The northern UK coastal town of Scarborough is in the midst of a transition, as the historical fishing industry declines and a new seaweed industry emerges. With capture fisheries being increasingly regulated to reduce damage on fish populations and the marine ecosystem, and seaweed farming being supported as a nature-based solution to marine...
If 'Old Space' was public budgets and public fanfare, international agreements and state players, 'New Space' is defined by private enterprise, national law, property rights, entrepreneurship, a vision of human settlement outside of Earth and the race to unlock the trillions of dollars of wealth 'trapped' within celestial bodies. While the impetus...
People draw on cosmological orientations and religious teachings as a resource to make sense of ecological change. This can be in ways that both do and do not align with established scientific narratives, and in ways that do or do not motivate participation in climate mitigation or adaptation efforts. To explore this dynamic between religion and...
Can we talk about climate change without talking about power and inequality? Is the way we categorise plants and animals neutral? Can we analyse environmental change from the outside, looking 'in' at the environment? Political ecology would argue, emphatically, no.
Since the age of enlightenment, countries across the globe have actively pursued continuous economic growth as a means of achieving freedom and prosperity. However, mounting evidence of the serious environmental and social consequences of unmitigated economic growth has given rise to a number of alternative visions of progress, including that of...
How humans view, interact with and value nature plays a significant role in how we interpret natural disasters. In turn, the occurrence of natural disasters has the potential to shape our relationship to nature, and the worldviews that underpin this relationship. An Anthropocentric worldview defines the human-nature relationship in the Western...
"Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being. Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity." -Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom
So your organisation is trying to adapt to a market in flux. Perhaps government regulation has changed funding structures or competitive forces, a market disruptor has emerged, or consumer or beneficiary expectations have changed.
Twentieth century Italian scholar and Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, suggests that dominant ideologies and narratives - 'hegemony' - allows ruling classes to silence the voices of the 'subaltern class', with their consent. He presents this analysis as part of his drive to understand and explain why, in large part, the material contradictions of capital...
There is ongoing concern in Australia about the illegal and highly damaging use of the drug methamphetamine, specifically in its highly potent crystal form, 'ice'. Despite government action, the use of the drug persists particularly among young Australians living in rural areas. This paper explores this persistence and pattern of ice use as a form...
Over the past decade the World Bank alone has allocated almost $85 billion to enhancing the level of direct community, beneficiary and local citizen participation in development programs and activities. Now often a strict condition in international aid funding, it has become expected that local citizens in developing countries will be induced to...
This is one of the many questions driving the REDxFUTURES team at the moment.