The body of scientific literature on slum mapping employing remote sensing methods has increased since the availability of more very-high-resolution (VHR) sensors. This improves the ability to ...produce information for pro-poor policy development and to build methods capable of supporting systematic global slum monitoring required for international policy development such as the Sustainable Development Goals. This review provides an overview of slum mapping-related remote sensing publications over the period of 2000–2015 regarding four dimensions: contextual factors, physical slum characteristics, data and requirements, and slum extraction methods. The review has shown the following results. First, our contextual knowledge on the diversity of slums across the globe is limited, and slum dynamics are not well captured. Second, a more systematic exploration of physical slum characteristics is required for the development of robust image-based proxies. Third, although the latest commercial sensor technologies provide image data of less than 0.5 m spatial resolution, thereby improving object recognition in slums, the complex and diverse morphology of slums makes extraction through standard methods difficult. Fourth, successful approaches show diversity in terms of extracted information levels (area or object based), implemented indicator sets (single or large sets) and methods employed (e.g., object-based image analysis (OBIA) or machine learning). In the context of a global slum inventory, texture-based methods show good robustness across cities and imagery. Machine-learning algorithms have the highest reported accuracies and allow working with large indicator sets in a computationally efficient manner, while the upscaling of pixel-level information requires further research. For local slum mapping, OBIA approaches show good capabilities of extracting both area- and object-based information. Ultimately, establishing a more systematic relationship between higher-level image elements and slum characteristics is essential to train algorithms able to analyze variations in slum morphologies to facilitate global slum monitoring.
Mineral extraction plays a pivotal role in economic growth and development of the Global South, serving as a cornerstone for numerous industries and contributing significantly to national economies. ...However, its exploitation often comes with significant environmental and social challenges. This research paper examines the impacts of mineral extraction on environmental sustainability and social equity in the Global South, focusing particularly on China over the past two decades (2002–2022). Utilizing the Dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (DARDL) methodology, we offer a comprehensive empirical analysis of the impact of mineral extraction on environmental and social implications. Our findings provide an in-depth perspective, highlighting the multifaceted nature of this relationship. The study underscores the temporal dynamics and evolving nature of the environmental and social repercussions associated with mineral extraction. It offers critical insights for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and civil society organizations engaged in the Global South.
•Mineral extraction drives economic growth in the Global South but poses environmental and social challenges.•This study focuses on China's mineral extraction from 2002 to 2022.•Utilizing DARDL methodology, it analyzes environmental and social implications.•Findings offer critical insights for policymakers and stakeholders in the Global South.
The integrity of natural ecosystems, particularly in the Global South, is increasingly compromised by industrial contaminants. Our study examines the growth of plant species adapted to ecosystems ...impacted by heavy metal pollution, specifically focusing on their phytoremediation capabilities and tolerance to contaminants. The potential of pollution-tolerant species was evaluated in the industrial subtropical wetland of Sialkot, Pakistan. Employing quantitative ecological methods, data on vegetation, phytosociological attributes, and soil properties were gathered from 450 plots across different pollution gradients. The study pinpointed 17 key indicator species tolerating high heavy metal pollution out of 182 surveyed, using a combination of Indicator Species Analysis (ISA) and the Importance Value Index (IVI). These species demonstrated diverse capacities to extract, stabilize, and accumulate heavy metals (Cr, Zn, Cu, As, Cd, Ni, Hg, and Pb) across varying pollution zones. Notably, Cannabis sativa demonstrated substantial phytoextraction of Zn and Cd, with concentrations reaching 1977.25 μg/g and 1362.78 μg/g, respectively. Arundo donax showed marked hyperaccumulation of Cd, peaking at 410.531 μg/g. Achyranthes aspera was remarkable for its extraction and accumulation of Ni and Cu, with concentrations of 242.412 μg/g and 77.2997 μg/g, respectively. Physiological changes, such as increased proline levels in Cannabis sativa and Achyranthes aspera reaching 39.041 μg/g and 27.523 μg/g under high metal concentrations, indicated adaptation to metal stress. Declines in chlorophyll and carotenoid levels were also observed as metal contamination increased, with up to 35% reductions in some species. These findings underscore the potential efficacy of selected plant species in phytoremediation and highlight the importance of physiological responses in their tolerance to metals, providing valuable information for targeted remediation strategies in polluted ecosystems and improving environmental management and sustainable practices.
•Industrialization and population growth drive the urgent need for heavy metal contamination prevention.•17 pollution-tolerant plant species with high phytoremediation potential were identified.•Adaptive responses include proline buildup and reduced carotenoid and chlorophyll levels.•Achyranthes aspera and Cannabis sativa showed exceptional bioaccumulation abilities in contaminated soils.
The promotion of social protection in Sub-Saharan Africa happens in a context where informal labour markets constitute the norm, and where most workers live uncertain livelihoods with very limited ...access to official social protection. The dominant social protection agenda and the associated literature come with an almost exclusive focus on donor and state programmes even if their coverage is limited to small parts of the populations – and in no way stands measure to the needs. In these circumstances, people depend on other means of protection and cushioning against risks and vulnerabilities including different forms of collective self-organizing providing alternative forms of social protection. These informal, bottom-up forms of social protection are at a nascent stage of social protection discussions and little is known about the extent or models of these informal mechanisms. This book seeks to fill this gap by focusing on three important sectors of informal work, namely: transport, construction, and micro-trade in Kenya and Tanzania. It explores how the global social protection agenda interacts with informal contexts and how it fits with the actual realities of the informal workers. Consequently, the authors examine and compare the social protection models conceptualized and implemented ‘from above’ by the public authorities in Tanzania and Kenya with social protection mechanisms ‘from below’ by the informal workers own collective associations. The book will be of interest to academics in International Development Studies, Political Economy, and African Studies, as well as development practitioners and policy communities.
Many cities around the world have been largely constructed by their residents, who build not only their own houses, but also frequently their neighborhoods. In this article, I use the notion of ...peripheral urbanization to analyze this way of producing cities that is quite pervasive in the global south. I argue that peripheral urbanization refers to modes of the production of space that (a) operate with a specific temporality and agency, (b) engage transversally with official logics, (c) generate new modes of politics, and (d) create highly unequal and heterogeneous cities. I also argue that peripheral urbanization not only produces heterogeneity within the city as it unfolds over time, but also varies considerably from one city to another. I build my arguments by juxtaposing dissimilar cases from a few cities in the global south. To focus on peripheral urbanization means simultaneously to de-center urban theory and to offer a bold characterization of modes of the production of space that are different from those that generated the cities of the North Atlantic.
How and why are U.S. transnational corporations investing in the lives, educations, and futures of poor, racialized girls and women in the Global South? Is it a solution to ending poverty? Or is it a ...pursuit of economic growth and corporate profit? Drawing on more than a decade of research in the United States and Brazil, this book focuses on how the philanthropic, social responsibility, and business practices of various corporations use a logic of development that positions girls and women as instruments of poverty alleviation and new frontiers for capitalist accumulation. Using the Girl Effect, the philanthropic brand of Nike, Inc., as a central case study, the book examines how these corporations seek to address the problems of gendered poverty and inequality, yet do so using an instrumental logic that shifts the burden of development onto girls and women without transforming the structural conditions that produce poverty. These practices, in turn, enable corporations to expand their legitimacy, authority, and reach while sidestepping contradictions in their business practices that often exacerbate conditions of vulnerability for girls and women. With a keen eye towards justice, author Kathryn Moeller concludes that these corporatized development practices de-politicize girls' and women's demands for fair labor practices and a just global economy.
On alternative smart cities McFarlane, Colin; Söderström, Ola
City (London, England),
20/7/4/, Letnik:
21, Številka:
3-4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Smart urbanism seems to be everywhere you turn. But in practice the agenda is an uncertain one, usually only partially developed, and often more about corporate-led urban development than about urban ...social justice. Rather than leave smart urbanism to the corporate and political elites, there are opportunities now for critical urban scholarship to not only critique how it is currently constituted, but to give shape to a globally oriented alternative smart urban agenda. An ambition like this means taking the 'urban' in 'smart urban' much more seriously. It means foregrounding the knowledges, political priorities and needs of those either actively excluded or included in damaging ways in mainstream smart urban discourses. We outline steps towards an alternative smart urbanism. We seek to move beyond the specific to the general and do so by drawing on radically different initiatives across the Global North and South. These initiatives provide tantalizing openings to a more socially just use of digital technology, where urban priorities and justice drive the use-or lack of use-of technology.
How, when, and why does a state take repressive action against individuals residing outside its territorial jurisdiction? Beyond state-led domestic forms of control over citizens living within their ...legal borders, autocracies also seek to target those abroad—from African states’ sponsoring violence against exiled dissidents to Central Asian republics’ extraditions of political émigrés, and from the adoption of spyware software to monitor digital activism across Latin America to enforced disappearances of East Asian expatriates. Despite growing global interconnectedness, the field of international studies currently lacks an adequate comparative framework for analyzing how autocracies adapt to growing cross-border mobility. I argue that the rise of global migration flows has contributed to the emergence of “transnational authoritarianism,” as autocracies aim to both maximize material gains from citizens’ “exit” and minimize political risks by controlling their “voice” abroad. I demonstrate that governments develop strategies of transnational repression, legitimation, and co-optation that transcend state borders, as well as co-operation with a range of non-state actors. Bringing work on the international politics of migration in conversation with the literature on authoritarianism, I provide illustrative examples drawn from a range of transnational authoritarian practices by the fifty countries categorized as “Not Free” by Freedom House in 2019, covering much of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. I sketch an emerging field of international studies research around the novel means that autocracies employ to exercise power over populations abroad, while shedding light on the evolving nature of global authoritarianism.
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