Gender and aquaculture value chains: A review of key issues and implications for research

Sand is a scarce resource, extracted from rivers and coasts at rates that exceed its natural renewal. Yet, little is understood about the political economy of sand extraction, the livelihood vulner...

Trading Sand, Undermining Lives: Omitted Livelihoods in the Global Trade in Sand

Here is a story from the roadside. A woman, accompanied by two children, is squatting on the sidewalk of a busy Gulshan street in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Figure 1). One child is a toddler, the other a little boy. The woman, while cleaning up the toddler, makes the most of a lamppost's shadow to protect the children from glaring sunlight. The group crouches on a piece of cloth or paper spread out on the pavement in front of a painted wall. The wall marks the boundary between private land and the public street. Since the woman and the children are poor, the commons are essential for their land use practices, even if the roadside offers little comfort to them. The behaviour of humans in deprived and desperate circumstances shapes the spatiality of poverty. Bangladesh, with a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.547, ranks 140 in a HDI country list of 177 (UNDP, 2007, 231). In 2005, the HDI average for OECD countries was 0.916; for the UK it was 0.946 (rank 16), for Germany 0.935 (rank 22), and for Sierra Leone 0.336 (rank 177). The HDI considers several indices: life expectancy at birth, the adult literacy rate, the combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary education, and gross domestic product per capita (UNDP, 2007, 229-32). How does our ability to measure poverty actually improve the lives of the poor? Meanwhile, the unnoticed woman carries on with her business. In Bangladesh, the poor are considered invisible by the elite and do not demand profound political changes (Hossain and Moore, 2005). Here is another story from the roadside. Travellers who have checked in at Vienna International Airport can feast their eyes on a luxurious spectacle of caviar. Figure 2 shows four cases of caviar. Each has a prominent price tag. The price of each case - containing a little over 400 grammes of caviar - exceeds Bangladesh's GDP per capita ($2.05 in 2005). Caviar boutiques invite high-end consumers. Retailing, which relies on passengers' impulsive shopping behaviour, has grown into many an airport's main business. The behaviour of humans in an affluent and already highly satiated state shapes the spatiality of wealth. International airports, once used for transition only, today have more shops and conference rooms than arrival and departure gates. To avoid the consequences of the economic crisis, luxury brands seek 'new modesty' and 'sustainable luxury' (Kahn, 2009, 12). Caviar retailers, however, still promote their products among travellers, who, after all, are credit cards on feet. The spatiality of poverty and wealth is grounded in plural perceptions of land and the social production of land uses by the wealthy and the poor. Figures 1 and 2 help us to perceive land, among other things, as a territory, an economic commodity and an environmental resource. The images invoke land rights, scarcity, value, purity and other qualities of land that planners must not replace with abstract notions of space. The captivating book Southern Theory criticises social theory for its lack of interest in place, material context, and specifically the land Disregarding the land is not just one theoretical choice among others; it emerges as a feature of the ideology of neoliberal society. (Connell, 2007, 196 and 208) Although most spatial planners position themselves as promoters of social and ecological issues, they often neglect the relationship between the poor and the land. Does it suffice to provide space for social housing? Although housing is critical for the poor, the current global discourse on poverty and property is not confined to social housing, but includes the vulnerability of land uses by the poor, informal settlements, the land rights of women, land reform, the contested spaces of urban commons, or new types of ownership for spaces of social exchange. This discourse - including the discussion of sustainable development, poverty reduction, the Millennium Development Goals, or the World Bank's pro-poor land policy - contemplates the poor and the land comprehensively. …

Centenary Paper: The Poor and the Land: Poverty, Property, Planning

Formalization of artisanal and small-scale mining in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: An opportunity for women in the new tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold (3TG) supply chain?

COVID-19 has shaken a foundational pillar of global capitalism: the organisation of work. A pivotal dimension of such re-organisation has been the classification of work as essential or not. This a...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02255189.2020.1834362

Essential for what? A global social reproduction view on the re-organisation of work during the COVID-19 pandemic

These success stories describe how two programs helped families to strengthen their health agricultural livelihoods and food security in Malawi. The programs helped households to grow more food guided farmers toward profitable business practices helped people to form savings groups taught families and young mothers about health and nutrition and increased access to HIV services and social welfare systems.

Veronicah K

Papers

Cultivating change. Success stories from the WALA and IMPACT programs in southern Malawi.