The drought that drew the world's attention to Cape Town in early 2018 was the worst on record, threatening to cut off household taps for 4 million people. Even before the drought, the city's ...relation to water was complex; South Africa still struggles with the legacy of racial inequality including its implications for water justice. Spatial and economic segregation of people initiated when Europeans first settled in the Cape culminated during the apartheid era 1948–1994. It forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of “colored” and “black” Capetonians to inferior housing in low‐lying areas prone to flooding and with limited access to water, sanitation, and other services. Post‐1994 policies have aimed to promote water justice for all citizens, but municipalities have struggled with implementation especially in rapidly growing informal settlements. During the recent drought, the City of Cape Town ramped up its program for water demand management, including pressure reduction, leak repairs, and public awareness‐raising campaigns. However, poor communication and a lack of trust contributed to a near‐panic situation at the threat of “Day Zero” as dams almost ran dry in the first half of 2018. Saved by winter rains, Cape Town is now exploring additional water sources and developing a new Water Strategy. Taken together, the City's experiences demonstrate that sustainable water governance needs to acknowledge the interrelated threats of drought and flooding, and the range of impacts these threats as well as the City's responses have on a population still defined by extreme inequality.
This article is categorized under:
Engineering Water > Planning Water
Human Water > Water Governance
Science of Water > Water Extremes
Cape Town's water crisis was triggered by a 3‐year drought leaving reservoirs with just 10% usable water. Thanks to a joint effort by government, residents, and businesses, water used dropped massively and household taps remained open until winter rains replenished dam levels.
Previous evidence suggests that interventions that raise awareness of gender inequality might have the potential to challenge and undo well-anchored biases but, at the same time, might be threatening ...and provoke reactance against them. The effects of such interventions might also have a differential impact on women and men and vary depending on their level of neosexism and feminist identification. Extending previous research, two pre-registered studies (
N
= 1,895) were conducted to explore the differential effects of interventions that raise awareness of gender (in)equality with two frames (i.e., gender equality achievement vs. gender inequality persistence) on women’s and men’s attitudes toward women and gender equality. We also examined whether participants’ gender ideology moderates these effects via different psychological mechanisms (identity threat and cognitive unfreezing). Results indicated that for women, the gender inequality persistence framing is more effective (increases cognitive unfreezing) but potentially riskier (enhances identity threat) than the gender equality achievement framing. For men, the gender equality achievement framing seems especially effective as it reduced identity threat, although such effect is contingent on their gender ideology (feminist identification or/and neosexism). These findings have implications for the discourse of practitioners, politicians, and activists who might capitalize on the power of combining gender equality with gender inequality frames to improve attitudes toward women and gender equality depending on the specific goals, the context, and the target of the interventions.
Forest restoration is a suitable tool to mitigate land degradation and enhance the supply of vital goods and services. Social participation in forest restoration has gained increasing interest. Yet, ...the impact of participation on people's perception of ecological restoration and the restoration process has barely been addressed despite its relevance for the long-term success of restoration actions. We assessed mutual learning of different stakeholder groups in a ten-year demonstration project, and its potential to foster continued participatory forest restoration in Beni Boufrah valley, a semiarid area located in North Morocco. We performed face-to-face interviews to assess post-restoration individual learning for a subset of 15 highly engaged stakeholders using five components of social learning: reciprocal determinism, self-reflective capability, expectations, self-regulation and locus of control. Furthermore, we organized a workshop to assess collective learning in the study area. The lessons learnt by the project team was described using monitoring vegetation measurements, field visits and meetings, and stakeholder recommendations. Two thirds of the stakeholders showed an increasing awareness of the reciprocal relationship between people and the environment, while recognizing the inappropriateness of current behaviors and practices. Farmers showed continuous mistrust towards the Forestry Agency which justifies the need for more innovative approaches to resolve persistent conflicts, integrate forest and agricultural interventions and establish new mechanisms for economic motivation. Stakeholders acquired theoretical and practical concepts on forest restoration, but self-initiated activities were scarce and reinforcement of environmental awareness is still needed. There was a high impact of drought on seedling survival and growth along with a decrease in stakeholder engagement over the years. We could identify and implement a series of practical corrective measures, namely participatory re-planting, plot fencing, establishment of a local monitoring committee, and raising awareness activities. Such participatory implementation of corrective measures may enhance the credibility of the restoration process and it can be further tested in similar semiarid areas of North Africa even at a larger scale.
Although research on the impacts of climate change on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their adaptation to climate change risks has recently received more attention, the focus on ...micro-businesses and household businesses is still very limited. Micro-businesses and household businesses are adversely affected by compound flooding events – a situation that will become more acute in the future – but there is little attention in the scientific literature to their adaptation options and actual implementation. Against this background, the paper analyzes the following research questions. How are micro-businesses already responding to flooding? Are micro-businesses willing to collectively invest in future proactive adaptation efforts in their neighborhoods? What are the key drivers of and barriers to adaptation? Based on scenario-based field experiments in Ho Chi Minh City, our results show that micro-businesses could play a much larger role in collective adaptation. Often overlooked in adaptation research, their willingness to engage in collective action under severe constraints is surprising. The conceptual framework presented in this paper helps us to understand the key drivers of and barriers to micro-business willingness to participate in collective adaptation activities. The most important key barriers for micro-businesses are limited financial capacity and lack of support from local authorities. However, micro-businesses are willing to contribute depending on the concrete adaptation measure and financing options. If no financial contribution is expected, almost 70 % are willing to participate in awareness-raising campaigns. And although their financial capacity is very limited, 39 % of micro-businesses would contribute financially if the costs were shared with other businesses in their neighborhood and with local authorities. In this context, micro-businesses should be much more involved in adaptation plans and measures. Through their local embeddedness, they can be important multipliers in strengthening adaptive capacity at the local level.
In 2009, the Dolomites have been inscribed in the World Heritage List as a serial property for criteria VII and VIII. In recent years, the Dolomites have become an even much more attractive ...destination for visitors. Many of them do not know how to behave appropriately in this sensitive environment. The Covid19 pandemic has further accelerated these phenomena. With the project "Respect the mountain" (DE: Achtsam am Berg; IT Rispetta la montagna), an awareness-raising process is being implemented since 2021 in South Tyrol, addressing visitors, locals, and tourism professionals in the area of the Dolomites WHS. It aims to raise awareness of environmentally friendly behavior, with focus on water saving and waste reduction. The project is a cooperation between the Department of Nature, Landscape and Spatial Development of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-South Tyrol - Coordination Office Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage, IDM South Tyrol and the Agency for Environment and Climate Protection of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-South Tyrol. Tourism associations oversee the implementation.
The aim of this study is to explore behavioral patterns behind household food waste with partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results are based on a quantitative consumer ...survey with personal interviews. Sample (
n
= 1002) is representative of the adult population of Hungary in regard to age, sex, and geographical distribution. Statistical analysis included descriptive tests, variance analysis, principal component analysis, factor analysis, and PLS-SEM modeling. Based on multivariate tests, income, age, education, residence, and region were identified as the most influential socio-demographical factors of food wastage. Within the framework of the attitude model, the first PLS-SEM model (normative model) validated that all three—cognitive, affective, and conative—attitude components have an effect on food wastage behavior, but the conative component revealed to be the most important one. This underlines the importance of childhood education and awareness raising to shape routines and behavioral patterns with proper messages and impulses. Based on the second PLS-SEM model (explicative model),
cooking too much food
was identified as the most prominent pattern that influences food wastage. Contrary to anticipations,
unplanned food purchase
represented only minor significance. The results provided behavioral insights to a national level food waste prevention campaign in Hungary, called
Wasteless
(
Maradék nélkül
). This campaign plays an important role to meet the requirements of new EU legislation on food waste and the recommendations of EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste.
The awareness-raising events for the inclusion of children with disabilities are aimed at positively modifying attitudes towards individuals with diversity and an opportunity to bringing together ...primary students, teachers, volunteers, university students, sports organizations and associations in the same space. In this regard, the intervention presented here arises from the collaboration between the City Council of Cornellá, 13 primary schools, the Catalan Sports Federation for Cerebral Palsy people (FECPC) and the University of Barcelona. In order to assess the potential of the awareness-raising days, an evaluative case study has been conducted. The results reflect, on the one hand, the importance of students experiencing trough sports the barriers faced by individuals with functional diversity, in order to assess their capabilities and promote their inclusion. On the other hand, it highlights the need for physical education teachers to receive training, both to familiarize themselves with adapted sports and to address diversity in their classrooms. The awareness-raising days can be considered as a good reference point for attitude transformation and teacher training, as long as they are immersed in continuous processes.
Las jornadas sensibilizadoras para la inclusión de los niños y niñas con discapacidad están orientadas a modificar positivamente las actitudes hacia las personas con diversidad y son una opción para unir en un mismo espacio alumnado de primaria, docentes, voluntariado, estudiantes universitarios, entidades y asociaciones deportivas. En esta línea, la intervención que se presenta surge de la colaboración entre el Ayuntamiento de Cornellá, 13 escuelas de primaria, la Federació Esportiva Catalana de Paràlisi Cerebral (FECPC) y la Universidad de Barcelona. Con la intención de valorar el potencial de las jornadas sensibilizadoras se ha desarrollado un estudio de caso de carácter evaluativo. Los resultados reflejan, por un lado, la importancia de que el alumnado experimente a través del deporte las barreras con las que se enfrentan las personas con diversidad funcional, para así poder valorar sus capacidades y favorecer su inclusión. Y, por otro lado, la necesidad de formación del profesorado de educación física tanto para conocer el deporte adaptado, como para atender la diversidad en sus aulas. Las jornadas sensibilizadoras se pueden considerar como un buen referente para la transformación de actitudes y la formación del profesorado, siempre y cuando se encuentren inmersas en procesos de continuidad.
Despite growing recognition of loneliness as a global public health concern, research on its occurrence and precipitants among men across different life stages remains limited and inconclusive. This ...study aims to address this gap by investigating the prevalence and predictors of loneliness among a large, representative data set of Australian adult men.
The study used longitudinal data from waves 2-21 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, including men aged 15-98. Estimating linear fixed effects regressions that account for unobserved time-invariant individual heterogeneity, a single-item measure of loneliness was regressed on a set of selected explanatory variables over different parts of the life course.
Increased social isolation, romantic partnership dissolution, having a long-term disability, and stronger beliefs that the man, rather than the woman, should be the breadwinner of the household, are associated with greater loneliness. Frequent social connection, having a romantic partner, and high neighbourhood satisfaction are protective against loneliness. The findings also reveal several differences in the predictors of loneliness over the life course. Job security is especially important for younger men, whereas for older men volunteering and less conservative gender role attitudes are important factors that can decrease loneliness.
The results emphasise the need to consider age-specific factors and societal expectations in understanding and addressing loneliness amongst men. Additionally, the findings underscore the importance of raising awareness about the impact of societal norms and expectations on men's mental health. The results offer valuable insights for policymakers, healthcare providers, and researchers to develop effective strategies and support systems to combat loneliness and promote well-being among men.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Non-AIDS-defining cancers (NADCs) in patients infected with HIV have recently attracted attention because of the improved survival of this patient population. To obtain accurate data, a longitudinal ...study is warranted for the nationwide surveillance of the current status and national trend of NADCs in patients infected with HIV in Japan.
An annual nationwide surveillance of NADCs in patients infected with HIV-1 in Japan from 1999 to 2021.
An annual questionnaire was sent to 378 HIV/AIDS referral hospitals across Japan to collect data (clusters of differentiation 4-positive lymphocytes, time of onset, outcomes, and antiretroviral therapy status) of patients diagnosed with any of the NADCs between 1999 and 2021.
The response and case-capture rates for the questionnaires in 2021 were 37.8% and 81.2%, respectively. The number of reported NADC cases subsequently increased since the beginning of this study. Evaluation of the case counts of NADCs demonstrated a high incidence of lung, colorectal, gastric, and liver cancers as the top 4 cancers. Pancreatic cancer (0.63), lung cancer (0.49), and leukemia (0.49) had the highest mortality rates among the NADCs. Trends of NADCs regarding transmission routes were maintained over the years in male individuals who have sex with male individuals compared with heterosexual male individuals and female individuals.
We demonstrated an increasing trend in the incidence of NADCs over a period of 23 years in Japan. The current data highlighted the importance of raising awareness regarding cancer management for patients infected with HIV in Japan.
The present study aimed at investigating the role of scientific research in the development of the local community from the point of view of the faculty members in the Palestinian Universities. To ...achieve this objective, a convenient sample of (244) faculty members from the universities of northern Palestine: Al-Quds Open University (Tulkarm), An-Najah National (Nablus), Technical Palestine - Khadouri (Tulkarem), and Arab American (Jenin). The results of the study showed that the participants' assessment of the importance of the role of scientific research in community development was medium in the overall instrument and two dimensions: applied research and scientific consultancy, but their assessment of awareness-raising was high. On the other hand, the results showed that there were statistically significant differences in the level of the role of practical research in the development of the community attributed to the gender variable in favor of males on the overall instrument and three dimensions, while there were no statistically significant differences in the level of participants' assessment attributed to the variable of specialization. The differences were in favor of the disciplines of educational sciences and applied sciences. There were also statistically significant differences in the level of their assessment attributed to the qualification variable on the overall instrument and the three dimensions in favor of PhD holders.Keywords: scientific research, community service, awareness-raising, applied research, scientific consultancy.
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