soil conservation (Chapter 7), and profitability improvement in aquaculture carried out at the bottom of the valley (Chapter 8) are examined. The authors conclude that, technically speaking, there is potential to improve the farming system on sloping land in a way that is compatible with soil conservation and an increase in income. In Part 4, the authors examine and develop numerical models that may be helpful in predicting farmers' responses to a decline in soil fertility and/or conservation activities (Chapter 10). In development studies and agricultural development research, the participatory approach has been thought to be a better way to transfer scientific knowledge and techniques to farmers than the top-down approach. However, the participatory approach has not worked as well as expected, and it is now widely recognized that the approach is inappropriate in some cases. In Chapter 9 Andreas Neef et al. …

Recent uprisings in the Arab world consist of individuals revealing vastly different preferences than were expressed prior to the uprisings. This paper sheds light on the general mechanisms underlying large-scale social and institutional change. We employ an agent-based model to test the impact of authority centralization and social network technology on preference revelation and falsification, social protest, and institutional change. We find that the amount of social and institutional change is decreasing with authority centralization in simulations with low network range but is increasing with authority centralization in simulations with greater network range. The relationship between institutional change and social shocks is not linear, but rather is characterized by sharp discontinuities. The threshold at which a shock can “tip” a system towards institutional change is decreasing with the geographic reach of citizen social networks. Farther reaching social networks reduce the robustness and resilience of central authorities to change. This helps explain why highly centralized regimes frequently attempt to restrict information flows via the media and Internet. More generally, our results highlight the role that information and communication technology can play in triggering cascades of preference revelation and revolutionary activity in varying institutional regimes.

The history of London governance provides some valuable examples of institutional experimentation. The city has been governed by different metropolitan arrangements for most of the twentieth century, but it also experienced about 15 years without any metropolitan institution. In investigating the link between institutional and policy change, the chapter briefly investigates such varied history, to concentrate on the last reform which established the Greater London Authority (GLA). The process by which the new government was established in 1999 is thoroughly analysed, and both the parliamentary and the administrative negotiations are investigated. The second part of the chapter discusses the change enacted by the GLA; in particular, the differences in the ways policies are formulated. This second part permits us to trace the link between institutional change and policy changes in metropolitan transport.KeywordsLondonGreater London AuthorityTransportInstitutional changeMetropolitan government

Resident's Perceptions of the Role of Tourism in Social Changes of Rural Areas (Case Study: Ziarat Village of Gorgan County)

Social media and internet public events

In this article we review the multi-disciplinary literature on how gender is implicated in illiberal and authoritarian-leaning politics as well as how illiberal political regimes impact gender justice. While a large body of literature is dedicated to the analysis of the so-called “antigender” discourses adopted by illiberal politicians, less is written about how these are translated into policy and institutional change. We identify two key policy areas where illiberal leaders have been particularly active and innovative: in reregulating aspects of reproduction to suit their ethno-nationalist, pronatalist agenda and in reshaping knowledge production around the concept of gender. We argue that policy and institutional change in these two areas is particularly relevant for the process of gendered dedemocratization. While both discourse and policy change are important to understand the gendered nature of illiberal rule, we need more information on how gendered illiberalism actually reshapes society and gender hierarchies.

IntroductionThe challenge for land use management in the nineties is to initiate a people- centered development process which creates opportunities for local people to make their own choices about which development strategy to follow. This need is felt in particular for upland areas where government initiated blue- print programmes for land use management have a record of failure. The major reason is that these programmes are often not adjusted to cope with the complexity and diversity of the uplands. Land use management encompasses both short-term and longterm benefits and is confronted with rapid changes. The differing role of private, state and communal lands in combination with a complex system of control and utilization makes land use management difficult to fully understand. This study responds with the development of an alternative strategy for planning sustainable land use programmes at local level and has the following objectives:- to develop a strategic model for people-centered planning of sustainable land use programmes;- to develop a flexible planning method that can serve as land use management tool at local level;- to test the feasibility of the strategy for the uplands of East Java, Indonesia.Strategic modelThe two major principles of the strategic model are:- Programmes are planned and implemented through a learning process in a local and organizational dimension. The local dimension includes a learning process of planning, implementing and monitoring of small scale programmes. The planning process is short, but planned interventions are regularly adjusted based on new insights and changing conditions. In the organizational dimension the learning process proceeds through three different phases of trial, development and expansion. In this dimension, the government can learn how to manage the strategy of implementing local level planning and how to change attitudes, norms and organizational competence of organizations in order to do so. This dimension embraces local, regional and national governments.- Three major variables have to be considered in programme planning: land use system; interventions and organizations. Sustainable land use programmes are only possible if a good fit between these variables is achieved.In the strategic model these two principles are combined; a fit between the variables is achieved through a learning process. Because achieving a fit between the three variables is a complicated matter, it requires a phased approach which consists of the following three steps: a trial phase, a development phase and an expansion phase. In the trial phase, the focus is on achieving a fit between interventions and land use system in the local dimension. This is achieved through the implementation of trial cases in local level planning in which villagers, field workers of organizations and local leaders become acquainted with this new approach of planning sustainable land use programmes at a local level. In the development phase, attention is focused on achieving a fit between organizations and land use system. Through the development of human resources and extension processes the skills and attitudes of those involved may gradually change to become more people-oriented. In the expansion phase the focus is on achieving a fit between interventions and organization. In this phase the planning approach is accepted and applied at a national level. Changes in government structures and procedures, such as decentralization and strengthening of local leadership need to be achieved. By dividing the process into phases, the complex problems associated with planning sustainable land use become manageable, and step by step the ultimate goal of achieving a fit between all three variables can be reached.Planning methodIn order to reach an optimal fit between the three variables of the strategic model in the trial phase, a planning method should be applied to collect and analyse data that can be transformed into the design of effective programmes. No 'off-the-peg' planning method is available, instead a combination of existing approaches, methods and techniques is needed.Three development approaches can be distinguished to this end: planning of land use development; extension approaches and project management approaches. Generally speaking, each approach covers a different side of the strategic model. Land use development focuses on achieving a fit between interventions and land use system; extension processes can be used in achieving a fit between land use system and organizations; and the fit between interventions and organizations can be accomplished with the help of project management techniques.For planning land use development in the trial phase a number of current methods and techniques are discussed. These are Farming System Analysis, Land Evaluation, Agroecosystem Analysis, Landscape Planning, Rapid Rural Appraisal and Gender Analysis. The criteria set by the strategic model determine which aspects of these present planning methods and techniques are useful for the development of a new planning method. None of these methods and techniques as such are ideal as an operational planning method for realizing the first phase of the strategic model. A synthesis of all useful features into a new land use planning method is proposed.For the trial phase the focus is on planning land use development while opportunities to develop extension processes and to influence project management are limited. Therefore plans should basically be tailored to the existing competence of organizations. Within these limitations some attention can be paid to extension processes and management techniques by introducing an additional step to land use planning, called programming which includes the preparation of a detailed design and a programme planning matrix.Planning environment on JavaThe environment for the planning of land use development programmes is diverse and complex in the uplands of East Java. Farmers react to the wide diversity in the land use system by developing a large number of different land use strategies. By contrast, government organizations use standardized programmes with uniform and mostly inflexible procedures for planning and implementation. Village development planning procedures exist, but do not yet function properly. Local organizations responsible for village development planning do not yet possess the skills and capability to develop such plans, and centrally organized sectoral agencies still dominate this 'bottom-up' planning process. The dominance of the central government can be explained by the incorporation of a number of socio-cultural features in their policy, such as the principles of 'sole authority', consensus, and harmony. The government uses these principles to encapsulate autonomous local organizations in the government administration, orienting the local leaders more to government rules and procedures than to the needs of the local population.This orientation towards government administration has two major implications for the current planning of interventions. Firstly, the interventions are adjusted to the competence of implementing organizations rather than letting the organizations develop their competence to implement the tasks of locally planned interventions. Secondly little more than lip-service is paid to the participation of villagers in planning.Notwithstanding these shortcomings in the present village development planning process, official government policy has some room for improvement. This may allow for a more balanced planning process new approach.Secondly, constraints which can be expected while applying the model on Java are described. The feasibility of the trial phase of the strategy is evaluated based on experiences with implementing the trial cases on Java. In this evaluation the question is raised as to what extent the results of local level planning on Java can respond to the research objectives as formulated at the start of this study. No experience has been gained as yet with implementing the development and expansion phase. One programme that provides some valuable lessons for the feasibility of the phased learning process of the strategic model is the Java Social Forestry Programme (JSFP). This programme has followed a comparable phasing strategy and has already reached the expansion phase.Conclusions and policy recommendationsThis evaluation results in a number of conclusions on conditions to be fulfilled for successful implementation of the strategy. To sum up:- although the strategy is aimed at the local level, it cannot be realized at local level only as it requires involvement of regional and national government organizations to deal with changing communication processes and organizational structure;- objectives in village development planning should be set realistically in the knowledge that short term results will always dominate long term benefits, tangible results will get higher priority than social changes, while top-down influences from sectoral agencies will prevail;- in addressing the organizational dimension a choice should be made between following an approach of 'decentralized trial cases' versus 'centrally guided bottom-up process'. Whichever strategy is chosen it needs careful management to avoid difficulties in institutionalization or a too rapid expansion respectively;- it is necessary for the government to be shown better results in terms of sustainable land use development programmes at local level implemented by highly committed villagers. Only then may they be motivated to accept such a participatory approach at the cost of losing some power or consensus;- implementing a participatory planning process is an initially slow process, to which government agencies need to be committed.These conditions are translated into a number of policy recommendations for donor agencies and governments pertaining to: long-term and continuous commitment; development of the management capacity and motivation of people involved; and strengthening the competence of a government organization for responsive governance.Experiences in Java have illustrated the importance of congruence between the design of land use interventions; the development of communication processes and the development of organizational competence. The whole range of actors involved who strive for sustainable land use - from villagers to programme managers - will have to contribute to achieving this fit. They will only be able so when they view PLANNING AS A LEARNING PROCESS.

Judd, R. W. Common Lands, Common People: the Origins of Conservation in Northern New England. 1997 . Harvard University Press , Cambridge, MA . 335 pp. $18.95. ISBN 0-674-00416-7 . In this intriguing conservation history, Richard Judd argues that, rather than arising in the wilderness West from progressive or scientific, elitist roots, the conservation movement in America had its roots among common farmers and fishers of nineteenth-century New England. It developed as these common folk were grappling with threats to their deeply held beliefs in democratic access to and common stewardship of natural resources. Relying heavily on primary sources, including agricultural journals, local news reports, legislative records, and commission reports, Judd develops a series of case studies to detail the common people's attempts to protect and preserve their familiar landscapes and resources in the face of social and institutional changes. Selected etchings, historical photographs, and maps are used effectively to illustrate points in the text. In this context, he includes Massachusetts along with New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine in northern New England with the reasonable argument that these states all share strong, historical and political connections as well as similar landscapes, forests, and coastlines. The book is divided into four main sections. The first, “Foundations,” describes the pioneering settlement of the northeastern frontier in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which depended largely on exploitation of the abundant natural resources of the region. Judd sees this initial exploitation as being followed by an attempt to create a properly ordered cultural landscape containing a balance of farm and nature. The Massachusetts Bay Colony's Great Pond Ordinance of 1641, which established open access to bodies of fresh water 10 acres or more in size, and early land divisions within colonial towns reflect a collective commitment to equitable allocation of common resources and the priority of community welfare over private resource rights. These attitudes persisted and gradually evolved through this era as farm and forage subsistence was gradually supplanted by more progressive farming practices. The rise of commercial resource users further strained these traditions. This section concludes with a discussion of efforts to restock the region's already depleted inland fisheries and an examination of the ensuing legal disputes over access rights to these replenished resources. The second section, “Common Lands,” begins with an examination of the farm reform movement. Judd views these farmers, struggling in an often marginal landscape and in the face of major economic and environmental changes to create a morally ordained, efficiently used landscape, as the foundation for Pinchot's utilitarian conservation ideas. In fact, he views these farmers as the first practical foresters, working to improve the productivity and appearance of their woodlots. At the same time, larger logging operations and their resulting environmental problems were causing major concerns throughout the East. These concerns led to the establishment of state Forestry Commissions in the late 1880s. The second section concludes with an examination of the rise of the Romantic strain of landscape appreciation in urban areas, its merger with agrarian land stewardship, and the fight for the creation of the White Mountain National Forest. This New Hampshire case is contrasted with the situation in Maine, where substantially different land-ownership, population, and development patterns and political structures produced a dramatically different approach to forest conservation. Section three, “Common Waters,” highlights the many conflicts that arose as social and economic changes impinged on the traditional culture of local and regional fisheries. Damming rivers and streams for industrial power in conjunction with increasingly efficient commercial fishing downstream or in the bays virtually eliminated many local fisheries. Opposing views of agrarian labor or industrial capital as the source of economic value fueled much of the ensuing political debate. Inability to resolve these conflicts at the local level led to the creation of the New England state Fisheries Commissions in the 1860s. Judd reviews the attempts of these commissions, the first government agencies specifically devoted to resource conservation, to restore migratory river fisheries. Despite considerable scientific understanding, these attempts were largely unsuccessful for political reasons. Judd then traces a gradual shift in the commissions' activities away from large rivers and food supplies toward smaller, upper-watershed streams and recreational fishing, setting the stage for modern, progressive conservation efforts. The final section, “Rural Traditions in the Progressive Era,” follows this shift from rural proponents of conservation based on utilitarian views of land use to urban proponents of conservation based on Romantic recreational ideals and the accompanying shift from local to remote control of resources. Judd sees this change driven initially by rising urbanism and a resulting increase in tourism in these rural, often economically depressed areas. The resulting conflicts pitted recreational fly fishers against subsistence bait fishers, encouraged outside recreational hunters by establishing closed seasons, and emphasized class antagonisms. Still, Judd argues, the conservation movement in northern New England at the start of the twentieth century was not so neatly split as it seemed at the national level between aesthetic preservationists and utilitarian conservationists. Finally, Judd details parallel conflicts between locals and outsiders in coastal fisheries, as native part-time fishers were confronted with competition from commercial fishers for a declining resource. In this instance, science rather than Romantic ideals determined a progressive conservation program, but traditional cultures strongly influenced policy largely because the local people were accustomed to a democratic economic structure, were politically active, and were still able to influence regional policy. A difficulty with the book, albeit a relatively minor one, is that the case studies, organized by topic, are not sequential and seem somewhat disjointed. Although Judd lays out his thesis and approach clearly in the introduction, it can be difficult to keep in mind the overall sequence of developments. Whether or not one agrees with Judd that the national conservation movement began in these New England villages, his description of the common people's responses to threats to their common resources posed by social and economic change is compelling and shows “commitment among common people to protect and preserve a familiar landscape” (p. 266). As an ecologist attempting to interpret the current landscapes and environmental processes in New England, I am ever more aware that it is impossible to understand the present or to plan for the future without a thorough understanding of the past. I especially recommend this book to scientists and biology students because it documents through very readable case studies the critical roles of history and politics in shaping our interaction with the environment. As Judd points out “it is important to remember that environmental thought receives its power less from scientific or legal accuracy than from the way it resonates with popular social impulses” ( pp. 11–12). Effective conservation depends on recognition of these intricate connections between nature and culture, between natural communities and human communities.