Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do ‘green grabs’ constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?

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Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?

dismantling the welfare state reagan thatcher and politics of retrenchment are a good way to achieve details about operating certainproducts. Many products that you buy can be obtained using instruction manuals. These user guides are clearlybuilt to give step-by-step information about how you ought to go ahead in operating certain equipments. Ahandbook is really a user's guide to operating the equipments. Should you loose your best guide or even the productwould not provide an instructions, you can easily obtain one on the net. You can search for the manual of yourchoice online. Here, it is possible to work with google to browse through the available user guide and find the mainone you'll need. On the net, you'll be able to discover the manual that you might want with great ease andsimplicity

Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment

http://www.oaith.ca/assets/files/Homelessness%20Report%202013.pdf

The State of Homelessness in Canada 2013

From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America, 2nd edn, Walter I. Trattner. Free Press, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. (1979), 290 pp. $12.95 (paper) $5.95

SUMMARY The Health Promoting School (HPS) and Comprehensive School Health Program (CSHP) initiatives have been proposed as a means of going beyond some of the limitations associated with health promotion initiatives aimed at schoolaged children. This involves moving beyond practices that rely mainly on classroom-based health education models, to a more comprehensive, integrated approach of health promotion that focuses both on child-youth attitudes and behaviors, and their environment. Despite the tremendous potential of these initiatives in terms of health and educational gains, only rarely are they actually put into practice. This article briefly reviews the features of these initiatives, as well as the extent of their implementation and current benefits. Against that backdrop, the authors identify some issues to consider and propose four conditions with a view to achieving broader practical application of these approaches. These issues, which are discussed from the standpoint of potential avenues of further study and courses of action, relate to the comprehensive, integrated nature of the intervention, the school/family/community partnership, political and financial support from policy makers, and, finally, evaluative research as a support to implementation.

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Comprehensive approaches to school health promotion: how to achieve broader implementation?

‘individualise’ service provision and between differing approaches to improving ‘accountability’ of public service providers. An area which, arguably, might have received more attention is ‘narrative’. A corollary of ‘soft logic’ in ‘administrative argument’ is that ‘doctrines’ are sold, in part, via the narratives they construct. In this respect, there is one area in the analysis where a more explicit awareness of narrative might have strengthened the argument. As part of setting out the context for contemporary public management, Chapter 2 deals with the ‘changing role of the state’. The analysis in this chapter uses (albeit in a qualified way, see for example, p. 45) Jessop’s distinction between the ‘Keynesian Welfare State’ (KWS) and the ‘Schumpeterian Workfare State’ (SWS). It is thus suggested that this distinction is a ‘useful guide’ (p. 45) to the changing role of the state with a broad shift from KWS to SWS. However, this risks taking narrative too much on its own terms. Thus, for example, discussing structural change in the UK economy under New Labour, Coutts et al. (2007: 857) point to the official government emphasis on ‘supply side’ driven policies. They quote (ibid.) a Treasury statement from 2004, which maintains that ‘changes in the structure of employment are a necessary part of economic development and flow . . . from the openness of trade . . . technological developments and changes in consumer preferences’. Impeccably SWS one might think, and a key part of the Treasury view on an appropriate public policy response is to develop workforce skills to ease ‘transitional’ costs (ibid.). Coutts et al. go on to point out that employment levels improved considerably in the economically disadvantaged North of England under New Labour. This was not, however, they argue principally due to officially endorsed ‘supply side’ policies, but rather to the direct and indirect effect of ‘the government’s expansion of public services (ibid.: 859). Thus ‘an old fashioned injection of aggregate demand . . . has probably been a very important influence despite the Treasury’s disdain for such an approach’ (ibid.) – perhaps a case of SWS narrative, but KWS practice? However this is very valuable book. Ian Greener has tackled the difficult task of writing a text on public management which is both accessible and critical and he has succeeded admirably.

Paul Hoggett, Marjorie Mayo and Chris Miller (2008), The Dilemmas of Development Work: Ethical Challenges in Regeneration . Bristol: Policy Press. £23.99, pp. 201, pbk.

This article presents an evaluation of an educational intervention that provided computer skills training for a sample of n = 17 rural seniors in North Middlesex, Ontario, Canada. Due to the rural nature of the community, this cohort had limited access to and knowledge of computers. A total of N = 36 originally participated in a designed basic computer training intervention consisting of 8-week training sessions, offered sequentially in three smaller cohorts of 12 seniors. The evaluation included a pre and post-test using the Seniors Basic Computer Skills Scale (SBCSS) to assess the effectiveness of this training. The evaluation team developed the SBCSS to measure basic computer skills of seniors and pilot-tested it with the sample. Psychometric testing of the SBCSS showed exceptionally high degrees of reliability. The SBCSS measured 11 basic computer skills including: (a) talking
about computers, (b) using computer technology, (c) using the Internet, (d) using an Internet resource such as Skype, (e) using a computer mouse, (f) using Web browsers, (g) manipulating the computer screen brightness and size, (h) using bookmarks, (i) sending and receiving emails with family and friends, (j) sharing
photographs with family and friends, and (k) using social media such as Facebook. There were some encouraging results regarding increased computer skills for this sample of rural seniors. However, there were other areas where learning did not increase significantly. This article speaks to the need to identify and recruit rural seniors who may benefit from such targeted interventions to increase technological skills, and also to the need for a second-level enhancement of the municipally funded Computer for Seniors program (CSP). We contend that community workers have a
unique role to play in such initiatives, as they may encourage local seniors to both explore their computer literacy in rural areas, and help to increase opportunities that are often missing in rural communities.


Keywords: rural seniors, computer technology, digital divide, community development

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Judith M. Dunlop

Papers

Paul Hoggett, Marjorie Mayo and Chris Miller (2008), The Dilemmas of Development Work: Ethical Challenges in Regeneration . Bristol: Policy Press. £23.99, pp. 201, pbk.

Digital Learning in Rural Ontario, Canada: An Evaluation of the Computer for Seniors Program