Paola Minoia

Local assessment of changes in water-related ecosystem services and their management: DPASER conceptual model and its application in Taita Hills, Kenya

Fresh water provisioning is a crucial ecosystem service (ES) in the agrarian societies of East Africa. Water resources are highly dependent on several other ES such as the water retention capacity of vegetation and the purification properties of soil. However, ES are constantly challenged by dynamic changes within water–land–vegetation–human relations. Environmental policies usually address immediate anthropic pressures but overlook multiple historical stressors, or ‘drivers’. This article presents a local assessment of changes in the water-related ES in the Taita Hills, Kenya, applying the Drivers, Pressures, Actions, State, Ecosystem services, Responses (DPASER) model, adapted from the Drivers, Pressures, State, Impacts, Responses (DPSIR) framework, boosted with ecosystem services and human actions and combined into a historical perspective. A review of the legislation, interviews, participatory mapping, timelines and focus group discussions were used in data gathering. The results indicate that land demarcation in the 1960s and consequent land privatization have been the main drivers of change in water-related ES, since these determined the prioritization of agricultural production over conservation of forests, wetlands and rivers. This case study shows that the degradation of water-related ES is strongly linked to historical development of land ownership and loss of commonality, and suggests enhancement of inter-sectoral management.

MEGA-IRRIGATION AND NEOLIBERALISM IN POSTCOLONIAL STATES: EVOLUTION AND CRISIS IN THE GHARB PLAIN, MOROCCO

Abstract. This article explores the development, evolution and impacts of large‐scale irrigation schemes in the formation of the postcolonial state of Morocco and in more recent neoliberal decades. In particular, the article focuses on the Gharb Plain in the Sebou River basin, which was targeted by huge investments to become the core region for national development. In this area, three stages of development – colonial, early independent, and the aggressive politique des grandes barrages post‐1970 – have created two clearly different and successive landscapes. The traditional landscape has been overlain, and largely obliterated, by colonial and postcolonial governmental landscapes, reflected through different spatial, economic, cultural, and political patterns over time. In the present, a fourth stage of neoliberal development is occurring in the landscape, in which diffused poverty and ecosystem collapse coincide with greater concentrated wealth and the building of technological infrastructures. The article aims to complement critical studies on neoliberal environments, by focusing in particular on the manipulation, dispossession and commodification of water and land resources in irrigated agriculture in Morocco. These emerging rationalities are closely related to the changing policies of the contemporary Moroccan state.

An assessment of the principle of subsidiarity in urban planning to face climate change: The case of Martellago, Venice Province

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a case study, showing a local governments capacity in addressing energy consumptions and local greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in its administration areas. This case demonstrates some strengths and weaknesses in the actions of local institutions to complement the national and European efforts in addressing climate change problems.Design/methodology/approach – The paper starts by considering the need to address global changes by a multi‐level governance system, in line with the subsidiarity principle proposed by the European Commission for the implementation of its policies. According to this principle, different institutional levels should intervene through control and reduction of GHG emissions from their operational scale. In particular, this paper reports an ongoing activity of urban planning carried out by a local municipality of Northern Italy, Martellago (Venice Province), that has focused on the energy and GHG reduction as a priority.Findings – Th...

Mapping Meaning: Critical Cartographies for Participatory Water Management in Taita Hills, Kenya

Participation of local people is often neglected in natural resource management, which leads to failure to understand the social aspects and historical construction of environmental problems. Participatory mapping can enhance the communication of local spatial knowledge for management processes and challenge the official maps and other spatial representations produced by state authorities and scientists. In this study, we analyze what kind of social meanings can be revealed through a multimethod participatory mapping process focusing on water resources in Taita Hills, Kenya. The participatory mapping clearly complicates the simplified image of the physical science mappings, typically depicting natural water supply, by addressing the impacts of contamination, inadequate infrastructure, poverty, distance to the sources, and restrictions in their uses on peoples access to water. Moreover, this shared exercise is able to trigger discussion on issues that cannot always be localized but still contribute to place making. Local historical accounts reveal the social and political drivers of the current water-related problems, making explicit the political ecology dynamics in the area.

Ecological sanitation: a sustainable goal with local choices. A case study from Taita Hills, Kenya

Sanitation has been a core development-related keyword since the Millennium Development Goals were launched, but its improvement in sub-Saharan Africa has been considered generally slow. So far, sanitation needs have been mainly addressed technically and economically while lacking proper intersection with related conditions, such as health education, cultural and environmental contexts, gender and ownership. These elements seem now to be considered by the new Sustainable Goals launched in 2015. More emphasis is given to the importance of providing differentiated, instead of homogenized, guidance to any process of change and material intervention, including sanitation projects. These cannot be reduced in terms of external environmental-engineered cycle connecting households but have to be valued for the way they involve people’s bodies, ecosystems and livelihoods. This paper presents the results of a research conducted in Kenya, and particularly in Taita Hills, an area mainly served by pit latrines and hit by environmental degradation. The research was meant to understand local perceptions and attitudes toward implementation of different types of ecological sanitation solutions that make possible the establishment of a closed loop of nutrients connecting food production and sanitation. The findings indicate the importance of local cultures and personal preferences in defining sanitation choices, particularly in rural areas, starting by the consideration of local livelihoods and preexisting systems serving the human waste disposal cycles.

Included or excluded? Civil society, local agency and the support given by European aid programmes

This article analyses some problems emerging in aid practices aimed to support civil society in developing countries. First, it reports the debate emerged in critical development studies regarding non-state actors, and particularly nongovernmental organizations, which have progressively substituted public institutions in service provision and in representative forums, often as a consequence of external pressures made by international donors. Secondly, it analyses the European aid programme named “Non-State Actors and Local Authorities in Development”, whose aim is to fight poverty and increase governance through actions empowering local organisations. More specifically, it evaluates the programme’s coherence and effectiveness in five visited countries (Georgia, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Cameroon) and, particularly, in two projects based in Rwanda. These two case studies show very different results as far as local involvement. Interviews, field visits and analyses of project reports reveal the diverse nature of the various organizations that compose the non-state actors, and their different capacity to express local agency. External donors need to redefine their aid relations in a way to effectively empower the most vulnerable groups.

Venice Reshaped? Tourist Gentrification and Sense of Place

This chapter is aimed to explore the role of tourism in reshaping historical cities, particularly into forms of cosmopolitan consumption. New mobility paradigms seem to merge production and consumption patterns of tourists and residents, all influenced by similar gazing and performing places. The iconic case of Venice shows patterns of staged authenticity, reconstructed ethnicity, and economy of subordination. Drivers to visit Venice include experiences in a setting that is densely characterised by cultural heritage; however, the tourist monoculture and cosmopolitan consumption have depleted the original elements of this attraction: traditional places, residents, livelihoods, material and immaterial cultures. Culture markets and international events, architectural and environmental restoration, together with private forms of transport in the fragile lagoon ecosystem, have transformed the historical city and its unique lifestyle into a place for cosmopolitan consumption, involving tourists together with new residents, sometimes integrating wealthy long-term residents in this overall tourism gentrification. Deprived of great part of what is considered to be the old and conservative block of residents, the gentrified residents acquire spaces for their cultural activities and political acts in their ‘saving Venice’ projects. Two gentrifying groups are described in this chapter: super rich with their philanthropic associations, and intellectuals. Despite clear differences in their causes and agency, both share common visions over leisurely uses of the lagoon city, artistic production and consumption of its heritage. Sustainability questions could instead propose to start from local memories to reconstruct Venice as a complex urban space with more inclusive sense of place.

Launching a new article type in Fennia: Data descriptions

The journals of the Geographical Society of Finland are launching a new article type: Data descriptions ( Datankuvauksia in Finnish, Beskrivningar av data in Swedish). The autumn issue of Terra (3/2014) pioneers the new article type. With this announcement we welcome manuscripts of this kind also to Fennia.