Geoff O’Brien

Social learning in managing disasters in Malaysia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is still much scope for improvement in planning and training, for both actors and disaster victims, in the front line of disaster management in Malaysia. Although the established ethos of Malaysias public service sector has tended to be one of control from above, there is promise and virtue in seeking to promote a professional culture. Ideas and recommendations in finding new solutions to old problems can move upwards as well as downwards due to the technical design in rules and regulations which is now to be accompanied by organisational design.Design/methodology/approach – Research was undertaken to determine attitudes of actors in disaster management mechanism in Malaysia.Findings – The actors in public service sectors in Malaysia had a negative attitude towards disaster planning implementation because they are usually not familiar with the Standard Operational Procedure in handling land disaster management in Malaysia called the MNSC Directiv...

Cities – good for the environment?

Abstract Cities have been essential for human development and socioeconomic development. Cities have shaped the environment and the climate system for many years. The rate of impact has accelerated since the Industrial Revolution. As we have progressed through different phases of the Industrial Revolution, resource use has continued to grow. The economic system is based on consumerism and growth. The global population has continued to grow. Urbanisation has increased with more than half of the global population living in cities. This is forecast to grow to 70 percent of the global population by 2050. There is considerable interest in improving the environmental performance of cities. We will need smart solutions for energy, transport and resource use, to produce only a low environmental footprint. This effort will require both smart solutions and an evaluation of our lifestyles. Future cities must focus on human well-being and reduce consumerism. Humanity must aim for sustainability as a rule.

Finite media: environmental implications of digital technologies

on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland have suffered population collapse. The collapse of the Grand Banks led to the loss of 50,000 jobs. Men, it is argued, became feminised as they had to take up employment opportunities that traditionally had been regarded as women’s work. The same happened with the collapse of the coal industry in the UK. This is a really good chapter that offers real insight into the role of women in fishing. Chapter 5 has its focus on little fish namely the anchovy, sardine and the menhaden. Probyn points out that they are oily and rich in Omega 3. Some 25% of these little fish are processed to make oil, pig and poultry feed and food for fish. The International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Association classes little fish as ‘industrial grade forage fish’. Probyn also discusses fish farms. Modern fish farms – that supply more than half of all seafood produced for human consumption, and whose environmental reputation Probyn is at pains to rehabilitate – are in fact a much better way of feeding humanity, especially if Integrated Marine Trophic Aquaculture systems are widely adapted. These systems incorporate species from different trophic or nutritional levels. Essentially the waste from one species become inputs (fertilizers food and energy) for another species. To give the system balance, organic wastes are extracted by filter feeders (shell-fish) and seaweed extracts inorganic wastes. Detrivores (bottom feeders) such as sea cucumbers extract other wastes. This chapter has a sense of optimism. Probyn describes the conservationist Patricia Majluf ’s successful campaign to persuade her fellow Peruvians to start eating Peru’s plentiful catch of anchovies – most is sent for processing. Majluf ’s campaign was especially effective among the poor. Instead of going off to Chinese processing plants to feed bigger fish, the anchovies were eaten at home, with domestic consumption rising from 10,000 tons in 2006 to 190,000 tons in 2010. Probyn concludes her book with some reflection whilst in the Sydney Fish Market. A smelly place, she says, but bustling with people from many parts of the world. Probyn concludes that it is our relationship or entanglement with the oceans that we need to consider. She argues that some species, like the little fish, should be eaten as opposed to being processed for other uses such as animal feed. Millions of people work with the sea. ‘Try to eat the ocean better,’ and ‘Try to eat with the ocean.’ Sage advice. In other words, not so much use of fish for cattle feed. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is well-argued and Probyn bases her judgement on sound research. I hope a philanthropist, one with a love of the sea, buys lots of copies of the book and sends them to all politicians who have a role in marine and fishing policy, to the many bodies that represent the fishing industries across the globe, the fishing companies, and to as many individual fishing boats as possible.

Institutions or solutions

Institutions or solutions? Environmental governance beyond the nation state is very uncertain. But, we now need our political systems to think beyond those borders and with common principles to respond to climate change. Even facing a single issue can be problematic. The Montreal Protocol is an example of success. What we can learn from the Montreal Protocol is that a clear institutional structure with a clear mandate is a necessary mechanism for effective environmental governance. Climate change involves a range of gases, most of which are produced from natural processes. It is much more complex than the ozone depletion problem. Climate science includes huge uncertainties. This partially explains why little progress has been made. We believe that climate change and increasing variability is the greatest universal environmental threat we face. We recognise the necessity of sovereign institutional responsibility for the delivery of climate solutions. We also believe that adapting to a changing climate is an urgent need. Changing in response to new conditions is normal, as is dealing with risk, both current and new. Any solutions must be within a sustainable development context. We need to ensure that our children have a future. Our own experience of environment, disaster management and climate change policy negotiation and programme management comes largely, but not entirely, from developing countries. Our climate change effort is perhaps best captured by the Netherlands Climate Adaptation Programme which ran in 14 developing countries from 2004 to 2010 (http:// www.nlcap.net/). Over that period, we were active in preparing and supporting developing country negotiation positions in the Conference of Parties, an experience that led us to write on the relationship between poverty and risk [1–3]. The United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) tries to deal with two separate problems; mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is essentially a technology problem. Adaptation focuses on livelihood change. Adaptation is about people and their livelihoods. It is most difficult to tackle two different problems within the same convention. The UNFCCC has laboured long and hard to fashion an agreement to make effective cuts in greenhouse gas emissions within a sustainable development context. But, change is happening more rapidly than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report suggested. Recent research strongly suggests that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and the Arctic Amplification may be the culprit in the perturbations in the Jet Stream [4,5]. This raises the issue of whether or not the current institutional structure of UNFCCC is effective. Developing an effective mitigation agreement is vital in order to avoid irreversible damage to global ecosystems, damage caused by human choices, by our actions. Perhaps, it is time to reform UNFCCC such that its focus is on mitigation. That would give clear International Journal of Environmental Studies Vol. 69, No. 6, December 2012, 869–870

Eating the ocean

industry. The buildings represent historic and socio-economic changes in the UK before and after the Second World War. Harwood acknowledges that many were considered outright ‘ugly’ a couple of decades ago. The rush for listing buildings barely 30 years old is explained as their outgrown use already (such as factories, telephone exchanges and telegraph), and the state of dilapidation of others in spite of being iconic of their times. The reason is partly in the material employed. Concrete has an official life of at most, 70 years. It will be difficult to keep concrete buildings in a state of preservation after another twenty years. Once water seeps into reinforced concrete, the torque steel reinforcement bars rust and their bond with the reinforcement is lost, making the structure unsafe. Many listed buildings will eventually have to be demolished. But it is books like this which will keep alive the saga of the Modern Movement and its ideals and the significant changes in architecture since the Industrial Revolution and the World Wars. The collection just falls short of being a complete encyclopaedia of British architecture of the period, because the author, by her own admission, has left out some of the well documented buildings and mentions them only in passing. There are no architectural drawings of buildings, only single photographs. Perhaps Historic England has a more developed archive of buildings of the period. The index on architects is comprehensive, and easy to search. I found a lapse though on Sir Herbert Baker. Although mentioned in the index as referred to on p. 355, he is not mentioned at all. The size of the book (285 × 245mm × 50 mm thick) makes it very difficult to handle. This is perhaps its biggest drawback. It could have been produced as two volumes. The book has value as a precedent, and should encourage other countries to explore through their contemporary architecture, their own course in nation building.

Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley will make oil, nuclear, natural gas, coal, electric utilities and conventional cars obsolete by 2030

are addressing are complex and that there is unlikely to be a solution that all agree. Compromise and flexibility will be important. On the other hand, can one imagine such an event – one where government regarded itself as not having all the answers and as being prepared to be corrected? Is this likely to be an effective means for governing risk management? It is impossible to know. But if we look at how the United Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) functions we can begin to see parallels. The Conference of the Parties (COP) brings together both scientists and political representatives. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides peer-reviewed science to the COP. The COP uses this information to formulate policy. It is a slow and often painful process. The COP is not as broadly based as the Decision Analytic Approach suggests. Reaching some form of agreement on complex problems will never be easy. The authors of this book are very clear about that. But they are also clear that we need to keep striving to find better ways of managing systemic risks.

Social Research Finding One: Quantitative Analysis of Successful Enterprises

The network externalities portrayed as connectivities in Part A can only be taken advantage of through the local practices of firms in Chengdu. The framework we use to guide this part of the research derives from the seminal work of Jane Jacobs.

Climate Governance and Climate Change and Society

Accelerated climate change and increasing variability is the single greatest threat to humanity. Despite more extreme weather events across the world there appears to be a lack of urgency in reaching an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This chapter reviews the evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and argues that the governance of the convention is a mess and the reliance on market based measures are unlikely to produce the reduction in emissions that are needed if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. This chapter posits that the society is missing from the governance of climate change. The current debate is dominated by climate scientists as well as economists, but those that will be impacted the most, the people, have little or no voice. That must change.

The White Planet: the evolution and future of our frozen world

biodegradation of specific petroleum products. In the last chapter, ‘The Future of Bioremediation’, the authors acknowledge the increase in research output in this field in order to present a clearer picture of the processes but find that more work needs to be done. They conclude that three basic principles are vital for the successes of bioremediation; ‘the amenability of the pollutant to biological transformation to less toxic products, the bioavailability of the contaminants to microorganisms and the opportunity for bioprocess optimization’.

The Albatross and the Fish: Linked Lives in the Open Seas

gue and their financial woes the Byzantines mustered armies not smaller than usual (Rosen has misread his source and claims that only a third of the Byzantine army remained (p. 309), whereas in fact the Byzantine army was reduced by a third), and yet they were repeatedly defeated by a numerically smaller enemy. As for the effect of the plague on future events there is something else to consider. During the late tenth to early eleventh centuries, the states founded on lands once belonging to Byzantium, namely the Carolingian Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate collapsed and became fragmented without the aid of an epidemic. The plague was a very important factor, but not the definitive one in shaping Europe and the Middle East as we know it. This brings us to China; Rosen claims in his prologue that there were enormous differences between China and Byzantium (p. 5), only to claim later that the circumstances the two empires faced were much the same bar the plague (p. 308f). Rosen gives too few details on these social, political, financial and religious circumstances to allow the reader to form an opinion on the subject. Apart from that, Rosen claims that the plague appeared only in two cities in China, Chang’an in central China and Luoyang to the east of Chang’an, without realising that there is something amiss with the statement. If the plague came to China from the West one wonders how it reached there without any casualties in between. Moreover, both cities were important administrative, religious and financial centres (Chang’an being the capital at the time); and another question is how the plague did not spread from these cities to the provinces. Obviously there is a problem both with the assumption about the origin of the plague and its limited dissemination throughout China. If one were to add to the above that much of the scholarship on which the book is based is outdated, the endnotes do not provide page numbers, and there are many factual errors (especially related to theology), clearly the book would have benefited from a re-rewriting. On the other hand, one must grant that Rosen appreciates the part plague played in the history of Byzantium, the Middle East and Europe, better than even professional historians have done. Moreover, Rosen’s deployment of the science is very impressive, and he elucidates the biochemistry well, and if some of it has been disproved or become obsolete it is not Rosen’s fault, but part of the process of writing on a biocultural topic. Certainly, ecologists would find interesting the descriptions of the ecology of the Mediterranean, the bacterium, the flea and the rat. There is much that is interesting, but also much scope for improvement. If Rosen takes notice of these criticisms and revises his book, the result would be a far brighter and more complete mosaic, truly worthy of the subject.