Our Land, Our Lives': Time out in the global land rush

Our Land, Our Lives': Time out in the global land rush PDF Author: Kate Geary
Publisher: Oxfam
ISBN: 1780771800
Category : Land tenure
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description

Our Land, Our Lives': Time out in the global land rush

Our Land, Our Lives': Time out in the global land rush PDF Author: Kate Geary
Publisher: Oxfam
ISBN: 1780771800
Category : Land tenure
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description


Just Responsibility

Just Responsibility PDF Author: Brooke A. Ackerly
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190662956
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
It has been well-established that many of the injustices that people around the world experience every day, from food insecurity to unsafe labor conditions and natural disasters, are the result of wide-scale structural problems of politics and economics. These are not merely random personal problems or consequences of bad luck or bad planning. Confronted by this fact, it is natural to ask what should or can we do to mitigate everyday injustices? In one sense, we answer this question when we buy the local homeless street newspaper, decide where to buy our clothes, remember our reusable bags when we shop, donate to disaster relief, or send letters to corporations about labor rights. But given the global scale of injustices related to poverty, environmental change, gender, and labor, can these individual acts really impact the seemingly intractable global social, political, and economic structures that perpetuate and exacerbate them? Moreover, can we respond to injustices in the world in ways that do more than just address their consequences? In this book, Brooke A. Ackerly both answers the question of what should we do, and shows that it's the wrong question to ask. To ask the right question, we need to ground our normative theory of global justice in the lived experience of injustice. Using a feminist critical methodology, she argues that what to do about injustice is not just an ethical or moral question, but a political question about assuming responsibility for injustice, regardless of our causal responsibility and extent of our knowledge of the injustice. Furthermore, it is a matter that needs to be guided by principles of human rights. As she argues, while many understand human rights as political goals or entitlements, they can also guide political strategy. Her aims are twofold: to present a theory of what it means to take responsibility for injustice and for ensuring human rights, as well as to develop a guide for how to take responsibility in ways that support local and global movements for transformative politics. In order to illustrate her theory and guide for action, Ackerly draws on fieldwork on the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, the food crisis of 2008, and strategies from 125 activist organizations working on women's and labor rights across 26 countries. Just Responsibility integrates these ways of taking political responsibility into a rich theory of political community, accountability, and leadership in which taking responsibility for injustice itself transforms the fabric of political life.

Urban Warfare

Urban Warfare PDF Author: Raquel Rolnik
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178873162X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
In Urban Warfare, Rolnik charts how the financialisation of housing has become a global crisis, as models of home ownership, originating in the US and UK, are being exported around the world. These developments were largely organised by htosw who benefit the most: construction companies and banks, supported by government-facilitated schemes, such as 'the right to buy', subsidies, and micro-financing. Using examples ranging from Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Chile, Israel, Haiti, the UK and especially Brazil, Rolnik shows how our homes and neighbourhoods have effectively become the "last subprime frontiers of capitalism". This neoliberal colonialism is experienced on the scale of the city but also within our everyday lives. Yet since the financial crisis and wider urban politics that have left millions homeless, forced from their homes because of urban development politics, and mega-events such as the Rio World Cup in 2013. These narratives are weaved together with theoretical reflections and empirical evidence to explain the crisis in depth. In response, Rolnik restates the political need for activism and resistance. Examining in detail the June Days protests in Rio, 2013-14, she shows that housing remains an essential, and global, struggle.

The Obesity Epidemic

The Obesity Epidemic PDF Author: Robyn Toomath
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421422506
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Why modern life makes it almost impossible for people to lose weight and keep it off. In a world where charlatans promise to fix the alarming obesity epidemic with a silver-bullet diet or trendy new exercise program, Robyn Toomath, a physician and realist, steps out of the fray to deliver some tough news: it’s really hard to lose weight. Dispelling common myths and telling provocative truths about weight gain—and loss—The Obesity Epidemic is an engaging investigation into the complicated factors that lead to obesity. While genes certainly play a part, Toomath argues, more people are fat than ever before because most of us consume significantly more calories than we did 30 years ago. But why? The answer, she asserts, is the commodification of food created by junk food advertising coupled with urbanization, globalization, and trade agreements. And while government, advertisers, gyms, and the weight loss industry keep pushing solutions that science shows do not work—from extreme exercise regimens and fad dieting to prohibitively expensive surgeries, pills, and misguided education campaigns—Toomath outlines what just might make a difference in terms of helping people truly control their weight. Drawing on the latest research and her twenty years of working with overweight patients, Dr. Toomath argues that even strongly determined people who are offered appealing incentives typically cannot lose weight permanently. Instead of demonizing people by treating weight as an issue of personal or even moral responsibility, Dr. Toomath makes it clear that nothing will change until we make it easy, not all but impossible, for people to eat healthily. Raising important questions about obesity, Toomath sidesteps the standard sound bites and puts an end to the myth of personal responsibility for body size by focusing on the environment all around us.

Expulsions

Expulsions PDF Author: Saskia Sassen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674369823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today’s socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion—from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible. This hard-headed critique updates our understanding of economics for the twenty-first century, exposing a system with devastating consequences even for those who think they are not vulnerable. From finance to mining, the complex types of knowledge and technology we have come to admire are used too often in ways that produce elementary brutalities. These have evolved into predatory formations—assemblages of knowledge, interests, and outcomes that go beyond a firm’s or an individual’s or a government’s project. Sassen draws surprising connections to illuminate the systemic logic of these expulsions. The sophisticated knowledge that created today’s financial “instruments” is paralleled by the engineering expertise that enables exploitation of the environment, and by the legal expertise that allows the world’s have-nations to acquire vast stretches of territory from the have-nots. Expulsions lays bare the extent to which the sheer complexity of the global economy makes it hard to trace lines of responsibility for the displacements, evictions, and eradications it produces—and equally hard for those who benefit from the system to feel responsible for its depredations.

Climate Change and Development

Climate Change and Development PDF Author: Thomas Tanner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136739130
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
The evidence for human-induced climate change is now overwhelming, the brunt of its impacts is already being felt by poor people, and the case for urgent action is compelling. This book addresses the two greatest challenges of our time – averting catastrophic climate change and eradicating poverty – and the close interconnections between them. Climate Change and Development provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary foundation for understanding the complex and tangled relationship between development and climate change. It argues that transformational approaches are required in order to reconcile poverty reduction and climate protection and secure sustained prosperity in the twenty first century. Section One provides the building blocks for understanding climate science and the nexus between climate and development. Section Two outlines responses to climate change from the perspective of developing countries, with chapters on international agreements, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and climate finance. Each chapter offers analytical tools for evaluating responses, enabling readers to ask smart questions about the climate change and development nexus as policy and action evolve in the coming years. The last three chapters of the book, contained in Section Three, are forward looking and focus on why and how development must be re-framed to deliver more equitable and sustainable outcomes. This section sets out different critiques of ‘development-as-usual’ and explores alternative paradigms of development in a warming and resource-constrained world. This is an invaluable and clearly written text that uses real world examples to bring to life perspectives from across different disciplines. It also contains chapter learning outcomes, and end of chapter summaries, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading and relevant websites. The text is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as those working in international development contexts who wish to get to grips with this pressing global challenge.

Food Security and Development

Food Security and Development PDF Author: Udaya Sekhar Nagothu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131759648X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The global food system is characterized by large numbers of people experiencing food insecurity and hunger on the one hand, and vast amounts of food waste and overconsumption on the other. This book brings together experiences from different countries addressing the challenges associated with food security. Seen through various disciplinary lenses the different cases included are countries at various stages of food security, with diverse stories of success as well as failures in their efforts. China, Brazil and India, as well as less developed countries in Africa and Asia, such as Malawi, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Philippines. The authors pay special attention to the environmental and socio-economic challenges in the respective chapters and how they contribute to food insecurity. Each of the case studies identifies and analyzes which factors or drivers (environmental, economic, policy, technology, markets) have been the most powerful shapers of the food system and their future impact. The case studies identify interventions at regional, national and local level that contribute positively to food security, highlighting solutions that are effective and easy to implement for all levels of decision makers, from farmers to policy makers. Overall, the book provides insights in order to foster a greater understanding of the issues surrounding food security and support progress towards the goal of a sustainable food system for all.

Understanding Security

Understanding Security PDF Author: Mike Bourne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137402105
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This broad-ranging new text introduces a wide range of theoretical perspectives with a central focus on their application to understanding key issues in global, state and human security in the contemporary world.

Developing Sustainable Food Systems, Policies, and Securities

Developing Sustainable Food Systems, Policies, and Securities PDF Author: Obayelu, Abiodun Elijah
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1799826015
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A food system is sustainable if it delivers food and nutrition security for all without compromising the economic, social, and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition for future generations. Sustainable food systems are vital in ensuring global health and ending malnutrition in all its forms. Assessing important dimensions of the food system such as nutrition, sustainable agriculture, food loss and waste can provide stakeholders with necessary information to evaluate the strength of their country’s food systems and determine where more support is needed. Developing Sustainable Food Systems, Policies, and Securities is a pivotal reference source that explores the nature, extent, and causes of nutrition problems across the world as well as the role that agricultural policy plays in these issues. The book supports the development of sustainable food systems, policy options, and securities by various countries in order to successfully maintain sustainable food production systems. Featuring research topics such as food security, carbon emissions, and nutrition, the book is ideally designed for economists, environmentalists, food producers, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students seeking coverage on agricultural and sustainability issues.

Land Grabbing and Global Governance

Land Grabbing and Global Governance PDF Author: Matias E. Margulis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134952236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Land grabbing per se is not a new phenomenon, given its historical precedents in the eras of imperialism. However, the character, scale, pace, orientation and key drivers of the recent wave of land grabs is a distinct historical event closely tied to the changing dynamics of the global agri-food, feed and fuel complex. Land grabbing is facilitated by ever greater flows of capital, goods, and ideas across borders, and these flows occur through axes of power that are far more polycentric than the North-South imperialist tradition. Land grabs occur in the context of changes in the character of the global food regime, formerly anchored by North Atlantic empires; the integrated food-energy complex seems to be headed towards multiple centres of power, especially with the rise of the BRICS and the proliferation of middle income countries participating in many of the land transactions. Land Grabbing and Global Governance offers insights from leading scholars and experts on contemporary land grabs. This volume examines land grabs in direct relation to a global economy undergoing profound change and the role of new configurations of actors and power in governance institutions and practices. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.