Terry Cannon

Uncertain predictions, invisible impacts, and the need to mainstream gender in climate change adaptations

Vulnerability to environmental degradation and natural hazards is articulated along social, poverty, and gender lines. Just as gender is not sufficiently mainstreamed in many areas of development policy and practice, so the potential impacts of climate change on gender relations have not been studied, and remain invisible. In this article we outline climate change predictions, and explore the effects of long-term climate change on agriculture, ecological systems, and gender relations, since these could be significant. We identify predicted changes in natural hazard frequency and intensity as a result of climate change, and explore the gendered effects of natural hazards. We highlight the urgent need to integrate gender analyses into public policy-making, and in adaptation responses to climate change.

Gender and climate hazards in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has recently experienced a number of high-profile disasters, including devastating cyclones and annual floods. Poverty is both a cause of vulnerability, and a consequence of hazard impacts. Evidence that the impacts of disasters are worse for women is inconclusive or variable. However, since being female is strongly linked to being poor, unless poverty is reduced, the increase in disasters and extreme climate events linked with climate change is likely to affect women more than men. In addition, there are some specific gender attributes which increase womens vulnerability in some respects. These gendered vulnerabilities may, however, be reduced by social changes.

Vulnerability, “innocent” disasters and the imperative of cultural understanding

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to make an argument that there are different types of social construction of disasters.Design/methodology/approach – The focus is on disasters triggered by natural hazards.Findings – It is now widely accepted that disasters are a product of a natural hazard having an impact on a vulnerable population. But the value of the concept of vulnerability is in danger of becoming less meaningful because it is removed from the political and economic processes that generate some vulnerabilities. On the other hand, there are some types of disasters that are relatively “innocent”, in the sense that people live in places that are exposed to risk for purposes of access to their livelihood, and not because social forces or power relations have forced them to live there, or made some groups more vulnerable than others.Practical implications – If it is the case that some vulnerability is “innocent”, then forms of explanation are needed of peoples willingness to expose themselves to r...

Resilience as a policy narrative: potentials and limits in the context of urban planning

The aim of this paper is to analyse the emergence of the concept of ‘urban resilience’ in the literature and to assess its potentials and limitations as an element of policy planning. Using a systematic literature review covering the period 2003–2013 and a combination of techniques derived from narrative analysis, we show that diverse views of what urban resilience means and how it is best used (as a goal or as a conceptual/analytical framework) compete in the literature. Underlying these views are various (and sometimes diverging) interpretations of what the main issues are and what forms of policies or interventions are needed to address these issues. Urban planners need to be better aware of these different interpretations if they want to be in a position to use resilience appropriately and spell out what resilience can bring to their work. The review also highlights that the notion of urban resilience often lacks adequate acknowledgement of the political economy of urbanization and consequently does not challenge the status quo which, some argue, is socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable. As such it runs the risk to be seen as simply making marginalized urban communities more resilient to the shocks and inequity created by the current dominant paradigm.

Indigenous peoples and food entitlement losses under the impact of externally-induced change

Three issues related to hunger, famine and food security are highlighted by the problems faced by “indigenous peoples” in many parts of the world. They affect not only the indigenous groups themselves, but also the potential for improved and increased food availability for the rest of humankind. First, indigenous peoples themselves continue to be subjected to the shock impact of outsiders in ways that remove their traditional access to land and other resources, especially those that provide customary sources of foods. The shock is therefore very negative in nutritional as well as the better-known cultural and health terms. Second, the destruction and disruption of many indigenous peoples is reducing the pool of knowledge (“ethnoschience”) available concerning the biosphere and natural resources, which is of widespread value to humanity. Thirdly, this compounds the already well-known shock impact of the “invaders” on those natural resources through environmental destruction and habitat alteration. These issues have a potential impact on global sustainability that is far greater than might be suggested by the small numbers of indigenous peoples involved. The paper argues for priority to be given to the links between hunger and food problems, the human rights of indigenous peoples, and environmental destruction.

Feature reviews: Development and human security

Human Development Report 1994. United Nations Development Programme, New York: Oxford University Press (for UNDP), pp 226, £13.50 pb China Opens its Doors: the politics of economic transition. by Jude Howell, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993, pp 274, £14.95 pb Economic Trends in Chinese Agriculture: the impact of post‐Mao reforms. edited by Y Y Kueh and R F Ash, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, pp 405, £45.00 hb Economic Reform and Social Change in China. edited by Andrew Watson, London: Routledge, 1992, pp 259, £35.00 hb Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War. Jorge G. Castaneda, New York: Alfred A Knopf,

Book Reviews : Stevan HARRELL (Ed.), Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press 1995.387 p. with maps, bibliography, index and glossary. Price: US

27.50 hb Toward Empowerment: Women and Movement Politics in India. by Leslie J Caiman, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992, pp 230 Arguing with the Crocodile: Gender and Class in Bangladesh. by Sarah C White, London: Zed Books, 1992, pp 186, £29.95 hb, £10.95 pb Where Women are Leaders: The SENA Movement in India. by Kalima Rose, London: Zed Books, 1992, pp 286, £32.95 ...

35.00. ISBN: 0-295-97380-3

This book details some of the processes in the last two hundred years for the southwest, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, but it goes beyond the processes of interaction, colonization and resistance. Its focus is much more on how the other nationalities have been defined by the Han, and the consequences for the minorities’ own self-awareness and for the policies that have affected them under the Qing and the various subsequent regimes. This is a considerable strength for the book in comparison with others that have tended to concentrate on charting the processes of interaction and incorporation. Harrell’s substantial introduction sets out a valuable framework for the ana-