Companion Encyclopedia of Geography

From the Local to the Global

Ian Douglas, Richard Huggett, Chris Perkins, Ian Douglas, Richard Huggett, Chris Perkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781135174910
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

This revised edition takes the theme of place as the unifying principle for a full account of the discipline at the beginning of the twenty-first century.The work comprises 64 substantial essays addressing human and physical geography, and exploring their inter-relations. The encyclopedia does full justice to the enormous growth of social and cultural geography in recent years. Leading international academics from ten countries and four continents have contributed, ensuring that differing traditions in geography around the world are represented. In addition to references, the essays also have recommendations for further reading.

As with the original work, the new Companion Encyclopedia of Geography provides a state-of-the-art survey of the discipline and is an indispensable addition to the reference shelves of libraries supporting research and teaching in geography.

Part VI
Responses to the geographical drivers of change

Chris Perkins, Ian Douglas, Richard Huggett

This section focuses upon action. It requires many more chapters than any other section to illustrate the diversity of human responses to change. Places and people respond to different kinds of change and in so doing create new geographies. Paralleling the second block of chapters that documents challenges, this section thematically explores the incredible diversity of approaches to change and evaluates the geographical significance. The early chapters in this section explore people’s interactions with the physical environment.

Natural hazards are ever present and are the focus of Colin Green’s analysis in Chapter 41. People have always had to cope with earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, avalanches, hurricanes and wildfires. Humans have responded to the threat of natural hazards at a range of scales, from local flood prevention schemes to national and international bodies seeking and monitoring Earth-crossing asteroids. This chapter discusses the relative significance of different threats and explores the ways people deal with risk. Its emphasis is upon management and upon social roles, discourse, governance and development in different contexts. Together the social construction of hazards produces different patterns of adaptability.

During human history, people’s responses to climatic variations have changed. They have endeavoured to escape the problem by migrating to other areas, or adjust to it by nomadism, or seasonal spatial shifts in the location of agricultural or pastoral activities. In the short term, in-situ survival for the poor, in a much more crowded world, is aided by relief systems and movement to refugee centres (see Chapter 31), and gradual adjustment guided by greatly improved weather forecasting and climate prediction. In Chapter 42, Rory Walsh emphasizes these temporal changes and spatial-cultural differences in societal impact, response and adaptation to climatic variability. Such responses are spatially and socially variable, reflecting differences in top-down actions by governments and in societal actions and initiatives both to minimize the human impact on the atmosphere and to prepare for climate change.

Catherine Heppell (Chapter 43) explores the relative significance of agricultural and silvicultural practices on the land management. Agriculture occupies 35 per cent of the world’s land surface and is the single largest consumer of freshwater resources, using a global average of 70 per cent of surface water supplies. Agricultural expansion is also one of the driving forces behind deforestation and forest land degradation. There are many technological solutions available for minimizing the pollution arising from agricultural and silvicultural practice, either preventative in nature or designed to minimize the delivery and impact of agro-chemicals on the surrounding environment. On their own, however, these technical solutions will not solve the problem of environmental degradation by farming and silvicultural activity. The socioeconomic factors determining how agricultural and silvicultural practices operate have to be changed to achieve greater sustainability of food growing and forest product management.

A small but often locally significant part of the land surface is transformed by waste. Many places reflect their past use as waste dumps but, as Ian Douglas shows in Chapter 44, former landfills are transformed to a host of new uses. Landfill (or landraise) is the least desirable option for waste management. Many of the world’s poorest communities are, of necessity, far better than wealthy communities at recycling materials and reusing ‘experienced resources’. Providing what consumers expect but at the same time reducing the volume of waste and using resources more efficiently remains a major societal challenge.

Rivers remain attractive and economically valued places for multiple reasons, yet their management has become increasingly challenging. David Sear (Chapter 45) illustrates how the restoration of rivers has become a key component of current river management. From small channels in both urban and rural areas to the world’s major rivers, the issues are to retain as many of the amenities of the river environment as possible, with an emphasis on restoring biodiversity and water quality, as well as retaining water supply, power generation, fishery and navigational uses. The chapter presents case studies of river restoration in the UK that demonstrate the complexity of stakeholder interests involved and the need for good scientific understanding. It also discusses broader issues, including dam removal in the USA.

Civilization was made possible by water management – ancient cultures diverted river flow from its ‘natural’ pathway to use for irrigation. Today, the dual need to ensure adequate water resources and minimize the environmental impact of human activities underpins attempts to move towards sustainable water management. In Chapter 46, Nigel Arnell considers water availability in a global context. Total average annual freshwater flows are approximately 40–47,000 cu. km/year. Global average resource availability (runoff and renewable groundwater recharge) is around 7–8,000 cu. m/capita/year. However, only around 53 per cent of global freshwater flows are available for human use, reducing global per capita availability to closer to 4,000 cu. m/capita/year. The considerable variability in runoff availability from year to year means that in many parts of the world, annual runoff in dry years can be only 10 per cent of the long-term mean. Further, resource availability varies dramatically from region to region, requiring a wide range of strategies to store adequate water, ensure effective irrigation (the main user of water) and reduce demand, especially in countries with adequate piped supplies.

The saline waters of the oceans contain significant resources that compared to those on the continental land surfaces are under-explored, but often over-exploited. In Chapter 47, Bernd Haupt and Maurie Kelly describe the role of the past and present ocean as biologically diverse habitat, as a resource for life and recreation, most importantly as a stabilizer for our climate. They outline issues related to human impacts on the ocean. Through understanding the role of past and present usage, and the momentous issue of resource exploitation, we can understand how consumerism, industrial and commercial expansion, and insufficient knowledge have led to dramatic changes in the oceans. Co-operative research efforts designed to increase scientific knowledge have enhanced the world’s ability to use marine resources more effectively and efficiently, but still greater efforts are needed to ensure that human activities are sustainable.

Coasts are special places for a host of human activities. Competing land uses may lead to complex problems of beach erosion in one place, juxtaposed with harbour siltation in another. Denise Reed (Chapter 48) considers the diverse nature of coastal zone problems and explores practical ways in which these fragile zones may best be managed. The call for coastal management to be based on scientific knowledge of coastal dynamics frequently comes to the fore when hurricanes or non-tropical storms devastate communities and infrastructure. One group advocates systematic retreat from the oceanfront to avoid damage in the future and allow natural processes to heal and adjust to the storm impact. Another reacts to storm damages by calling for increased investment in protecting communities – either through enhancing natural buffers, i.e. beach nourishment, or by strengthening engineered defences such as sea walls. Resolving such contrasted opinions requires good understanding of the environmental and social dimensions of the use of coastal zones.

Global warming has already led to changes affecting low-lying coral atolls in the world’s tropical oceans. The main island of Tuvalu was inundated three times in 2003. In Chapter 49, Patrick Nunn explores the special nature of small island environments and communities and discusses their options in a world of rising sea levels. Island decision-makers have the opportunity now to significantly reduce the undesired impacts of future sea-level rise on such islands. The options include gradually relocating vulnerable coastal communities, infrastructure and income-generating activities to higher ground; reducing the dependence, for both subsistence agriculture and cash crops, on lowland areas by relocating farms to higher ground; encouraging new enterprises to operate from higher locations and to have a reduced dependence on lowland-coastal areas; planting vegetation barriers along island coasts, especially, in the tropics, mangrove forests along the most vulnerable stretches of coast; and declaring key coastal areas as reserves to allow natural ecosystems to be restored and to increase coastal resilience to change.

Richard Ladle and Ana Malhado (Chapter 50) explore the ‘extinction crisis’ and the several factors that are causing a worrying loss of biodiversity – habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, unsustainable exploitation, pollution, the effects of invasive species, and global climatic change. They also consider the responses to biodiversity loss, including the international legislative responses, the establishment of protected areas, and technical responses.

The way we think about nature and the environment structures the way we manage it and thus has material outcomes. Lesley Head (Chapter 51) argues that conceptions of culture and nature as separate entities, symbolized most profoundly in Western thought by the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences, have had many implications for environmental management. For example, natural heritage and cultural heritage are frequently managed by different agencies, or different parts of a single agency, although they may be part of the same landscape. Parts of landscapes are preserved, others have special values to first peoples, such as the Australia Aborigines and the Inuit. Yet even in the world’s modern ‘extended urban regions’ there is a role for nature in the city. For example, it has been suggested that New York could be conceptualized and managed as a Biosphere. While such thinking seems bizarre if we think of nature as existing ‘out there’, somewhere remote from human activity, it is consistent with the idea that cities are just as much ecosystems as any other area. Such thinking about nature/culture relationships is required for the century ahead.

Population distribution, composition and growth are closely related to local geographies. Analysing demographic structures and changes allows policymakers to project future trends, by unpacking the significance of changing mortality, fertility and migration data. Chapter 52 by Shii Okuno explores the nature of the challenges faced by continuing growth, but also discusses the implications of an aging and stagnating population in parts of Western Europe. It sets population issues into a wider cultural context by discussing the policy options and geographical, social and moral implications of managing change.

In the post-colonial era global power continues to be exercised by the rich and powerful. In Chapter 53, Gavin Bridge focuses in particular on the exploitative nature of uneven development. He charts the nature of commodity chains, explores the continuing significance of ownership and control and documents how these social and economic relations are mapped out in the context of nations or places without mature or complex economies, and in which the trading of single and often primary commodities continues to play a significant role.

Even after the colonial era the global economy continues to be organized around the interests of capital. Its operation depends upon the rapid transfer of funds around the globe, to maximize returns for investors. At a local level, access to financial services is spatially uneven, and communities may be completely unable to borrow. Meanwhile the national debt burden of many countries represents a crippling impediment hindering economic or social development. Chapter 54 by Michael Pryke analyses the nature of these financial underpinnings. It explores why financial centres like Wall Street remain in place and agglomerated, in a world of constant placeless flux and flows. It charts the emergence in the 1970s of new forms of liberalized global finance explaining the particular architecture through which flows are orchestrated. The chapter ends on an optimistic note, arguing that alt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of plates
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Part V: The geographical imagination
• Part VI: Responses to the geographical drivers of change
• Index