Search Results (91)

Understanding changes in urban green and blue infrastructure (UGBI) associated with land use management can inform planners on trends in environmental change that may impact urban resilience. While UGBI change resulting from land use conversion has received significant research interest, UGBI change within otherwise consistent land uses has received scant attention. This study developed a high-resolution spatiotemporal analysis framework to map fine-scale UGBI change across all land use classes in Manchester, UK, over a period (2000–2017) of significant population growth. The study found that UGBI declined in 17 out of 29 land use classes, with an overall city-wide UGBI loss of 11.9%, compared to UGBI gains for 6.4% of the city. Declines were most concerning in residential areas, which cover 33.6% of Manchester, as UGBI in these areas is important for delivering ecosystem services to citizens. Extrapolation of change rates indicate that two-thirds of future UGBI loss could occur in residential areas. These results provide insights into socio-economic processes which are likely to have similar implications for UGBI trends in other urban areas. Such knowledge is critical to inform land use planning and management to identify where UGBI is at risk and implement appropriate policies to reverse or minimise losses. Full article

Citizens Advice on Prescription (CAP), a Liverpool (UK)-based service, provides welfare advice and link worker social prescription support to people experiencing and at risk of experiencing financial or social hardship. CAP, which receives referrals from healthcare and third-sector services, aims to improve service users’ financial security, health, and wellbeing. A mixed-methods social return on-investment (SROI) analysis was used to evaluate this service. Between May 2022 and November 2023, a subset of service users (n = 538) completed the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Survey (SWEMWBS) at baseline and a 2-month follow-up. Supporting quantitative and qualitative economic data were also collected (February 2023–February 2024) through semi-structured interviews (n = 16). Changes in social value were determined by comparing pre- and post-SWEMWBS scores. These scores were then mapped to monetary values using the Mental Health Social Value Bank (MHSVB). SROI ratios were then calculated by dividing the change in social value by the associated service provision costs. The mean social value change per person ranged from GBP 505.70 to GBP 697.52, and the mean service provision cost was GBP 148.66 per person. The overall study reported a positive SROI return range of GBP 1: GBP 3.40–GBP 4.69. The results indicate that non-clinical support services, like CAP, may be an effective intervention for addressing the wider determinants of health and wellbeing. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has not just gently nudged but forcefully thrust environmental issues into the forefront of public consciousness. This shift in awareness has been a long-time aspiration of conservation scientists, who have played a crucial role in advocating for recognizing nature’s contributions to human life and a healthy environment. I explain the advantages of using newly available tools and sources of digital data, i.e., the absolute search volume in Google using the flag keywords biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability, Τhe GDELT Project, which monitors the world’s broadcast, print, and web news, and the difference-in-differences method comparing paired samples of public interest before and after the pandemic outbreak. We focus on the case of UK citizens’ public interest. Public interest in the flag keywords in the UK showed a highly significant increase during the pandemic. The results contradict hypotheses or findings presented elsewhere that the public interest is attenuated during and because of the public health crisis. I support growing public awareness of the existential risks springing from human materialism misappropriating nature, environment, and resources. In conclusion, I advocate for a “new conservation narrative” that could be fostered by the increased public interest in environmental topics during the pandemic. Full article

Urban Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have been acclaimed for their politically transformative potential: de-commodifying land and providing permanently affordable housing under community control. Few studies include CLT residents and this paper features two case studies to help fill the gap. St Clements in East London, UK, and Citizens House, Southeast London, both created by London CLT, collectively have 34 households living in them. Unlike more geographically focused CLTs, London CLT provides governance, knowledge, and skills to support people across London to build the affordable housing they campaign for. The selection criteria prioritised the needs of those failed by the existing housing market, who had long-standing connections to the borough, and contributed to community life. London CLT hoped residents would have a transformational impact on the neighbourhood, spreading the ethos of community control. Using the conceptualisations of territorialisation and conviviality, new knowledge has been produced about residents’ experience of negotiating shared lives. While residents are happy with their homes, and value the neighbourliness that comes from knowing others better, investing time and energy in more organised activity and decision making has been slow. The two spaces display both the affectivity and distancing associated with territorialisation and the ‘rubbing along’ and ambivalence of conviviality. Full article

Background: The global food system faces growing pressure from population growth, climate change, wealth inequity, geo-political instability, and damage to the ecosystems on which our food supply depends. Fragmentation of the priorities and needs of food system stakeholders—citizens, food producers, food industries, governments—compounds the problem, with competing or misaligned interests increasing the risk of failure to adequately meet the needs of those that form, and are served, by the food system. Growing consensus on the need for transformative system level change to address the problems facing the food system is yet to be significantly reflected in strategic action. Methods: The national food strategy of the UK is offered as an exemplar to discuss the need to promote more coherent and ambitious visions of transformative change that acknowledge the complexity of the food system as a whole. We draw upon cross-sectoral experience to distil the needs, priorities, and key food system tensions that must be acknowledged to promote transformative systems change that equitably delivers healthy sustainable diets, contributes to a resilient global food system, and protects the environment. Results: Greater coherence, ambition, and consideration of the food system as a whole are needed if a UK national food strategy is to contribute to significant transformative change. Conclusions: To promote this, we advocate for (1) a food system digital twin to model and test potential food system interventions or legislation; (2) a citizens’ forum to inform and co-develop a cohesive national food strategy; and (3) increased cohesion and integration of food system governance within government to drive a coherent, ambitious national food strategy. Full article

The impacts of COVID-19 on cities across the United Kingdom were significant and diverse, whilst ongoing climate-related, sustainability and social challenges were highlighted and sometimes amplified. Lessons from organisational and citizen experiences and their responses have the potential to improve local sustainability and resilience to global events; hence, they must be examined. We report findings from a project conducted in Preston (UK) exploring how COVID-19 recovery might accelerate organisation-led and citizen-led action for the wellbeing of people, places and the planet. The project used a settings approach to public health and combined qualitative research with conceptual development; the former involved online interviews and group dialogues with members of several local anchor institutions, whilst the latter examined synergy between community wealth building, Doughnut Economics and place-based climate action. We explore two themes—anchor institutions’ strategic priorities and plans; ‘building back better’, and its future sustainability implications. These revealed four cross-cutting aspects: wellbeing, tackling societal inequalities, collaborative working, and COVID-19 as a catalyst for transformative change. Informed by ‘Doughnut-Shaped Community Wealth Building’, organisations are encouraged to embed commitment to equitable and inclusive climate action; consolidate the co-operative approach developed during the pandemic at strategic, operational and grassroots levels; take a nuanced approach to future work policies and practices; work across anchor institutions to advocate collectively for supportive national-level policy to build a sustainable, wellbeing economy. Full article

Antimicrobial resistance poses one of the greatest threats to global health and there is an urgent need for new therapeutic options. Phages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria and phage therapy could provide a valuable tool for the treatment of multidrug-resistant infections. In this study, water samples collected by citizen scientists as part of the Citizen Phage Library (CPL) project, and wastewater samples from the Environment Agency yielded phages with activity against clinical strains Klebsiella pneumoniae BPRG1484 and Enterobacter cloacae BPRG1482. A total of 169 and 163 phages were found for K. pneumoniae and E. cloacae, respectively, within four days of receiving the strains. A third strain (Escherichia coli BPRG1486) demonstrated cross-reactivity with 42 E. coli phages already held in the CPL collection. Seed lots were prepared for four K. pneumoniae phages and a cocktail combining these phages was found to reduce melanisation in a Galleria mellonella infection model. The resources and protocols utilised by the Citizen Phage Library enabled the rapid isolation and characterisation of phages targeted against multiple strains. In the future, within a clearly defined regulatory framework, phage therapy could be made available on a named-patient basis within the UK. Full article

Climate change poses a serious existential threat to life on our planet. If we are to mitigate the most damaging impacts of climate change, there is a need for citizens who are willing and able to make changes to their individual behaviours, but who are also politically engaged and motivated to participate in, and advocate for, systemic change; there is a need for citizens who are Climate Capable. However, there is no scale currently available with which to measure the climate capability of adults and adolescents. Through an iterative process across three studies with 849 UK adults, we developed and validated a 24-item Climate Capability Scale. In a further study, with 458 UK adolescent participants (aged 12–15), we validated the scale for use with adolescents. We demonstrate that the scale is internally consistent, has good test–retest reliability, correlates with measures of related constructs such as environmental worldview and scientific literacy, and predicts self-reported pro-environmental behaviour. The Climate Capability Scale may have particular value in educational and public engagement contexts for measuring the effectiveness of programs and interventions designed to increase Climate Capability, as well as similar approaches to heighten engagement with the climate crisis. Full article

The UK government responsibilizes its citizens when it comes to their cyber security, as do other countries. Governments provide excellent advice online, but do not provide any other direct support. Responsibilization is viable when: (1) risk management activities require only ubiquitous skills, (2) a failure to manage the risk does not affect others in the person’s community. Cybersecurity fails on both counts. Consider that parents and carers are effectively being responsibilized to educate their children about cybersecurity, given that young children cannot be expected to consult and act upon government advice. Previous research suggests that UK parents embrace this responsibility but need help in keeping up to date with cybersecurity ‘best practice’. In this paper, we consider a number of possible sources of parental advice, and conclude that support workers would be best placed to support parents in this domain. We then carried out a study to gauge the acceptability of this source of help. We find that parents would be willing to accept advice from this source, and suggest that cybersecurity academics be recruited to train support workers to ensure that they have current ‘best practice’ cybersecurity knowledge to impart to parents. Full article

This paper draws on empirical data generated in the ‘Everyday Bordering in the UK’ project, with a focus on the experiences of people seeking asylum and hoping to establish a safe life in the UK. Specifically, we show that during the process of claiming asylum, people’s experiences of waiting and displacement—practices inherent in UK immigration policies—work as time- and space-based dimensions of power that are imbued with colonial logic. Existing studies apply the lens of Foucault’s governmentality approach to politics regulating people seeking asylum. In particular, the international literature describes the policy of dispersal, and associated periods of waiting, as a dynamic of power used by governments to control and regulate behaviours. However, these time- and space-related experiences are often considered separately, focusing on the rationalities underpinning these politics. This paper, by contrast, develops Foucault’s theories by examining how these two characteristics interconnect in the lived realities of people waiting for an asylum decision in the UK to create racialised politics of power and privilege that reproduce the colonial origins of European migration governance. In doing so, we contribute by illustrating how practices within the UK asylum system can be embodied by people seeking asylum to create a subject that modifies behaviours in response to being positioned as ‘less deserving’ than UK citizens—the ‘colonised self’. Full article

Green infrastructure, particularly public greenspaces such as urban parks, plays an important role in urban environments, and improving public participation in greenspace practices and encouraging environmental stewardship can help to address some of the challenges of greenspace governance. We identify a gap in the research as to whether participation in citizen science projects can enhance connections between people and place and encourage better community participation in the stewardship of parks and urban greenspaces. The research adopts a Living Lab approach to utilise the inherent knowledge of the local community in developing digital experiments in the pilot site using a Nature Data Probe toolkit and seeks to explore its potential for enhancing nature connectedness by revealing hidden nature. We describe an action research method working with participants from a secondary school located close to a large urban park in Plymouth, UK. The results found that participants were more observant of hidden nature following the workshop and that an increase in the number of participants, and in the specific and descriptive responses identifying nature, was observed. These findings indicate that a deeper awareness of the natural environment was created and, in summary, we discuss the implications of this as a pathway to increased participation in greenspace governance. Full article

Community energy development and the empowerment of customers as producers are the main contributors to decentralized market solutions in energy transition policy. Despite the growing literature on community energy projects from the perspectives of various business models, drivers, and barriers, few studies display the impact of institutional factors on the community energy business model configuration. Using insights from Ostrom’s institutional framework, this study develops a conceptual framework comprising policy instruments and the intermediaries that configure the various community energy business models, and it examines this framework in the developed world of northwestern European countries (Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and the UK) and in selected cases in developing countries (Rural Central America, South Africa, Iran, and Indonesia). The findings indicate that ambitious renewable energy consumption targets and national policies in northern EU countries have resulted in political and financial incentives, as well as greater financial security than other investment markets, which encourage citizens to contribute to the proliferation of community energy. On the other hand, in the studied developing countries, top-down energy policies and a centralized energy system are insufficient for participatory energy planning. Due to unsupportive policies, a lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks, and a lack of institutional support in these countries, the initiation of community energy projects requires the presence of intermediaries such as developers who work ‘in-between’ other actors, such as energy providers, users, or regulators. Full article

In Germany, socioeconomically deprived citizens more often develop esophageal carcinoma, since typical risk factors follow the social gradient. Therefore, we hypothesized that socioeconomic deprivation might also be associated with advanced tumor stages and comorbidities at the time of surgery. As a consequence, socioeconomic deprivation may be related to postoperative complications and reduced overall survival. Therefore, 310 patients who had undergone esophagectomy for cancer in curative intent between 2012 and 2020 at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) were included in this study. Socioeconomic status (SES) was estimated using the purchasing power of patients’ postal codes as a surrogate parameter. No association was found between SES and tumor stage or comorbidities at the time of surgery. Moreover, SES was neither associated with postoperative complications nor overall survival. In conclusion, socioeconomic inequalities of patients treated at a high-volume center do not affect treatment outcomes. Full article

Nowadays, several alternatives to internal combustion engines are being proposed in order to reduce CO₂ emissions in freight transportation and citizen mobility. According to many experts, the use of electric vehicles constitutes one of the most promising alternatives for achieving the desirable reductions in emissions. However, popularization of these vehicles is being slowed by long recharging times and the low availability of recharging stations. One possible solution to this issue is to employ the concept of battery sharing or battery swapping. This concept is supported by important industrial partners, such as Eni in Italy, Ample in the US, and Shell in the UK. This paper supports the introduction of battery swapping practices by analyzing their effects. A discrete-event simulation model is employed for this study. The obtained results show that battery sharing practices are not just a more environmentally and socially friendly solution, but also one that can be highly beneficial for reducing traffic congestion. Full article

In this article, we reflect on our collaborative practice-as-research piece Project Finding Home, that arose from our experiences of working and living in the UK as ‘non-British’ citizens. Engaging with other refugee and migrant artists over three years, we worked deliberately as co-researchers and co-creators in a non-hierarchical dynamic to produce a series of four films reflecting on how we find home when it is so impacted by government policy, social and cultural integration, and intergenerational relationships. This article focuses on two of these films, one made with the participatory theatre company of Sanctuary, PSYCHEdelight, and one made with conceptual artist, Khaled Barakeh. Through observations of their work, we discuss how their respective uses of comedy (in PSYCHEdelight’s show Mohand and Peter) and visual representation (in Barakeh’s installation On the Ropes) resist singular views of migrant narratives. Additionally, we analyse our creative and ethical processes for making films with them about their work. Discussing how their aesthetics informed our processes for showcasing who they are and what they do as artists to a wider audience, we examine how artistic practice, its documentation, and its dissemination can question dominant aesthetic norms and existing migration and cultural policies in the UK and Europe. Full article