Vulnerability to climate change in rural Saskatchewan: Case study of the Rural Municipality of Rudy No. 284

With the likelihood of future changes in climate and climate variability, it is important to understand how human systems may be vulnerable. Rural communities in Saskatchewan having agricultural-based economies are particularly dependent on climate and could be among the most vulnerable human systems in Canada. Future changes in climate are likely to have significant impacts on rural livelihoods, and rural populations will face the challenge of coping with climate change in light of a multitude of other changing socio-economic and environmental conditions. The Rural Municipality of Rudy No. 284 was chosen as a case study due to its access to irrigation, a key tool in climate adaptation for the agricultural system in the area against one of its most notorious climatic features - severe multi-year droughts. Further irrigation development would continue to reduce climate vulnerabilities. Even with irrigation however, the compounding effects of climate and other socio-economic changes will likely require modifications in current practices and policies in order to secure adequate livelihoods. Climate change adaptation in the RM must ensure equitable access to water and potentially irrigation, reduce barriers to collaboration when addressing communal problems, and provide more certainty in government programs.     

The second wave of globalisation and agrarian change in the Pacific Islands

The global agro-food complex is penetrating the most ‘isolated’ and ‘peripheral’ localities of the world. In the Pacific Islands, a second wave of globalisation is pulling a number of small island nations into the increasingly globalised neoliberal agricultural sector. Conscious of the under-analysis of globalisation in Southern agriculture in general, this article has three broad aims. Firstly, it contextualises and traces the evolution of the second wave of globalisation, compares it to the first, and discusses its impacts on the agricultural sector of the Pacific Islands. Secondly, it explores the local socio-economic and environmental impacts of the second wave through two primary research-based case studies in Tonga and Niue. Finally, it calls for a concerted critical research effort designed to uncover the workings of neoliberal agricultural globalisation in the region and suggests means of resisting its worst implications.     

Rural development in the context of conflictual resource usage

The paper examines the role of aquaculture in sustainable development of rural communities. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, aquaculture is the fastest growing sector in the food sector, and the only growing component in the fisheries. It offers year-round jobs and incomes. However with its agricultural focus on ‘enclosing’ waterways, aquaculture is frequently opposed by the traditional fishery, and residential property owners. Their opposition may succeed in banning aquaculture. This paper, recognizing that aquaculture may produce conflicting rights and damage to other users, suggests that mutual economic and environmental interactions should be identified. This will permit a more holistic approach to coastal management. Regulations can be imposed to mitigate adverse environmental repercussions, and a cost-benefit study made to clarify socio-economic impacts. Cage culture of salmon in the Bay of Fundy in Atlantic North America is used to illustrate conflictual relationships, but the illustration could have come from Galicia in Spain, or the Tenth Region in Chile.     

Population growth and the changing ecosystem in Mindanao

Mindanao is the second largest island in the Philippines. Once considered the greenest spot on earth, it has since been highly exploited. This paper discusses the changing ecosystem of the island as a result of rapid population growth since the early 1900s. Not much is known about Mindanao before 1900. From 1913, however, population grew on Mindanao as the American colonial government established agricultural colonies to open up the south for trade and development. Colonial settlement together with migration and natural population increase led to environmental resource degradation and the displacement of indigenous communities such as the Moros and Lumads. Legal and illegal logging and rampant kaingin agriculture have also stressed the environment. The opening of the Mindanao frontier, Philippine development, the Great Migration, incursion of the Mindanao upland, deforestation, the displacement of indigenous communities, and the possible maintenance and rehabilitation of the ecosystem are discussed.     

A pinch of salt: landowner perception and adjustment to the salinity hazard in Victoria,Australia

Land degradation is one of the most critical environmental issues facing many countries today. The need to maintain productive agriculture has fuelled interest in finding more appropriate policy and management responses to environmental change, including the various forms of land degradation. While the processes resulting in degraded land are often natural phenomena, the term “land degradation” is used in this paper to refer to their anthropogenic acceleration and the consequent impacts on agricultural potential. Forms of land degradation include salinity, erosion, chemical contamination and changes in soil structure. The research reported here is concerned specifically with irrigation-induced soil salinity in Victoria, Australia. The paper is based on the hazards research paradigm developed within the social sciences. We use this paradigm to inform our inquiry into perceptions of, and responses to, the salinity hazard in a region of the state of Victoria known as the Tragowel Plains. Our investigation, based on questionnaire surveys and farm case studies, reveals a relatively high level of awareness of the salinity hazard. Adjustments to the hazard include changes in both land management and in land use. As the extent of such hazards increases it is imperative that research continues with a view to better understanding these human–environment relations in the context of specific environments.     

Planning for change in small towns or trying to avoid the slaughterhouse blues

Rural farming communities throughout the Prairies and Great Plains have sought to reverse decades of slow economic decline by attracting value-added processing of agricultural products as a means of economic development. The meatpacking industry has been attracted to the region by the availability of fed cattle. It has created thousands of low-paying jobs and boosted local agricultural economies by increasing the demand for animals and feedstuffs, while at the same time impairing water quality and bringing a host of social problems to packinghouse communities. This article examines how the town of Brooks, Alberta prepared and dealt with these challenges over a two year period following the expansion of a beefpacking plant. Despite the advance warning of the social changes that would accompany the hiring of additional workers the town failed to meet the housing needs of newcomers recruited to work at the plant and experienced a significant increase in a variety of social disorders. The study concludes that preparing for change begins with the recognition that social and environmental impacts are inevitable with the arrival of a new industry. A pro-active response to protecting the environment and ensuring that basic human needs are met is better for a community and its workforce than having changes thrust upon it by an industry whose only interest is in maximizing profits.     

Climate,floods, and migration in Pakistan

This commentary offers a glimpse into the complex landscape of climate-induced migration in rural Pakistan. By shedding light on the interplay between gradual ecological shifts and rapid climate shocks, it exposes the misalignment between climate policies and the mobility strategies of marginalized communities. The vulnerabilities of rural Pakistanis facing climate and ecological shocks, like the 2022 floods, are rooted in the historical mismanagement of land and water commons. The current focus on infrastructure-heavy interventions does not address the rigidity introduced by colonial and postcolonial interventions, which have undermined the seasonal mobility and fluidity of pastoralists, peasants, fishers and the landless in rural Pakistan. Thinking climate and migration together requires us to consider the socio-economic constraints and drivers of migration, burgeoning political conflicts, and the ecological consequences of infrastructure-heavy climate adaptation strategies by global investors and the Pakistani state.     

Human mobility in the context of environmental and climate change: Recent data collection tools from the International Organization for Migration to address key methodological and conceptual issues

This paper outlines recent data collection tools and methodologies that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been using in order to gather information on human mobility as influenced by environmental factors and their impacts. It looks at alternative ways for collecting and analysing data in the face of methodological challenges related to the multicausality of movements, the voluntary/involuntary continuum in human (im)mobility decisions in the context of environmental and climate change, and the policy and epistemological imperative from viewing migration as an adaptation strategy. The paper finds that certain data collection approaches can be quickly deployed in rapid-onset disasters as well as applied in contexts of gradual, slow-onset environmental change to provide information useful for operational responses to immediate crises and/or for developing policies in response. Some of the tools can be useful in both contexts and may support both immediate and long-term operational, policy and research objectives.     

Sustainable Social Work: An Environmental Justice Framework for Social Work Education

Environmental degradation is not experienced by all populations equally; hazardous and toxic waste sites, resource contamination (e.g., exposure to pesticides), air pollution, and numerous other forms of environmental degradation disproportionately affect low income and minority communities. The communities most affected by environmental injustices are often the same communities where social workers are entrenched in service provision at the individual, family, and community level. In this article, we use a global social work paradigm to describe practical ways in which environmental justice content can be infused in the training and education of social workers across contexts in order to prepare professionals with the skills to respond to ever-increasing global environmental degradation. We discuss ways for social work educators to integrate and frame environmental concerns and their consequences for vulnerable populations using existing social work models and perspectives to improve the social work profession's ability to respond to environmental injustices. There are significant social work implications; social workers need to adapt and respond to contexts that shape our practice, including environmental concerns that impact the vulnerable and oppressed populations that we serve.     

Documenting Environmental Degradation and Its Consequences Using Visual Methods as Pedagogical Tools in Social Work Education

Environmental degradation, including the depletion of natural resources, the distortion of environmental aesthetics, diminished physical infrastructure, and the poisoning of essential environmental supplies involving air, water, and soil abridge environmental quality, particularly for those who are impoverished, possess qualities that do not fit acceptable racial or ethnic stereotypes, face physical barriers preventing social integration, or who are encapsulated in communities in which societal disinvestment weakens quality of environment. Visual methods for documenting environmental degradation are useful in identifying and assessing this social issue from the perspectives of people and groups that face marginalization. Such methods are useful for sensitizing social work students to environmental degradation, heightening students’ understanding of environmental injustice, and alerting them to how environmental quality is an essential aim of social work practice.     

Towards an alternative logic of technological change: Insights from Corn Belt agriculture

Empirical evidence drawn from a Corn Belt case study is used to connect the environmental and socioeconomic contradictions of agricultural production in the region. The paper rests on several key arguments: First, a preliminary case is made for a more explicit recognition of the theoretical and empirical links between the socioeconomic problems of agricultural regions stemming from chronically low levels of producer surplus retention and similar problems of social welfare associated with reduced levels of remunerated labor in the industrial sector. Second, there is a parallel need for connecting the negative social and environmental costs of capitalist agriculture. The case study uses the evolving production process on individual farms as a means of exploring the causal relationship between the movement towards capitalist social relations and environmental degradation resulting from intensive patterns of synthetic chemical use. And third, the role of agency among family farmers faced with a regional economic crisis emerges from the case study analysis. In the 1980s, a small minority of Iowa farmers would adopt, perfect and disseminate a low-chemical input system of production attuned to the logic of family farm social relations. The contribution of the state-sponsored research institutions was notably absent. The case example highlights the process of technological change as a socially-constructed phenomenon subject to alternative forms of rationality that emerge from different syntheses of ecological conditions and social relations.     

Beyond the Farmgate: Factors Related to Agricultural Performance in Two Dairy Communities1

Abstract This study compares the logic of agricultural production across two dairy farming communities in the Northeast using a measure of agricultural performance as the dependent variable. Both communities have similar farm structural and environmental characteristics, but significantly different levels of agricultural performance. Our analysis indicates that dairy farmers in both communities are following the same basic path toward the optimization of milk production, but achieving quite different results. A comparison of structural factors shows that the high-production community is in a more advantageous position than the low-production community in terms of opportunities for formal education, access to markets, and proximity to an urban center. Acknowledgment of structural differences across agricultural communities is crucial to the development of adequate sociological theory, agricultural policy, and extension programming.     

Agriculture as an upholder of cultural heritage? Conceptualizations and value judgements—A Norwegian perspective in international context

The multifunctional role of agriculture as a producer of collective goods in addition to food and fibre, has been stressed within the context of negotiations on the liberalization of the world market for food (WTO) and in general in discussions concerning restructuring of the agricultural sector. One of these collective goods, cultural heritage, is connected to agricultural practice and covers objects, sites and areas influenced by agricultural activity, as well as experience based knowledge of work, resource utilization and management. Agriculture is seen both as a threat to and a caretaker of cultural heritage. This double role is recognized in Norway, although the responsibility of the agricultural sector as a caretaker of cultural heritage is stressed. This article investigates the connection between agriculture and cultural heritage as expressed by public and private actors who define the policy agenda, namely the cultural heritage or environmental, the agricultural and tourism sectors. This is done by analysing explicit and implicit value judgements in central concepts like “cultural heritage”, “active agriculture” and “added value”. The Norwegian case is compared to the international context. The analysis shows that within a Nordic context active farming and cultural heritage is positively linked and the farmer is seen as a major caretaker, while in documents from dominant international actors cultural heritage is seen as something on the side of active farming. Although differences reflect some actual variation in the consequences of agricultural practices, it is clear that concepts serve as ‘legitimizing tools’ placing central actors within a specific political agenda.     

Hyper-Segmentation and Exclusion in Financial Services in the U.S.

Abstract

The last twenty years has been a period of major structural change for the financial services sector in the United States. Some of this restructuring has been prompted by technological change, but public policy has actively facilitated the increased mobility of capital to places where it brings the highest short-term private return but not necessarily the greatest long-term social return. While deregulation and technology have combined to provide a wider choice of services and increased price pressure in the lucrative segments of different financial markets, the pursuit of affluent customers has left lower-income consumers and very small firms at a disadvantage. The sector overall has moved toward a hyper-segmentation of customer bases by income and race, leaving many communities served primarily by higher-cost and sometimes abusive financial services firms.     

Changing Gears: Shifting to an Environmental Perspective in Social Work Education

This paper seeks to add to the growing literature on environmental social work education which suggests the need for a fundamental rethinking of the humanistic values and theories informing social work to embrace concerns relating to environmental degradation and climate change. For the most part, social work's interest in the environment to date relates to human needs. Of most concern here is the over-representation of people in poverty and subsistence among those impacted by deforestation and climate injustice. However, even here the emphasis is on the human experience of environmental and climate change when this is an outcome of human actions and structural inequalities. The paper begins with an overview of the theoretical terrain of environmental thought before examining issues in relation to perspective transformation and the implications for under- and post-graduate curriculum development.     

From an Agrarian to an Environmental,Food, and Natural Resource Base for Agricultural Policy: Some Reflections on the Case of the EC

Abstract The agriculture of the European Community (EC) has experienced significant changes in the last decade. From a situation of deficiency in agricultural and food production, the twelve-nation community has shifted to a situation of food overproduction. This change has also been characterized by a rapid decrease in the agricultural labor force and a decrease of its importance in the employment structure which has manifested itself in fewer, more efficient farms. This alteration of structural conditions has led to the emergence of a new set of agricultural issues. This article discusses these changes by underscoring the decline of agrarian-based issues and the emergence of environmental, food, and natural resource-based issues. It is maintained that EC agricultural policies have been instrumental in both the resolution of agrarian-based issues and in the creation of new problems embodied in the environmental, food, and natural resource-based policies. The combination of the demise of agrarian-based policies and the emergence of environmental, food, and natural resource-based policies is also employed as a theoretical perspective from which the evolution of the agricultural sector in the EC can be interpreted.     

Reflecting on Grantee Evaluation Accountability to Funders: Exploring Power Dynamics with Grassroots Organizations in Communities of Color

Grassroots organizations in communities of color often struggle in their relationships with philanthropic partners, especially as it relates to the issue of accountability. This article focuses on exploring the nature of accountability within the social contract between the philanthropic sector and these grassroots organizations. Drawing on a review of the relevant literature and results of 11 structured interviews with leaders from the philanthropic sector and grassroots organizations in communities of color, key themes are identified. Recommendations are offered on how the hierarchy within the sector can be addressed and how the dialogue between these partners can be improved.     

Ergonomic evaluation of the environment: a case study in a control room of the hydroelectric sector

Representative systematic evaluation studies of the workspace and the extent to which that space is suitable for performing tasks have been developed by professionals engaged on finding evidence as to the importance of users and designers being joint participants in drawing up projects. In this context, this paper sets out to evaluate the environment of a control room in the hydroelectric sector, based on a multidisciplinary method which integrates ergonomics, architecture and environmental psychology so as to assess the influence of space on the user, and thus to identify the user's level of satisfaction with it. It was observed that some adaptation strategies of the space for activities were not implemented satisfactorily, resulting in the need for further studies on making workspaces suitable.     

The Effects of Homeownership on Civic Participation among Immigrant Farmworkers in Washington State

Homeownership is generally considered to have positive benefits for families and communities. However, the collapse of the housing market in 2009 led to questions about this assumption, especially for low‐skilled workers whose employment is volatile. This question is particularly relevant to the farmworker population in rural communities for whom homeownership might function as the first step in the path toward social integration. In this study I ask whether homeownership impacts immigrant adaptation among farmworkers in Washington State. To answer this question researchers analyzed 2,845 responses from the Washington State Farm Worker Survey. I divided the sample into renters and homeowners and evaluated behaviors and attitudes along three dimensions: perceptions of community efficacy, civic engagement, and motivations for civic engagement. I found that when compared with those who rent, farmworkers who are homeowners tend to have a greater sense of community efficacy, are more engaged in their communities, and are more motivated to get involved in local affairs. These findings suggest that homeownership can function as a vehicle for immigrant adaptation among Washington State farmworkers. This bodes well for the future of the state's rural areas, where Latinos are increasingly becoming the majority in many agricultural communities.